diff options
Diffstat (limited to '75744-h/75744-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 75744-h/75744-h.htm | 8045 |
1 files changed, 8045 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/75744-h/75744-h.htm b/75744-h/75744-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6bb2772 --- /dev/null +++ b/75744-h/75744-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8045 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + My Lorraine Journal | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +a { + text-decoration: none; +} + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2.nobreak, h3.nobreak { + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +hr.chap { + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + clear: both; + width: 65%; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; +} + +img.w100 { + width: 100%; +} + +div.chapter { + page-break-before: always; +} + +ul { + list-style-type: none; + text-align: left; + margin: 0; +} + +li { + margin-top: .5em; + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +table { + margin: 1em auto 1em auto; + max-width: 30em; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +td { + padding-left: 2.25em; + padding-right: 0.25em; + vertical-align: top; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: justify; +} + +.tdc { + text-align: center; + padding-top: 0.75em; + padding-left: 0.25em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.tdc2 { + padding-left: 0.25em; + text-indent: 0; + text-align: center; + white-space: nowrap; +} + +.tdr { + text-align: right; +} + +.tdpg { + padding-left: 0.25em; + text-indent: 0; + vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; +} + +.blockquote { + margin: auto 10%; +} + +.caption p { + text-align: center; + margin-bottom: 1em; + font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.center { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.footnotes { + margin-top: 1em; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.footnote { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em; +} + +.footnote .label { + position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; +} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + +.hanging { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.larger { + font-size: 150%; +} + +.noindent { + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + right: 4%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; +} + +.poetry-container { + text-align: center; +} + +.poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; +} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; +} + +.poetry .verse { + padding-left: 3em; +} + +.poetry .indent0 { + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poetry .indent2 { + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.poetry .indent4 { + text-indent: -1em; +} + +.poetry .indent6 { + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.right { + text-align: right; +} + +.smaller { + font-size: 80%; +} + +.smcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; +} + +.allsmcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; + text-transform: lowercase; +} + +.titlepage { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 3em; + text-indent: 0em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker img { + max-width: 100%; + width: auto; + height: auto; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 1.5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .blockquote { + margin: auto 5%; +} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp100 {width: 100%;} +.illowp48 {width: 48%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp48 {width: 100%;} +.illowp53 {width: 53%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp53 {width: 100%;} +.illowp56 {width: 56%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp56 {width: 100%;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75744 ***</div> + +<h1>MY LORRAINE JOURNAL</h1> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="deco1" style="max-width: 4.375em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/deco1.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Books by</span><br> +EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="max-width: 20em;"> + +<ul class="allsmcap"> +<li>A DIPLOMAT’S WIFE IN MEXICO. Illustrated.</li> +<li>DIPLOMATIC DAYS. Illustrated.</li> +</ul> + +</div> + +<p class="center">HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK<br> +[<span class="smcap">Established 1817</span>]</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus01" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>DUCAL PALACE, NANCY</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="titlepage larger">MY LORRAINE<br> +JOURNAL</p> + +<p class="titlepage"><i>by</i><br> +EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY<br> +<span class="smaller allsmcap">[MRS. NELSON O’SHAUGHNESSY]</span><br> +<span class="smaller"><span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF</span><br> +<i>“A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico”<br> +and “Diplomatic Days”</i></span></p> + +<p class="titlepage">ILLUSTRATED</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp56" id="deco2" style="max-width: 9.375em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/deco2.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p class="titlepage">HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br> +<span class="smaller">NEW YORK AND LONDON</span></p> + +<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">My Lorraine Journal</span></p> + +<p class="center smaller">Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers<br> +Printed in the United States of America<br> +Published September, 1918</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<p class="center"><i>To<br> +Mrs. William H. Crocker</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>In memory of a lost battle<br> +and in appreciation of<br> +her work in Lorraine</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Ducal Palace, Nancy</span></td> + <td class="tdpg" colspan="2"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Verdun and Vicinity</span></td> + <td class="tdc2"><i>Facing p.</i></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02">4</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Place Stanislas, Nancy</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">12</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Author at Vitrimont</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">30</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Cemetery, Vitrimont</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">30</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">The Bridge at Lunéville</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">30</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Fountain of Amphitrite by Jean Lamour, Place Stanislas, Nancy</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">38</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Souvenir Menu of Luncheon at Verdun, June 17, 1917</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">46</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Our Party on the Battle-field at Verdun, June 17, 1917</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">50</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">In the Boyaux, Verdun, June 17, 1917</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">50</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Sister Julie</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">124</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Bas-relief of the Refugees</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus12">124</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><span class="smcap">Miss Polk’s Wedding</span></td> + <td class="tdc2">”</td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus13">162</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> + +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td><span class="smcap">Foreword</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FOREWORD">xi</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc" colspan="3">PART I</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr smaller">CHAP.</td> + <td></td> + <td class="tdpg"></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">How One May Happen to Go to the Front</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_I">3</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Nancy</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_II">12</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Lunéville</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_III">18</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Vitrimont</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_IV">22</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Lunéville Again</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_V">28</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VI.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Gerbéviller and La Sœur Julie</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_VI">33</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VII.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Bar-le-Duc</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_VII">37</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Verdun</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_VIII">42</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IX.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Châlons.—Château de Jean d’Heurs.—Revigny, the + “Lining” of the Front</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_IX">60</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">X.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Mont Frenet.—La Champagne Pouilleuse.