Little Franz could hardly believe his ears; that wasn’t at all the way the master was accustomed to speak.  It was very strange!  Somehow—­everything was very strange.  The room looked queer.  Everybody was sitting so still, so straight—­as if it were an exhibition day, or something very particular.  And the master—­he looked strange, too; why, he had on his fine lace jabot and his best coat, that he wore only on holidays, and his gold snuff-box in his hand.  Certainly it was very odd.  Little Franz looked all round, wondering.  And there in the back of the room was the oddest thing of all.  There, on a bench, sat visitors.  Visitors!  He could not make it out; people never came except on great occasions,—­examination days and such.  And it was not a holiday.  Yet there were the agent, the old blacksmith, the farmer, sitting quiet and still.  It was very, very strange.

Just then the master stood up and opened school.  He said, “My children, this is the last time I shall ever teach you.  The order has come from Berlin that henceforth nothing but German shall be taught in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine.  This is your last lesson in French.  I beg you, be very attentive.”

His last lesson in French! Little Franz could not believe his ears; his last lesson—­ah, that was what was on the bulletin-board!  It flashed across him in an instant.  That was it!  His last lesson in French—­and he scarcely knew how to read and write—­why, then, he should never know how!  He looked down at his books, all battered and torn at the corners; and suddenly his books seemed quite different to him, they seemed—­somehow—­like friends.  He looked at the master, and he seemed different, too,—­like a very good friend.  Little Franz began to feel strange himself.  Just as he was thinking about it, he heard his name called, and he stood up to recite.

It was the rule of participles.

Oh, what wouldn’t he have given to be able to say it off from beginning to end, exceptions and all, without a blunder!  But he could only stand and hang his head; he did not know a word of it.  Then through the hot pounding in his ears he heard the master’s voice; it was quite gentle; not at all the scolding voice he expected.  And it said, “I’m not going to punish you, little Franz.  Perhaps you are punished enough.  And you are not alone in your fault.  We all do the same thing,—­we all put off our tasks till to-morrow.  And—­sometimes—­to-morrow never comes.  That is what it has been with us.  We Alsatians have been always putting off our education till the morrow; and now they have a right, those people down there, to say to us, ’What!  You call yourselves French, and cannot even read and write the French language?  Learn German, then!’”

And then the master spoke to them of the French language.  He told them how beautiful it was, how clear and musical and reasonable, and he said that no people could be hopelessly conquered so long as it kept its language, for the language was the key to its prison-house.  And then he said he was going to tell them a little about that beautiful language, and he explained the rule of participles.