Which of these two roads should he follow?  He did not know.  The profound solitude of the place made him fear that he might not meet any one who could direct him, when the sound of a psalm vigorously chanted reached his ears from the distance.  Soon it became more distinct, and he recognized the words, ‘In exitu Israel de Egypto’, sung at the top of the lungs by a voice so shrill that it would have irritated the larynx of any of the sopranos at the Opera.  Its vibrating but sharp tones resounded so clearly in the dead silence of the forest that a number of stanzas were finished before the pious musician came in sight.  At last a drove of cattle appeared through the trees which bordered the road on the left, walking with a slow, grave step; they were driven by a little shepherd about nine or ten years of age, who interrupted his song from time to time to reassemble the members of his flock with heavy blows from his whip, thus uniting temporal cares with those of a spiritual nature with a coolness which the most important personages might have envied him.

“Which of these roads leads to Bergenheim?” called out the traveller when they were near enough to speak to each other.

“Bergenheim!” repeated the child, taking off his cotton cap, which was striped like a rainbow, and adding a few words in an unintelligible Gallo-Germanic patois.

“You are not French, then?” asked the stranger, in a disappointed tone.

The shepherd raised his head proudly and replied: 

“I am Alsatian, not French!”

The young man smiled at this trait of local patriotism so common then in the beautiful province by the Rhine; then he thought that pantomime might be necessary, so he pointed with his finger first at one road, then at the other: 

“There or there, Bergenheim?” asked he.

The child, in his turn, pointed silently with the tip of his whip to the banks of the river, designating, at some distance on the other side, a thicket of woods behind which a slight column of smoke was rising.

“The deuce!” murmured the stranger, “it seems that I have gone astray; if the chateau is on the other side, where can I establish my ambuscade?”

The shepherd seemed to understand the traveller’s embarrassment.  Gazing at him with his intelligent blue eyes, he traced, with the tip of his toe in the middle of the road, a furrow across which he rounded his whip like the arch of a bridge; then he pointed a second time up the river.

“You are an honor to your country, young fellow,” exclaimed the stranger; “there is the material in you to make one of Cooper’s redskins.”  As he said these words he threw a piece of money into the child’s cap and walked rapidly away in the direction indicated.

The Alsatian stood motionless for a few moments with one hand in his blond hair and his eyes fastened upon the piece of silver which shone like a star in the bottom of his cap; when the one whom he considered as a model of extraordinary generosity had disappeared behind the trees, he gave vent to his joy by heavy blows from his whip upon the backs of the cattle, then he resumed his way, singing in a still more triumphant tone:  ‘Mantes exultaverunt ut arites’, and jumping higher himself than all the hills and rams in the Bible.