—The Return</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_I_CHAPTER_X">64</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc" colspan="3">PART II</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">By the Marne</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_II_CHAPTER_I">77</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">The Canteen at Bar-le-Duc</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_II_CHAPTER_II">87</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Theatricals and Camouflage</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_II_CHAPTER_III">97</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">The Burial of Père Cafard</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_II_CHAPTER_IV">108</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">A Providential Ford</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_II_CHAPTER_V">112</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdc" colspan="3">PART III<br>LORRAINE IN AUTUMN<br>“<i>L’élégante + et mélancolique Lorraine</i>”</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Nancy and Molitor</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_I">121</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Eighteenth-century Emanations</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_II">131</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Toul</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_III">144</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">A Stroll in Nancy</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_IV">153</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Vitrimont in Autumn</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_V">161</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VI.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">At the Guérins’</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_VI">167</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VII.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">Across Lorraine</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_VII">174</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> + <td><span class="smcap">The Châlons Canteen</span></td> + <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PART_III_CHAPTER_VIII">182</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD</h2> + +</div> + +<p>It will be seen, by the first chapter, how fortuitous +though inevitable was the writing of this little book, +begun before the American troops came to France; yet +it happens to concern that part of the war zone wherein +our men are preparing themselves for battle, and which +will be quickened with their blood.</p> + +<p>The time has scarcely come to write of the world war; +indeed, it is only between wars that one can write of +them, when wisdom, with accompanying imagination, +looks down the great perspectives; now men’s utmost +energies are concentrated upon deeds of passion performed +in hope or in despair.</p> + +<p>Oliver’s <i>Ordeal by Battle</i> of 1915 remains the most +scholarly and philosophic of the war books; Masefield’s +<i>Gallipoli</i> the most artistic. But even these, and the +many, many others, give not so much a sense of inadequacy +as of impossibility.</p> + +<p>Letters from strong souls undergoing supreme emotions +have emanated from the trenches or the air. We +have mourned young perished singers: Rupert Brooke, +Alan Seeger. But for the most part, and so it must be, +war books are limited to the relation of personal deeds +and sufferings, and descriptions of localities where they +have taken place, colored more or less by the temperament +of each—even as I, “<i>en passant par la Lorraine</i>,” +wrote these pages.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Edith Coues O’Shaughnessy.</span></p> + +<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">33 rue de l’Université, Paris</span>,<br> +<i>January 19, 1918</i>.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I</h2> + +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br> +<span class="smaller">HOW ONE MAY HAPPEN TO GO TO THE FRONT</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>Thursday, June 7, 1917</i>.</p> + +<p>Even personal events have their outriders, and this +is how an unexpectant lady, still fiancée to Mexico, +received from Destiny various indications that she was +to go there where men, ten thousand upon ten thousand, +lay down their lives <i>pro patria</i>. Like everything, it was +simple when it had happened.</p> + +<p>At the Foire Saint-Sulpice, where I was serving at the +tea-stall, I met E. M. C., whom I thought in California. +After greetings (we had not seen each other since the +fatal month of October, 1916) she said to me:</p> + +<p>“You must come down to Lunéville where I have a +house, and visit the village of Vitrimont, that mother is +rebuilding.”</p> + +<p>I answered: “My dear, I’m still tied to Mexico, and +I can see my publishers frowning all the way across the +ocean if the second much-promised, long-delayed book +doesn’t arrive. I oughtn’t even to peep at anything else +for the moment.”</p> + +<p>Then, tea victims beginning to crowd in, “business as +usual” engaged us and we parted.</p> + +<p>When I got home I found that Joseph Reinach, met<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> +but once—Polybe of the delightful <i>Commentaires</i>—had +sent me his brochure, <i>Le Village Reconstitué</i>. I still +didn’t hear the outriders galloping down the street.</p> + +<p>In the evening I dined <i>chez Laurent</i> with Mr. C., +known in Mexico. When I got there I found that his +sister, Madame Saint-R. T., Présidente de La Renaissance +des Foyers, was going into Lorraine, to Lunéville +itself, the next day; conversation was almost entirely of +the practical work to be done in the devastated districts, +and the deeply engaging <i>philosophie de la guerre</i>, of how +one had not only to rebuild villages, but to remake souls +and lives.</p> + +<p><i>A quoi bon donner des chemises?</i> Give tools and implements, +or a brace of rabbits, that nature may take +its course and the peasant can say, “Soon I will have a +dozen rabbits, and twenty-five francs that I have +earned.”</p> + +<p>Some one observed that it really would be the rabbits, +however—it is any living, productive thing that is +of account, beyond all else, in the dead and silent places +of devastation, and gifts of twelve chickens and one +cock are demanded rather even than shoes.</p> + +<p>As we were pleasantly dining in the garden, and +philosophizing sometimes with tears, sometimes smiles, +a terrific thunder-storm broke over Paris, and we all +crowded into the big central room, with piles of hastily +torn-off, muddy table-linen. We sat talking, however, +till they turned both ourselves and the lights out. As +we parted, Madame Saint-R. T.’s last words were, +“But try to come down to Lunéville.”</p> + +<p>I thought to myself that night, “Things are getting +hot.” I believe in signs from heaven, and signs from +heaven are not to be neglected.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus02" style="max-width: 75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>VERDUN AND VICINITY</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>On Saturday, when E. M. stopped by for me to go +again to the Foire, I said:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p> + +<p>“I believe I <i>will</i> go to Lunéville. What does one do +about papers?”</p> + +<p>We straightway went to the Rue François Premier, +not being in the <i>mañana</i> class, either of us, and found +there a charming specimen of <i>jeunesse dorée</i>, intellectual, +“sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” but doing +his bit. Shears for the cutting of red tape were +liberally applied, and my papers were promised in an +unprecedented three days.</p> + +<p>As we “swept” out I said to E. M., “You don’t +think we were <i>too</i> strenuous?”</p> + +<p>She said, “Oh, they are used to us now, though it was +a thrilling moment when you ripped your photograph +(such a photograph!) from the duplicate of your passport!”</p> + +<p>The aforementioned charming specimen, M. de P., +had said a photograph was essential; it was Saturday +afternoon, the next day was Sunday, and for some unexplained +reason photographers don’t seem to work in +France on Mondays, at least not in war-time.</p> + +<p>It was about this time that E. M. said, in a <i>dégagé</i> +way: “I am going down to Verdun with a friend. It’s +awfully difficult, and the women who have been there +can be counted on one’s fingers. I wish <i>you</i> could go, +too.”</p> + +<p>I said, “That’s out of the question.” But I thought +to myself, “We will see what Fate decides.” It’s a great +thing to keep astride of her, anyway.</p> + +<p>On account of Sunday coming in between, my papers +could not be ready in time for me to leave with her on +Tuesday (they have to be sent to the <i>Quartier-Général</i> +to be stamped), but they were promised for Wednesday +that I might start for Lunéville on Thursday. I went +to see E. M. at her aunt’s, the Princess P.’s, on Monday +night for a few last words and injunctions. I found<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span> +her after passing through some lovely dove-gray rooms +with priceless old portraits of Polish great, hanging on +silvery walls, and rare bibelots and porcelains discreetly +scattered on charming tables rising from gray carpetings. +She greeted me by saying, “It’s all arranged for you to +go to Verdun, too.”</p> + +<p>“Verdun!” I cried. “Glory and sorrow of France!”</p> + +<p>I didn’t ask how, but thought of the harmonious +working of chance that brings as many gifts as blows +in its train.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Thursday, June 14th, 10.30 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>We slipped out of the station, flooded with waves of +blue-clad men, at eight o’clock, and since then there +has been a constant stopping of the train in green, glade-like +places to let troop-trains pass. A while ago I found +myself looking out on a river, and a shiver went over +me. It was the jade-colored, slow-flowing Marne.</p> + +<p>White morning-glories are thick on every hedge, and +wild roses such as grow in New England lanes, and there +are many thistles, soft and magenta-colored; lindens, +acacias, and poplars abound and hang delicately over +the banks of the river.</p> + +<p>Lying open on my lap is the <i>Revue de Paris</i> of June +1st, but I can’t read even the beautiful “<i>Lettres d’un +Officier Italien</i>”—(Giosué Borsi<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>), breathing a deep +spirit of conformity to the will of God and showing the +evolution that many an <i>intellectuel catholique</i> of his +generation has gone through in Italy. In his dugout +were Dante, Homer, Ariosto, the Gospels, St. Augustine, +Pascal, and <i>Le Manuel du Parfait Caporal et les Secours +d’Urgence</i>. And he loved his mother and let her know it.</p> + +<p>All along the route are villages and peaceful country +houses, near the train, bowered in acacia and linden;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> +elder-bushes are in full bloom, too, and we pass many +green kitchen gardens. Women are shaking blankets +out of windows, and looking at the train going to the +front, thinking, who shall say what thoughts?