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Updated: June 19, 2025
Archettes, just below; the flat valley with the river winding from side to side; the straight rows of poplar trees; the dark pines on the hills, and the rounded mountains rising farther and higher into the distance until the last I saw, far off to the south-east, must have been the Ballon d'Alsace at the sources of the Moselle the hill that marked the first full stage in my journey and that overlooked Switzerland.
Probably no other Flemish town has seen its defenses so altered and enlarged as Ypres has between the primitive days when the crusading Thierry d'Alsace planted hedges of live thorns to strengthen the towers, and the formation of the great works of Vauban.
In all of them you find music. They are those Germans whose countries I had seen a long way off, from the Ballon d'Alsace, and whose language and traditions I now first touched in the town that stood before me. LECTOR. But in Porrentruy they talk French! AUCTOR. They are welcome; it is an excellent tongue. Nevertheless, they are Germans. Who but Germans would so preserve would so rebuild the past?
Then there is Thann, with its perfect Gothic church, a veritable cathedral in miniature, and the charming, prosperous valley of Wesserling. From Thann the ascent of the Ballon d'Alsace may be made, but the place itself must on no account be missed. No more exquisite church in the region, and most beautifully is it placed amid sloping green hills! It may be said to consist of nave and apse only.
To walk from Nieuport Ville to the Digue de Mer at Nieuport-Bains is to pass in a few minutes from the old Flanders, the home of so much romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the market-places with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around them, from the belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets and the narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other from the tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where the candles glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar, from the land of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc, and Van Eyck, and Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple and the Golgotha of Europe, into the clear, broad light of modern days.
For the Ballon d'Alsace is the knot of Europe, and from that gathering up and ending of the Vosges you look down upon three divisions of men. To the right of you are the Gauls. I do not mean that mixed breed of Lorraine, silent, among the best of people, but I mean the tree Gauls, who are hot, ready, and born in the plains and in the vineyards.
I gave a Napoléon d'or for the scion, and this is its first year of flowering. Here, take it!" With that he actually cut the blossom from the stalk, and handed it to me. It was a magnificent flower, and almost black, with but a slight purple tinge. It was the darkest-hued rose known at that time. Later on the "Deuil d'Alsace" came out of Pandora's box.
At length, sick and helpless, he was admitted to the hospital of Notre Dame, where he died in 1771. He painted the large portrait of Cardinal Thomas Philippe d'Alsace, Archbishop of Malines. Daniel Janssens, born in 1636, was a painter-decorator of the first order. He adopted the manner of Jacques de Hornes of whom he was the favorite pupil.
I was now arrived at the head of this lovely vale, at the sources of the river Moselle and the base of the great mountain the Ballon d'Alsace, which closes it in like a wall at the end of a lane.
The reason of this, my little map here, where the dark stands for the valley and the light for the high places, will show better than a long description. Not that this map is of the Ballon d'Alsace in particular, but only of the type of hill I mean.
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