IV INTRODUCTION

in Alsace after thirty years of conquest. It is Bazin's best work, and won him a seat among the Forty 'Immortals' of the Académie Française (1904).

Besides novels, Bazin has also written a number of books of travel and description: Sicile (1892), Les Italiens d* aujourd'hui (1894), Terre d'Espagne (1895), Nord-Sud (1913), etc., delightf ul Works, doubly readable for the charm of the author's personality, no less than for that of his style. They hâve flowed easily from the pen of a high-minded artist who is also a kind gentleman to whom the fates hâve been not unkind.

For Bazin^s life has been so happy as to hâve but little history. Bom at Angers in 1853, he attended the govemment school, studied law, and for a time taught, in his native city. But he was not slow to find himself, and before he reached the âge of thirty-five, he was not only the author of two novels, but also on the staff of the best Paris newspaper, the Journal des débats. Since then he has devoted himself to letters, and has won for himself a place in the front rank of those novelists whom the world can love for their character and principles no less than admire for their genius.

"The Oberlé Family'' is a vivid picture of the lastîng dissensions that follow upon the annexation of territory by a conquering nation, a picture painted on the background of Alsace.

Alsace, a beautiful and fertile région, lies on the western bank of the Rhine from the point where this river makes a sharp northward tum at Basle. As early as the thirteenth century, Alsace belonged to the house of Austria. During the Thirty Years* War, she was ceded to France, and her possession confirmed to that country by the Westphalian treaties of 1648 when France, Germany, Spain, and other