</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Big movement of troops is delaying us, and it has been +a morning spent among emerald-green hills, pale, like +Guatemalan or Bolivian emeralds, not like the deep-colored +gems of the Rue de la Paix. Everywhere are +patches of blue-clad men, marching down white roads +between green fields melting into the blue sky at the +point of the eyes’ vision. Still others are bathing in the +pale, warm Marne or resting on its banks. Trains go +past loaded with battered autos, <i>camions</i> and guns +coming from the front, or others with neatly covered, +newly repaired machines of death, going out.</p> + +<p>All were silent in the train at first. “<i>Méfiez-vous, les +oreilles ennemies vous écoutent</i>” is the device placarded +everywhere. In my coupé some one feeling slightly, +very slightly, facetious, had rubbed out the first two +letters of <i>oreilles</i>, changed the first “<i>e</i>” into an “<i>f</i>,” so +that it read, “<i>Méfiez-vous, les filles ennemies vous écoutent</i>.” +The ruling passion strong in death!</p> + +<p>We pass Epernay, whose little vine-planted hills had +run red, before the treading out of its 1914 wine, with the +blood of English and French heroes.</p> + +<p>At last we began to talk, a dark-eyed colonel of infantry +with the <i>Grand’ Croix de la Légion d’Honneur</i> +having reached down my bag for me.</p> + +<p>It is a historic date for France and for ourselves.</p> + +<p>The night before, General Pershing arrived in Paris, +with his guerdon of help, mayhap salvation. All the +newspapers had pictures of him and his staff, their +reception at the station, the crowd before the Hôtel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> +Crillon. One officer told the story of the woman in the +crowd who was so little that there wasn’t the slightest +chance of her seeing anything or anybody. When asked +why she was there she answered, “<i>Mais j’aurai assisté</i>,” +and that, it seems to me, is the epitome and epitaph of +the generation whose fate it is to see with their eyes +the world war.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">In the Station, Châlons-sur-Marne</span>, <i>2.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>Extreme heat. Train four hours late on account of +the movement of troops. Wave after wave of horizon +blue undulates through the station. They are lying +about, standing about, sitting about—the <i>poilus</i>. Half +hidden by their equipment, their countless bundles tied +around their waists, slung on their shoulders, under their +arms, they seem indescribably weary and dusty, turned +toward the blazing front where the best they can hope is +<i>la bonne blessure</i>—theirs not to reason why. Sometimes +30,000 pass through Châlons in a day.</p> + +<p>Now it comes to me that our men—our fresh, eager, +beautiful young men, such as I saw disembark at Vera +Cruz—will pass through this same station to that same +blazing front....</p> + +<p>By my window, on the siding, is passing an endless +train of box-cars, with four horses in the ends of each +car. Between the horses’ forefeet, pale-blue groups of +men are crowded; no room to lie, scarcely to sit—cramped, +hot, with their eternal accoutrement. One +bent group was playing cards, the horses’ heads above +them. But mostly they are looking out at people who +are not called upon to die.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Pangs of hunger began to assail me as the train pulled +out. I went into the dining-car and had a modest,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> +belated repast of <i>œufs sur le plat</i>, cheese and fruit. +At the tables were groups of uniformed men talking in +low voices of what had been and what might have been. +As I looked out of the window, while waiting, my eyes +fell upon the first band of prisoners I had seen—tall, +stalwart men, wearing the round white cap with its +band of red—at work on the roads, those veins and arteries +of France.</p> + +<p>An officer, once the most civilian of civilians, looking +like the pictures of Alexandre Dumas <i>fils</i> on the +covers of cheap editions of <i>La Dame aux Camélias</i>, with +bushy hair parted on one side, mustache, and stubby +Napoleon, broad face and twinkling eyes, pointed out +Sermaize, the first of the devastated villages we passed, +which has been rebuilt by the English Society of Friends. +“Conscientious objectors” don’t intend to let the sons +of Mars do everything, but they can’t keep pace with +the destruction. In <i>Le Village Reconstitué</i> M. Reinach +speaks of the ugliness of the models proposed to the +victims, which pass understanding, and says that even +the vocabulary of Huysmans would not suffice to give +the least idea of them. What the peasant wants is +“<i>mon village</i>,” which doesn’t at all resemble what the +<i>commis voyageur en laideur</i> proposes.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Revigny</span>, <i>4.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>I have seen the first black crosses in a green field +bounded by clumps of poplar against the clear sky. +Revigny is a mass of ruins, roofless houses, heaps of mortar, +and endless quantities of blue-clad, heavily laden +men coming and going in the station—the eternal waiting, +waiting for transit. Revigny is on the road to +Verdun, Alexandre Dumas <i>fils</i> told me. He gets out at +Bar-le-Duc, which is now the point of departure to the +fateful fortress. Groups of yellow Annamites are working<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> +at the roads. They are imported for that purpose, +being of little use when the cannon sounds.</p> + +<p>Awhile ago two young Breton under-officers, colonials, +came into the compartment. They had been at school +together and had not met for ten years until just now +on the train. They watched together the shifting scenery; +one was coming from a young wife, the other from +a fiancée.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Gondrecourt.</span></p> + +<p>Two symmetrical fifteenth-century towers pierce a +pale-blue sky. One of the young Bretons tells me that +for some time the train has been making a great détour, +as the straight line to Nancy would take it through +Commercy, daily bombarded by the enemy.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Pagny</span>, <i>5.30 o’clock p.m.</i></p> + +<p>Here we pick up the Meuse—and there still follows +us the pink-and-gray ribbon of willow-fringed canal that +links the Marne to the Rhine, and which all day long +has looked like the marble the Italians call <i>cipollino</i>. +But I remember that its greenness has been but lately +colored with a crimson dye.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Toul</span> (<i>where we thread up the Moselle</i>), <i>5.50</i>.</p> + +<p>We have just passed Toul. Great barracks are near +the station, and on the opposite hill is the fortress, high +against the sky, bound to Verdun by an uninterrupted +series of forts. It is a <i>place de guerre de première classe</i>. +The Romans had an encampment here, and Vauban +made the fortifications of his time.</p> + +<p>And because the mind is not always held to the +thing in view, even though it be of great moment, I +thought how Toul was the town where Hilaire Belloc +did his military service, “was in arms for his sins”; +from here it was that he set out upon the “path to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> +Rome” in fulfilment of his vow. Other things laid long +away in memory came to mind, and I was only jerked +back as my eye was caught by a group of German +prisoners being marched past the station, one soldier, +with a pointed bayonet, in front of them and another +behind.</p> + +<p>And at Nancy we are to knit up the river Meurthe.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br> +<span class="smaller">NANCY</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>Nancy, a dream of the eighteenth century, with the +réveillé of twentieth-century guns.</p> + +<p>We arrived at Nancy five hours late, at seven o’clock.</p> + +<p>No sign of E. M., no sign of anything familiar. Fortunately +I was flanked by Brittany, and a stout heart +did the rest. When we found that the next train for +Lunéville would leave at nine o’clock, I asked them to +dine with me and take a little walk about the town. +Our luggage—we were all traveling light, I with a hand-bag +and flat straw valise, they with two iron helmets—was +given to the <i>consigne</i> and, after my <i>sauf-conduit</i> had +been stamped in three separate places, we departed.</p> + +<p>The square before the station was surging with the +usual pale-blue waves, and as we crossed it the odor +of leather and tired feet and hot men was a good deal +stronger than the linden scent. We passed a very banal +statue of Thiers, <i>Libérateur du Territoire</i>, and some horrors +of <i>art nouveau</i>. A construction with colored-glass +windows and unnatural cupolas and gilding and mushy +outlines protruded from a corner, and its name, for its +sins, was Hôtel Excelsior. But we were searching for +the celebrated Place Stanislas. After asking a passer-by, +we were directed to a street whose name I have forgotten, +and we started down its rather distinguished +length of gray, well-built houses of another century,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> +many of them having the double Lorraine cross in red +to indicate cellar accommodations, with the number they +could shelter.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus03" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>PLACE STANISLAS, NANCY</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>When, suddenly, we stepped into the Place Stanislas, +I almost swooned with joy. I was in full eighteenth +century, in the midst of one of its most perfect creations, +with the low boom of the twentieth-century guns in the +distance.</p> + +<p>Quickly my spirit was ravished from the world of +combat into the still, calm, beautiful world of art, within +the enchantments of the <i>grilles</i> of Jean Lamour. A +sensation sweet, satisfying, unfelt since the beginning of +the war, invaded me. I gazed entranced upon that delicate +tracery of wrought iron, like some rich guipure, at the +four corners of the square of buildings, its lovely gilding +reflecting a soft light; and, outlined against a heaven +colored especially for them—pale blue, with threads of +palest pink, and a hint of gray and yellow—were urns +and torches and figures, half human, half divine, supporting +them. The beautiful fountains in the corners +were banked with sand-bags, but their contours were in +harmony with the other <i>grilles</i>, and one was surmounted +by an Amphitrite, the other by a Neptune. It was all +a symbol of a state of mind, a flowering of feeling, to +which had been vouchsafed a perfection of expression.