Author: Anthony Trollope
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5202] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on June 4, 2002] [Most recently
updated: June 4, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, the golden Lion of Granpere
***
This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
Up among the Vosges mountains in Lorraine, but just
outside the old half-German province of Alsace, about
thirty miles distant from the new and thoroughly French
baths of Plombieres, there lies the village of Granpere.
Whatever may be said or thought here in England of
the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate
be admitted that good roads were made under the Empire.
Alsace, which twenty years ago seems to have been
somewhat behindhand in this respect, received her
full share of Napoleon’s attention, and Granpere
is now placed on an excellent road which runs from
the town of Remiremont on one line of railway, to
Colmar on another. The inhabitants of the Alsatian
Ballon hills and the open valleys among them seem
to think that the civilisation of great cities has
been brought near enough to them, as there is already
a diligence running daily from Granpere to Remiremont;—and
at Remiremont you are on the railway, and, of course,
in the middle of everything.
And indeed an observant traveller will be led to think
that a great deal of what may most truly be called
civilisation has found its way in among the Ballons,
whether it travelled thither by the new-fangled railways
and imperial routes, or found its passage along the
valley streams before imperial favours had been showered
upon the district. We are told that when Pastor
Oberlin was appointed to his cure as Protestant clergyman
in the Ban de la Roche a little more than one hundred
years ago,—that was, in 1767,—this
region was densely dark and far behind in the world’s
running as regards all progress. The people
were ignorant, poor, half-starved, almost savage,
destitute of communication, and unable to produce from
their own soil enough food for their own sustenance.
Of manufacturing enterprise they understood nothing,
and were only just far enough advanced in knowledge
for the Protestants to hate the Catholics, and the
Catholics to hate the Protestants. Then came
that wonderful clergyman, Pastor Oberlin,—he
was indeed a wonderful clergyman,— and
made a great change. Since that there have been
the two empires, and Alsace has looked up in the world.