</p> + +<p>There is an Arc de Triomphe, put up by Stanislas at +one end, in honor of his kingly son-in-law, in front of +the Hôtel de Ville, and a statue of Stanislas himself in +the middle, bearing the name “Stanislas,” the date +of 1831, and “<i>La Lorraine Reconnaissante</i>.” In looking +about, my eye fell on the Restaurant Stanislas, <i>dans la +note</i>, certainly, and I decided to dine there. We found +that we had time to investigate a little further, and +turned down by the café into a most lovely linden-scented +square called Place de la Carrière. Through the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> +double lines of trees between the fountains at the farther +end was visible an old palace, and the square was flanked +by houses that courtiers only could have lived in. It +all cried out, “Stay with me awhile.” An old park was +at one side, with trees planted <i>en quinconce</i><a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>—chestnuts, +ash, trembling poplars—and everywhere was the +penetrating fragrance of the lindens. It was so sweet +and loosening under the shade, after the long hot day +in the train, that the young officers began to talk, one +of his fiancée waiting in <i>Les Landes</i>, the other of his +wife of a year, seen only twice seven days. And then +again we were silent, and under the flowering trees I +was seized with a great longing for the beautiful and +calm, for the arts and ways of Peace. It seemed to me +I could not longer think of this, that, or the other “offensive,” +but that I must see before my eyes, hear with +my ears, feel with my touch, the lovely, the melodic, +the benign. <i>O bon Jésus!</i> Not of the battle-fields, not +of <i>réformés</i>, of limbless, sightless men, not of starving, +frightened children, not of black-robed women, not of +lonely deaths, not of munition-factories. What is this +world we are in?</p> + +<p>I don’t know how long we were silent, but at last one +of the young men said, “We must think of the hour.” +Then came a glancing at wrist watches, rattling of +identity disks, and we went back to the café and got a +table by the window, where we could look out on the +lovely, calm <i>ensemble</i> and the fading sky. The menu +was brought; it was a meatless day, but with a snap of +the eye the waiter recommended <i>œufs à la gelée</i>. We +understood later, when we found, concealed in the bottom +of each little dish under the egg, a thick, round +piece of ham. Fried perch, new potatoes, salad, strawberries +and cream, with the celebrated macarons of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> +Nancy—<i>des Sœurs Macarons</i>, as the little piece of paper +underneath each says—made a delicious menu. A certain +<i>petit vin gris du pays</i> had been recommended us +with another snap of the eye.</p> + +<p>As we sat waiting, one of the officers exclaimed at a +giant, lonely, priestly figure passing through the Place:</p> + +<p>“<i>Le voilà, l’aumônier du 52ème.</i>”</p> + +<p>I said, “Do run after him and ask him for dinner, +too.”</p> + +<p>He came back with the young man and we had a +most enjoyable repast. The chaplain knew all the +things about Nancy that we didn’t. He was a huge, +bearded man, who might have been with the hosts of +Charlemagne, and was a native of Commercy, where +Stanislas used to go with his court. The two Bretons +were very Catholic and very royalist; when I remarked +upon it, they said, simply, “Oh, we are all that way, <i>par +là</i>,” and they spoke names of great men born in Brittany, +and the <i>aumônier</i> told tales of near yesterdays surpassing +those of the heroic age. The gayest of the Bretons, he who +had not just left his young wife and his child unborn, +began to sing, “<i>Voici un sône tout nouveau</i>,” and suddenly +it was a quarter before nine and we had time only +for a dash to the station <i>d’une bonne allure militaire</i>, +which left me breathless. The nine-o’clock train didn’t, +however, leave till ten, as it was waiting for the Paris +train, which didn’t arrive at all. Finally, in a strange +heat, vagaries of lightning without thunder or rain—the +thunder we <i>did</i> hear wasn’t the old-time, pleasant, +celestial sort, but something with an easily traceable, +regular, decisive sound—we pulled out of the station, +I not knowing where I was going—no address in the +town of Lunéville.</p> + +<p>A thick, heavy, soft, enveloping night was about us.</p> + +<p>Groups of soldiers were lying, sitting, standing in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span> +little stations. We stopped every few minutes, and I +could distinguish them by the light of cigarette or +lantern on their guns and equipment, waiting for motors +to take them to the trenches. At one place I had to +descend to show my <i>sauf-conduit</i>; it was inspected and +stamped by the flickering light of a blue-veiled lantern, +and I climbed in again. I was beginning to feel a bit +tired, and the end was <i>not</i> in sight.</p> + +<p>We descended at Lunéville in complete darkness, a +motley crowd of military and civilians. My companions +were due at different points at dawn—Baccarat +and the Forest of Parroy. As I write, they are in the +trenches. They put me into the hands of a <i>commissaire</i> +who said he lived opposite E. M.’s. I waited, standing +by the door, while he locked up the station, looking +out on the silhouette of a gutted, roofless house, showing +dimly against the soft night sky. At last there was a +sound of rattling of keys and the <i>commissaire</i> picked me +and my luggage up. We started forth, the only human +beings visible, in what seemed a deserted town—no +lights in streets or houses.</p> + +<p>As we passed a wide open space the scent of flowering +lindens enveloped me, and with me walked the ghosts +of lovely and too-amiable ladies, of witty rulers loving +the arts as well as women—Duke Léopold and Madame +de Craon, King Stanislas and Madame de Boufflers, and +Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet.</p> + +<p>We walked seemingly through the entire town toward +a freshness of parks, and in darkness we arrived before +a garden gate; silence, and the bell nowhere to be +found. After looking for it in the light of various +matches—vainly, of course—the <i>commissaire</i> had the +brilliant idea of going to the house next door, <i>la maison +de M. le Maire</i>, the celebrated M. Keller. A woman +came out and showed the bell where nobody would ever<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> +have thought of looking for it, and, furthermore, masked +by vines. The door was finally opened by a tall, slender, +white-robed figure with two black braids showing over +her shoulders and a floating scarf. I thought it a vision +of Isolde, but it proved to be Miss P., who cried:</p> + +<p>“We had given you up! We waited at Nancy till +the train came in, and then had to motor back as quickly +as possible on account of the lights.”</p> + +<p>I went in, to find E. M. in a most becoming, slinky, +pale-blue satin <i>négligé</i>, also with braids on her shoulders. +I’d rather have found them both in <i>paniers</i>, shaking the +powder out of their hair. However, I can’t complain; +it was all pretty good as regards the stage-setting. We +embraced. I explained that various zealous guardians +of the gates of Nancy had stamped my <i>sauf-conduit</i>, +and, as I was certainly the only one of my species arriving +by that train, they should have given news of me +when asked concerning <i>une Américaine</i>. Then, as the +only healthy rooms in Lunéville in 1917 are on the +ground floor, I departed to one that had been retained +for me at the Hôtel des Vosges. Again through the +soft-scented night, guided by my <i>commissaire</i>, to a room +of extreme cleanliness and a most comfortable bed.</p> + +<p>It is 2 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> I am too tired to sleep. My mind is +jacked up by all the twists and turns of the day. I +have been reading the <i>Cour de Lunéville</i>, by Gaston +Maugras, found in my room, belonging to E. M.</p> + +<p>Three o’clock. Soft, very soft booming of cannon, +and a deep-toned bell. But no “poppy throws around +<i>my</i> bed its lulling charities.”</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br> +<span class="smaller">LUNÉVILLE</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>Lunéville, a dream of fair women of old and new +times, linden scents, and circling Taubes and little +white puffs of shrapnel against blue skies.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Hôtel des Vosges</span>, <i>June 15th, 8 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Have just breakfasted to the gentle accompaniment +of firing on a Taube.</p> + +<p>Dear old village life began at an early hour, but of +course the Taube put the cocks and the carts and the +geese and all the other usual auroral sounds quite in +the background.</p> + +<p>My breakfast service is decorated with the same +double cross of Lorraine that I saw on various houses +in Nancy indicating comfortable cellar accommodation. +The cross with the <i>chardon lorrain</i> (Lorraine thistle) is +everywhere.</p> + +<p>Popping and cannonading going on at a lively rate, +and whir of aero wheels; a beautiful day. Some little +white puffs of shrapnel visible from my window; I +must get dressed and investigate.</p> + +<p>Cannonading just stopped. I don’t know whether he +got off or was got.</p> + +<p>The hotel is discreet and clean, <i>avec un petit air</i>.</p> + +<p>It has been a good house of the good epoch, and over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> +each window are diverse and charming eighteenth-century +<i>motifs</i> in gray stone.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>6.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>Just home from Vitrimont in a blinding blaze of +sun, in a motor driven by E. M., and bearing in +large letters the words “Commission Californienne pour +la Reconstruction des Villages Dévastés,” a sort of +“open sesame,” and everywhere bayonets were lowered +to let us pass. Nerves a-quiver with another day’s impressions. +Tried lying down, but it didn’t go, so I am +in an arm-chair looking out of my Lorraine window in +full eighteenth century as regards setting, but with a +very definite tide of twentieth-century warfare sweeping +through it all. Meant to go to church, where there +are special prayers to be offered up, at Benediction, for +the needs of Lorraine, but, though the spirit was willing, +the rest of me was like lead after the hot, full day and +two hours in one spot too tempting.</p> + +<p>This morning, before I was dressed, E. M. and +Mrs. C. P., also staying in the hotel, appeared, so I +hastily harnessed up for the day and sallied forth with +them. We went first to the charming old house of +Mlle. Guérin, and, going in through a wide hallway, +stepped out into a large garden, where, under some +trees, several ladies were sitting, one of them Madame +Saint-R. T. We embraced cordially, in the very evident +fulfilment of destiny. Madame Saint-R. T. was +reading Pierre Boyé’s <i>Cour de Lunéville</i>, which I matched +with Gaston Maugras’s, and then I looked about me.</p> + +<p>The house, gray and long and low, was, until a hundred +years ago, a Capuchin monastery, when it came +into the hands of Mlle. Guérin’s family. There are old +linden-trees in the garden, and some tall cedars and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> +roses not doing very well; and masses of canterbury-bells +and geraniums. At one end of the garden, against +the wall, is an ancient statue of the Virgin, dark, moss-grown, +against still darker walls; we placed the flowers +we had gathered on her breast and in the hands of the +Child. <i>Avions</i> were humming above in the perfect sky, +and against the faultless blue was a very white crescent +moon just discernible.</p> + +<p>After accepting an invitation for dinner that night, +we walked out through the town toward the Château, +once the haunt of witty rulers, philosophers, and of the +fair and evidently too-amiable ladies beloved by them. +However, when we got into the great square of the +palace I forgot about them, for, looking up at the statue +of Lasalle, born in Metz, 1775, and fallen at the battle +of Wagram, 1807, were two Senegalese whom <i>we</i> looked +at as the Lunéville populace might once have looked at +the camels the young Duke Léopold brought back with +him from his wars with the Turks. The juxtaposition +was as strange. One of the Senegalese had on a +blue cap, the other a red. We gave each one a franc +for cigarettes, received large-mouthed, white-toothed +smiles, and proceeded to look at the remains of a German +<i>avion</i> which had fallen beside the statue the day before, +the most complete wreck possible. The aviator had +been killed and his broken wings were being removed to +the Museum. It made me quite still—there was something +so complete about it all, the great Château in the +background, the statue of Lasalle, the two Senegalese, +the shattered Taube!</p> + +<p>We walked on rather quietly over the bridge of the +Vesouze to the Place des Carmes—the Place Brûlée, as +it is now called. The big Carmelite convent which +formed the square had been used as a barracks for a +generation or so, and one side had been burned with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span> +incendiary bombs when the Germans left, while the +other side was untouched. In the middle was the statue +of L’Abbé Grégoire (who made the mistake of being +ahead of his time), and on the pedestal are the words, +“<i>J’ai vécu sans lâcheté, je veux mourir sans remords</i>.” +We stopped only a moment at the church—eighteenth +century, of course; fine old choir, delicate baroque designs +on the great wooden doors, and dominating towers +in a lovely reddish stone, with charming <i>motifs</i> of urn +and scroll, and flying angels against the sky, or rather +<i>in</i> it.</p> + +<p>We began to have that “gone” feeling about this +time, and turned back through the town to E.M.’s +house, where we were to lunch. It was cool and charming +as we stepped in out of the sun-flooded garden, +stripped of the mystery of the night before, but quite +lovely. In old Lunéville china vases were masses of +pink and purple canterbury-bells. It had been hastily +but charmingly got ready for occupancy with old furniture +that nice people in the provinces can put at the +disposition of their friends, and I saw again Miss P., +the Isolde of the dim, scented garden of the night +before. After lunch we sat in an arbor jutting into a +corner of the ancient park, drinking our coffee, and +eating some Mirror candies just out from New York—all +to the continued hum of <i>avions</i> and the rather soft +crack of guns. Then the motor was announced, or, +to be faithful to reality, somebody said, “We’d better +be off.” We put on our veils, got into the motor, which +E.M. cranked herself, and started off to Vitrimont without +any male assistance of any kind.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br> +<span class="smaller">VITRIMONT</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>A merciless blaze of sun as we passed out through +the town, badly battered at the end, through the +Place Brûlée, leading to the road to Vitrimont, some +three kilometers distant, running through green fields +with their little groups of black crosses. All is softly +green and gently rolling. Vitrimont, and around about +it, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of that +first August of the war, and Vitrimont itself was taken +and lost at the point of the bayonet seven times in one +day as gray German floods kept rolling in over the green +eastern hills. The village is charmingly placed on a little +eminence; sloping down from it are very fertile +meadows, then other thickly wooded hills slope up +against the sky.</p> + +<p>We passed through encumbered streets of devastated, +roofless houses, going first to Miss P.’s little dwelling, +that she has lived in during all these months of the +superintending of the reconstruction work. It consists +mostly of one perfectly charming room done up in yellow +chintz with a square pattern of pink roses, and +some good bits of old furniture, books, and flowers. +She took down from the wall a violin made by a convalescing +soldier out of a cigar-box and drew from it a +few soft and lovely tones. The rest of the house, where +she has installed herself with a woman servant, is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> +typical of the Lorraine peasant houses: a very wide +door to let the harvest-wagons in, a narrow one for human +beings, a narrow hall leading into a kitchen, then +the bigger living-room giving into it, now so charming +in its yellow chintz. From the kitchen some steep stairs +lead up into an attic which Miss P. has converted into +a medical dispensary.</p> + +<p>Outside, across the street, is a little pergola effect +made of boarding, where one can sit and look out across +the softly rolling, wooded hills. In it are a table and a +few chairs and some pots of flowers. We deposited our +tea-things there, and were starting out to make the +tour of the village, when the mayor, in shirt sleeves, +loose suspenders, and slipping trousers (his wife was +killed in the 1915 bombardment of Lunéville and his +son fell in the 1914 fighting in Vitrimont), came to welcome +us and do the inevitable stamping of our safe-conducts.</p> + +<p>We then proceeded to the old church, one of the first +things to be restored, so that its delicious fifteenth-century +vaultings and window-tracings would be beyond +further damage from exposure to the weather. One of +the things <i>not</i> hurt was the dado running around the +interior in the form of painted cloth folds by a misguided +nineteenth-century <i>curé</i>. War, with its usual +discriminating touch, had left <i>that</i>. In the vestibule +are some small, perfect Louis XV holy-water fonts in +the form of shells upheld on angels’ heads. A celebrated +baptismal font was removed to Paris.</p> + +<p>We then went to the <i>maison forte</i>, as the peasants +call what had been a sort of château, the dwelling of the +“first family” of the place. Its medieval tower was +battered beyond repair, and the house itself pretty well +damaged, while some of the rooms still had charming +bits of paneling, and the locks and latches of the doors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span> +were perfect examples of eighteenth-century wrought-iron +work. In one of the large rooms, whose ceiling was +broken in by a shell, was a lovely old fireback under a +marble mantel with the arms of the Counts of Vitrimont. +By a north window was sitting a woman +working at an embroidery screen with a brilliant +green and silver design; an old man with palsied head +was near.</p> + +<p>The school also has been rebuilt. A rosy-faced young +schoolmistress received us, and two little boys kept +to do their <i>pensums</i> told us the name of the President +of the United States, and showed us Washington <i>and</i> +San Francisco on the map hanging in the room. This +having been satisfactorily gone through with, the +punished little boys, with the usual luck of the wicked, +were given chocolates by E. M. and dismissed; then we +walked out into the little cemetery, approached by a +narrow pathway of arching sycamores. It looks out +toward the ancient forest of Vitrimont; in between are +more green, undulating fields ripening with the 1917 +harvest. The walls of the cemetery are battered and +broken and monuments and gravestones are overturned. +There was furious hand-to-hand fighting there, and in +those first August days the long dead again mingled +with the living. I passed down by broken, sun-baked +walls, reading the names on the crosses as I went, and +these are some of them:</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p><i>Lieut. Jeannot, 26ème Infanterie, aspirant—Un soldat +inconnu—</i></p> + +<p><i>Haye, Louis, Sergent—28 soldats—</i></p> + +<p><i>A notre fils, Charles Diebolt, mort pour la Patrie 1895-1914, +26ème Infanterie—</i></p> + +<p><i>Charles Carron, Musicien; Souvenir d’un camarade, +mort au Champ d’Honneur 31 août 1914—</i></p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span></p> + +<p>A rude wooden cross bears the words:</p> + +<p>“<i>Ci-gît Edouard Durand, fusillé le 25 août 1914 par +des lâches.</i>”</p> + +<p>As one goes out is the tomb of a young girl; “<i>Hélène +Midon, 18 ans, victime du 1er septembre 1915—une +prière—la plus jolie fille du village</i>.” A white and virginal +rose has been planted where she lies. In this +cemetery lie, too, the wife and son of the mayor.</p> + +<p>The first upspringing of early flowers is everywhere—asters, +goldenrod, wild roses—and the hot sun extracted +from each its soft, peculiar perfume. I picked +a seemingly perfect rose from the grave of <i>un soldat +inconnu</i>. Its petals immediately fell to the ground. +Everything grows with an almost ironical luxuriousness +on the shallow, hastily dug graves. All over Lorraine +is this same flowering; it has been and will be, but there +was no time to ponder on the fate of frontier lands, for +we were next to call on the officer commanding the +detachment quartered at Vitrimont, who was housed +in a reconstructed building and who had been waked +from slumber to receive us. When I gave him my +boxes of cigarettes for his men he said that he had +received some before for the soldiers who had the Croix +de Guerre. I promptly told him mine were for the +soldiers who had <i>not</i> got it. Mrs. C. P. brought bundles +of illustrated papers and postal cards.</p> + +<p>Soldiers are everywhere helping to get in the hay; +sweet odors of freshly cut grass float about on the +warm air to the sound of distant cannonading. However, +in spite of everything, it is already <i>l’après-guerre</i> +here, and the delivered population is breathing again, +but it all gives the sensation of something prostrate that +needs the help of strong, fresh hands before it can arise. +Mrs. Crocker’s work is on such a generous, imaginative, +sliding scale, and Miss P., untiring and executive, is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span> +of immense tact in dealing with the Lorraine peasant, +a peculiar type demanding peculiar handling. There +are numberless psychological situations needing adjustment +in the human as well as material affairs of devastated +villages. Miss P. meets all difficulties with +understanding plus determination. Some are content, +some not, with what is done for them. One woman +whose house was completed, and who was evidently +dazzled by the result, said, “It isn’t a house to live in, +but to rent.”</p> + +<p>Another, however, when we went into the grange +behind her house, pointing to the posts sustaining the +hay-lofts, said: “Will they hold? The old ones were +twice the size.”</p> + +<p>Sanitary improvements have been worked out as far +as possible, but when you try to tamper with a peasant’s +pile of <i>fumier</i>, it’s like tampering with his purse—and +<i>that’s</i> impossible. Quite a good deal of live stock has +been put into Vitrimont.</p> + +<p>A soldier stationed with the Vitrimont detachment +cranked the motor for us. His home was near by, and +he told us with shining eyes that he had just bought +for ninety francs two pigs. Somebody observed it was +the <i>premier pig qui coûte</i>. However that may be, the +purchase marked the remaking of his home.</p> + +<p>One is appalled at the time and energy and money +necessary for the rebuilding of this single village—a +million francs is the cost estimated—and materials and +workmen are increasingly difficult to get. One thinks +of the hundreds that <i>aren’t</i> being rebuilt. Vitrimont +has certainly been smiled on by heaven <i>and</i> Mrs. C.</p> + +<p>As we drove home, fleecy, delicately tinted clouds +were pinned together with mother-of-pearl cross-shaped +brooches. It is in the air alone that there is any “war +beauty.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span></p> + +<p>Soldiers are passing under my window, some in the +blue trench-helmets, with their equipment; some in their +fatigue caps, swinging their arms, free of their eternal +burdens; and there are officers afoot or on horseback, +and colonials—marines, we call them—in many kinds of +uniforms.</p> + +<p>The poster on the old garden wall opposite says: +<i>Alice Raveau viendra jouer “Werther,” dimanche, le 17 +juin, 1917, en matinée</i>.</p> + +<p>Charlotte might have lived in the house behind the +wall on which it is pasted, a gray, smooth-façaded house +with a good eighteenth-century door, and a chestnut +and a linden in full bloom. At the café on the corner +soldiers are sitting, laughing and talking, humming, drinking +their <i>bocks</i>, reading their papers, or throwing words to +women who pass by, and I thought of the men who pass +through these villages, leaving to women an inexorable +burden and an untransmittable joy. Many swallows are +flying about, and above it all, in the colorful afternoon +air, <i>avions</i> are humming. On the wings of the French +airplanes are stamped a great circle of color like an eye +with red pupil, white retina, and a blue outer rim. After +the hot day, something lovely and cool begins to come +in at the window, and I know soldiers all over Lorraine +are resting after the heat and burden of the day, though +in the distance the dull, muffled sound of cannon continues. +Now I must “dress”—that is, put on my other +dress—for the eight-o’clock dinner at Mlle. Guérin’s.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br> +<span class="smaller">MONSIEUR KELLER</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Lunéville</span>, <i>Saturday, 16th June, 8 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>As I put out my light and opened wide my window +last night a rush of warm, linden-scented air came +in, also the thick, soft, meridional voice of some soldier +singing “<i>En passant par la Lorraine</i>.” I, too, was passing +through Lorraine, and I got the sleep I didn’t get +the night before.</p> + +<p>This morning more whirring of aeroplanes, but peaceful. +The Taube got off yesterday; all the events of +Friday were accompanied by that constant low-flying +of aeroplanes, making one feel one was being looked after.</p> + +<p>Dinner at Monsieur Guérin’s. Monsieur Keller, the +celebrated mayor of Lunéville, whose tact, courage, and +good sense saved Lunéville many tragedies at the time +of the German entry, took me out. He has a lively, perceptive +eye, and, all in all, life seems not to have been +unkind to him, though he has been invaded, and his +parents before him. He received the Germans and said +adieu to them all in that month of August. His fine +old dwelling, where the treaty of peace was signed in +1801 between France and Austria, is next to E. M.’s, +and housed at one time one hundred German soldiers, +and the general and his staff were quartered in it. He +was, of course, the bright particular hostage during the +occupation, and was followed about by two officers and +four soldiers wherever he went.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span></p> + +<p>“I kept them moving,” he added, with a snap of his +perceptive eye.</p> + +<p>At Lunéville one hundred and thirty houses were destroyed +and there was much loss of life among civilians. +The mayor has, or rather had, a property near Vitrimont, +called Léomont, on a hill where there was formerly +a Roman temple to the moon, and from this +Lunéville is supposed to take its name. The great farm +and its ancient buildings were destroyed during the +bombardments of Lunéville and Vitrimont.</p> + +<p>“It’s only a war monument now,” he added, philosophically.</p> + +<p>It’s the atmosphere of Lunéville that’s so charming +to me—this drop into full eighteenth century, with the +boom of twentieth-century cannon in the distance. In +spite of the sound of guns, there is some peace they +can’t destroy. I knew nothing about the French provinces +till I got to Lunéville, and I suppose it’s their +immemorial and quite special atmosphere that I have +received. Here the war seems to be a thing of the past; +they think of their <i>secteur</i> only, and of themselves as +<i>libérés</i>, and talk of the war in the past tense, and it +might be 1814 just as well as 1914.</p> + +<p>A heavenly evening. We walked in the dim old garden +smelling of linden. No lights anywhere, of course, +and, though the stars were beautiful, they didn’t seem +to light up anything terrestrial; the only things blacker +than the night were the giant cedars. At dinner was a +youngish, much-decorated general, coming back for a +night from the front; though born in Lunéville it was the +first time he had been here since the war—always fighting +in other parts of France. Besides the general there +were Madame Saint-R. T., E. M., and Miss P., who +appeared in some sort of dull-red tunic that she ought +always to wear; the mayor and his wife (she is Gasconne,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> +and very animated, though she said twenty years of +Lunéville had somewhat calmed her); two or three +women with husbands at the front bringing daughters; +several young officers; and M. Guérin and his daughter—the +usual war-time composition of dinner-parties in +the provinces, I imagine. Excellent and very lavish +repast, <i>maigre</i>, of course, but everything else except +meat in profusion. I didn’t get to bed till after eleven. +M. Guérin walked back to the hotel with us, and, while +he and Mrs. C. P. talked, again I was accosted by ghosts +of dead rulers and lovely ladies and philosophers as we +crossed the vast, dim Place Léopold. They, too, had +crossed it and been amorous and witty, pleased or having +<i>vapeurs</i>, enveloped by linden scent, and the changeless +stars had controlled their destinies.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>This morning we visited the military hospital in one +of the most charming edifices I have ever seen, an +eighteenth-century convent-building. The first entry +on the tableau in the hallway giving the names of the +benefactors was 1761; the last, 1913. It is a two-storied, +cloistered, rambling edifice, with several wide +courtyards planted with trees and flowers, a fountain in +the middle of one; in another a statue of the Virgin; +beyond it a sun-baked vegetable garden; and still +farther, behind a hedge, the inevitable little cemetery.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus04" style="max-width: 20.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>AUTHOR AT VITRIMONT</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus05" style="max-width: 20.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>CEMETERY, VITRIMONT</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus06" style="max-width: 31.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>THE BRIDGE AT LUNÉVILLE</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>We went through the wards of the hospital, high-ceilinged, +spotless, airy, with the <i>médecin-chef</i>, talking +with the wounded and distributing cigarettes.</p> + +<p>One of the doctors, also mayor of Gerbéviller, said to +us, when we told him we were going there in the afternoon, +“But don’t you want to see the young German +aviator?”</p> + +<p>Thinking it quite “in the note,” we went up-stairs<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span> +again. He unlocked the door of a large corner room. +At a table by a window looking out on another little +tree-planted court was the young eaglet with fractured +“wing”—arm and shoulder—in plaster. He got up +with the military salute as we came in. I begged permission +to address him in German, and when I asked +him where he was <i>zu Hause</i>, he answered, “Posen,” +and that it was far. He said he was very comfortable, +but, with a longing glance at the patch of sky, added +that he was dreadfully bored. I suppose he was, after +being a bird in the blue ether and breaking into secular +silences. He had been there a month, but was still very +thin under the cheek-bones and dark about the eyes, +and very young. He turned to the doctor with an entirely +different expression—a sort of shutting down of +iron shutters over the youthful look—on being asked +in German if he had all he needed.</p> + +<p>“Why have I had no answer to the post-cards I have +written my mother?” he asked, adding, “we also have +mothers.”</p> + +<p>The <i>médecin-chef</i> said: “You know you can only write +once a month; but write another, all the same, and I +will see it is sent off.”</p> + +<p>He had a worn French grammar on the table and had +been diligently studying verbs when we entered. The +doctor was <i>so</i> nice with him.</p> + +<p>There is no bitterness at the front; the more one sees +of it the more one realizes that bitterness is the special +prerogative of non-combatants far from the field. I +heard an American woman say to an officer just back +from the front, so newly back that “the look” was +still in his eyes:</p> + +<p>“I’d like to see you at Cologne, destroying the cathedral. +It would serve the Boches right.”</p> + +<p>He looked at her and made answer: “<i>Ce n’est pas<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span> +comme ça, madame</i>. Enough has been destroyed in the +world. Think rather of reconstruction.”</p> + +<p>Ah! <i>les civils!</i></p> + +<p>Coming out, we met Mlle. des Garets and went with +her to her evacuation hospital near the station, which +was a triumph of turning heterogeneous spaces into a +single purpose. Two old railway sheds had been converted +into receiving-rooms, douche-rooms, refectories, +and several eighteenth-century cellars had been so arranged +that in case of bombardment they could stow +away fifteen hundred wounded. This seems a simple +enough statement, but just think what stowing away, +<i>suddenly</i>, fifteen hundred wounded means! Mlle, des +Garets, a daughter of General des Garets, has been marvelous +in her devotion and practicality since the beginning +of the war.</p> + +<p>I hear the motor-horn....</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br> +<span class="smaller">GERBÉVILLER AND LA SŒUR JULIE</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>We started out for Gerbéviller in a blinding sun, +over a road leading through pleasant green +meadows. That is one of the strange things of Lorraine—everywhere +destroyed villages and everywhere +well-planted fields, almost as if planted by the ghostly +throngs of heroes who lie within. For in nearly every +field there are the little clusters of black crosses, hung +with flowers or the tricolor badge, or quite bare—with +the number of men who lie within, or a date, scarcely +ever a name.</p> + +<p>We went into the village, very ancient, that owes +its name, Ville des Gerbes, to a miracle performed there +by St.-Mansuy, past the completely destroyed château +of the Lambertye family, and, going up a winding street, +reached the house of Sister Julie, the heroine of August, +1914. On every side were gutted houses and piles of +mortar and stones; one enterprising individual of the +fair sex had installed against a resisting wall Le Café +des Ruines, and some soldiers and civilians were sitting +on bits of stone and masonry, drinking their <i>bocks</i> and +reading newspapers. The convent-building is in the +principal street, and it was unharmed save for a little +peppering of rifle-fire and a bit of cornice knocked off—<i>par +la grâce de Dieu</i>, as Sister Julie afterward told us. +Up three steps, and one finds oneself in a narrow, ancient<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> +stone hallway. Turning to the right, one enters +a cool, peaceful room of the convent-parlor type—a +large crucifix, lithographs of the last three popes, horsehair +furniture, white crocheted doilies, everything spotless. +In a moment Sister Julie came in. Her flashing +eyes, her determined jaw, show her always to have been a +woman of parts, and yet her whole life is really crowded +into those few eventful days of the latter part of August, +when “they” entered the town. For the rest, the quiet, +useful routine of the nursing and teaching order of St. +Charles de Nancy, which had been <i>chassé</i> at the time of +the French Revolution; a few nuns managed to remain +hidden, and the order has been preserved. She is evidently +a responsive soul, for she immediately began to +enact the story of the arrival of the Germans, with a +certain art in the presentment of the tragedy of the +little town, gained, no doubt, by many recitals.</p> + +<p>The Germans came into the town on the 27th of +August, after the heroic defense of the bridge over the +Mortagne by a detachment of fifty-four men of the +2d Chasseurs from sunrise to sunset, who held up during +hours the brigade of the Bavarian General Clauss. +Finally, at five o’clock the gray hosts got through and +passed in with a great sound of tramping feet and ringing +hoof, and, after the manner of invaders, <i>mettant le +feu et le sang dans le village</i>. Sister Julie thought her +hour also had come. In the room where we were sitting +she had placed her thirteen wounded men, brought in +at intervals during the day. “<i>Mes petits</i>,” she called +them, and her eyes shone softly at the memory. She +sent the other sisters up to the attic, and remained alone +to face the enemy and to beg that the house be spared. +She went out on the little step, not knowing what fate +awaited her, and found four immense officers on horseback, +with their horses’ heads facing her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span></p> + +<p>“They thought they were Charlemagnes, immense +men, with light hair and light-blue eyes and arched +noses and gallooned uniforms. I was like a dwarf in +comparison, and I am not small.” To tell the truth, +she is indeed a “muscular Christian.”</p> + +<p>Then began the interrogatory, the ranking officer +demanding of her:</p> + +<p>“<i>Sie sprechen Deutsch?</i>”</p> + +<p>She said to us, with a smile:</p> + +<p>“I did speak it in my youth, but it wasn’t the moment +to recall my studies, and I didn’t answer, and we +remained for a few seconds looking at each other <i>comme +des chiens de faïence</i>.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> I so little on the house-step, +and they so tall on their big horses, and with poignards +drawn from their breast pockets, <i>pas le beau geste de +tirer l’épée du côté</i>,” she finished, disdainfully.</p> + +<p>Finally, the silence was broken by the ranking officer, +whose next words were in French: “<i>Nous ne sommes pas +des barbares</i>; you have soldiers and weapons concealed +in your house. Lead the way.”</p> + +<p>Then the four officers dismounted and, with pistols +in one hand and poignards in the other, followed Sister +Julie into the little room where the thirteen wounded +men were lying. Their helmets touched the ceiling as +they looked about them. Standing by the first bed +nearest the door, an officer pulled down the covers.</p> + +<p>“You have arms concealed.”</p> + +<p>“We have nothing. You will find only men lying in +their blood.”</p> + +<p>By this time Sister Julie was not only talking, but +acting the scene, indicating where the beds were, where +she had stood, where the four <i>chefs</i> had entered, and +how the eyes of the wounded men followed her. The +officers made the rounds of the beds, pulling down each<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> +stained cover, Sister Julie following to re-cover the men, +who were expecting, as was she, the order to burn the +house.</p> + +<p>She continued: “They were Bavarians, and when I +said: ‘You see, we have nothing. Leave me my +wounded, in the name of Mary most Holy,’ the commanding +officer began to look at the point of his shoe +as men do when they are embarrassed. I have seen +surgeons do just that when they are in doubt about an +operation,” she added. “Then he suddenly turned without +a word and went out, followed by the other three, +pistols and poignards in hand. They passed up the +street with their detachment, ‘<i>mettant le feu et le sang au +village; et moi, restée avec mes petits, à remercier le bon +Dieu—et de leur donner à boire</i>.’”</p> + +<p>We gave our little offerings into her generous hands, +and sniffed the scent of freshly baked bread that permeated +the corridor. E. M. photographed her standing on +her historic steps, and we went out into the hot, cobble-stoned +street, to the completely ruined Lambertye +château, standing in the midst of a park whose gardens +were designed by Louis de Nesle. Two large and very +beautiful porphyry basins near the house were untouched—not +a nick or a scratch. On the great marble fireplace +of what had been the big central hall, now uncovered +to the day, we could still read the words:</p> + +<p class="center">Charles de Montmorency<br> +Duc de . . . . mbourg,<br> +Maréchal de France.</p> + +<p>Afterward E. M. took some more photographs, and +we sped homeward to pack our belongings and dash +into Nancy to get the eight-o’clock train from there for +Bar-le-Duc, to be ready for the high adventure of +Verdun early the next morning.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br> +<span class="smaller">BAR-LE-DUC</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Bar-le-Duc</span>, <i>Sunday, June 17th, 2 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Scribbling in an indescribable brown-upholstered +room, where one lies on the outside of a +dark and menacing bed covered by one’s own coat, a +strong odor of stable coming in at the window and a +horrid black cat wandering about. It’s no night to +sleep. Two o’clock has just softly sounded from some +old bell. I didn’t hear one o’clock, I am thankful to +say. I was in a sort of trance of fatigue when we got +here at eleven.</p> + +<p>Miss P. motored us into Nancy, straight into the +setting sun. My eyes were so tired that I didn’t try +to pierce the hot glaze, but there’s a memory of running +through green fields, with black crosses, saline installations +(Rosières aux Salines), manufacturing towns (Dombasle-sur-Meurthe), +and Gothic towers (St. Nicholas du +Port), and a dash through the new factory suburbs of +Nancy into the delicate and perfect loveliness of the +Place Stanislas. Neither E. M. nor I had a permit to +go to Bar-le-Duc, the point of departure for Verdun, +but Mrs. P. had, so she was deputed to order dinner at +the Café Stanislas, while we went to the Hôtel de Ville +to try to find the <i>Secrétaire Général</i>, Mr. Martin, a special +friend of E. M.’s, and do what I call “cutting barbed +wire.” It seemed at one time as if the high adventure<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> +of Verdun might have to be abandoned, as the <i>Secrétaire +Général</i>, who alone could give us the necessary permission, +had been called to Pont-à-Mousson to investigate +the results of a raid of German <i>avions</i> there and +at Pompey that morning. However, when fate has +made up its mind that things shall happen, any deadlock +is cleared up by the puppets themselves, literally +on a string this time, for as we were standing there in +the room with the impotent substitute of the <i>Secrétaire +Général</i>, the telephone rang, and who was it but the +so desired gentleman calling up about something on the +long-distance wire. E. M. literally grabbed the receiver, +explained the situation, and he gave the necessary +authority to his substitute, and we in turn gave the +oft-repeated story of our lives from the cradle to the +present moment, and finally could depart with papers +in order for dinner at the Café Stanislas. Again as we +walked across the lovely Place my soul was stirred with +memories of peace, love, and the arts of peace. I +seemed to understand anew those words, “The arts of +peace,” and in a half-dream I looked up at the heavens. +Again pale, charming faded tints of blues and grays and +pinks were the background for the urns and figures of +the sky-line of the pure and lovely buildings that surround +it, and a crescent moon with something untouched +and virginal flung a last charm about it all.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus07" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>FOUNTAIN OF AMPHITRITE BY JEAN LAMOUR, + PLACE STANISLAS, NANCY</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>We found Mrs. C. P. waiting at the same table at +which I had sat two nights before with the sons of Mars +and the man of God. We were just beginning our dinner +when, looking out of the window, we saw something +strange and for a moment unclassifiable, in an almost +impossible juxtaposition of ideas. No one’s mind would +be sufficiently mobile to grasp what it was without blinking +a bit. The great, portentous black cross on its wings +was what started the mind working properly. It was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> +the Taube brought down at Pont-à-Mousson that +morning, being drawn on a <i>camion</i> through the delicious, +delicate tracery of Jean Lamour’s wrought-iron gate!</p> + +<p>1755-1917!</p> + +<p>We dashed out; a crowd was already gathering. A +young French aviator with a curious look in his eyes +was watching it being set up. Having espied the wings +on his uniform, we asked “what and where and how” +and are “they” dead or prisoners? Some one said, +“<i>C’est lui</i>,” indicating the young man, who did not +answer our questions, but continued to stand quite still +in some sort of dream or <i>détente</i> of nerves. But a man in +the crowd said:</p> + +<p>“He brought it down at Pont-à-Mousson, and <i>they</i> are +prisoners.” We were standing by the statue of <i>Stanislas +le Bienfaisant, Stanislas le Bon</i>, his reign <i>le règne des +talents, des arts et des vertus</i> (these last not as we know +them in 1917), and he <i>was</i> looking on strange things! +We went back to the café, consumed in haste and distraction +the very nice little dinner, topped off by strawberries +and cream and the celebrated <i>macarons des +Sœurs Macarons</i>, and again I found myself dashing to +the station, which one thinks is near and isn’t, accompanied +by my two fair friends, all going at the same <i>allure +militaire</i> that I had taken forty-eight hours before with +the two Breton officers and the Chaplain of the 52d.</p> + +<p>Wild dash at the station for our hand-luggage; and +stampings of safe-conduct, then a hunt for the porter, +who, with an excess of zeal (and hope), had reserved a +coupé for us and put up the fateful words <i>dames seules</i>. +Now there is no such thing as <i>dames seules</i> at the front. +Many officers were standing in the corridor, one on +crutches, so we tore the forbidding words from the windows, +and the compartment automatically, though +courteously, filled.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span></p> + +<p>Among them two immense, dark-bearded men from +the Midi, with accents to defeat the enemy, and a pale +officer from near the Swiss frontier, as we afterward +discovered. He smiled when I said to the dark one +sitting by me, after the greetings and thanks:</p> + +<p>“You come from Marseilles?” (He came from a little +place five miles from there.)</p> + +<p>The officer on crutches stretched his leg with a contraction +of the face and a sigh of relief. They were all +<i>en route</i> for home, from the same regiment, the seven +precious days of <i>permission</i> counting from the hour +they reach their homes till the hour they leave them, +after months in the field. They had fought in Belgium, +on the dunes, these men of the south, those first eighteen +months, up to their waists in water, often for weeks at +a time. They found the Lorraine landscape that so +soothed my soul only fairly pretty, and spoke soft +praises of <i>le Midi</i>.</p> + +<p>They all had the strange, bold, hard, shining look about +the eyes, with a deeper suggestion of sadness, that men +just returning from action have. It is the warrior look—one +kills or one is killed, one conquers or is conquered; +there is no <i>via media</i>.</p> + +<p>The pale officer from Savoy said: “There should never +be any war; <i>c’est trop terrible</i>; but, once given the fact +that war exists, all means to victory are justifiable.” +And the bright, hard look deepening on his face made +me suddenly think of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, +and I knew it was the way French warriors have looked +through the ages, but, oh! France. “<i>Oh doux pays!</i>”</p> + +<p>At Bar-le-Duc, dating from the Merovingians, at +least, we descended (our bags passed out of the windows +by the officers), and went through a dark, silent, linden-scented +town, obliged to drag our own belongings through +an interminable street, over a bridge across tree-bordered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span> +black water, till we got to this abode, known to men +by the name of Hôtel de Metz et du Commerce. What +the devils call it I don’t know; I have just chased the +black cat out, and if I don’t get some sleep I shall not +get to Verdun. There’s no linden scent coming in at +my window here.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Bar-le-Duc</span>, <i>eight o’clock a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Waiting in the sandy-floored dining-room of the hotel. +All three of us very cross. At dawn not only the light, +but the sounds of chopping of wood, emptying of pails, +and invectives of various sorts came in at the dreadful +windows. At seven the maid mounted to know if we +wanted the water in the tea or the tea in the water. +That tea “threw” them. Not a sign of the famous +Bar-le-Duc jellies that one has eaten all one’s life, even +<i>outre-mer</i>. We compared notes of furry, rumpled sheets, +dented pillows, dark coverlets, dreadful scents, and +unmistakable sounds. We are now somewhat restored +by hot and very good <i>café au lait</i>, and Mrs. C. P. is looking +out of the door for signs of Mr. de Sinçay, who +has just stepped out of his motor.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br> +<span class="smaller">VERDUN</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p><i>Verdun! The sound is like a clarion call. Verdun! +It is shorty but gravely harmonious. It is satisfying +to the ear, it is quickening to the soul. Verdun! It is for +France the word of words; in it lies the whole beauty of +her language and of her martial glory as well.</i></p> + +<p><i>Who shall say it is but a fortuitous collection of letters, +this word Verdun, beautiful as a chalice, that holds the dearest +blood of France? It would not have been the same +mystically, perhaps not actually, had it been Toul or Epinal +or even that other melodic sound, Belfort. Verdun! It is +the call through red days and nights, and everywhere the +sons of France rallying to it with great hurryings lest mayhap +one be there before the other, to dye with deeper color +the crimson of high deeds. Verdun, ear and tongue relinquish +you regretfully.</i></p> + +<p><i>Verdun, glory and sorrow of France, I salute you, +Verdun! Verdun!</i></p> + +<p>Night, silence, and memory turning over the events +of the day.</p> + +<p>I stopped writing this morning as a gentleman of +supreme personal distinction entered the little sandy-floored +café, a gentleman who should always be arriving +in a dark-red, sixty-horse-power Panhard, or receiving<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> +on a terrace with a castle behind him, or sitting +in a library of first editions only, in soft but gorgeous +bindings. It was M. de S., and we shortly all got into +the big auto, we three women on the broad back seat, +M. de S. in front with the military chauffeur. Even +the bend of his long back was <i>l’élégance suprême</i>. He +said the motor had seen three years of war-service, but +certainly there was something unfatigued about it as +it started out through the ancient streets of Bar-le-Duc, +on the white road to the fateful fortress. The arrow on +the first Verdun sign-post gave a feeling of having shot +itself into one’s heart, as well as pointing the way.</p> + +<p>Almost immediately we met a long convoy bringing +men back from the front, ourselves and everything else +enveloped in a white plaster-of-Paris-like cloud of dust. +It seemed an endless line, with their camouflaged canvas +tops and sides, painted in great splashes of green and +brown. In some of them the men were singing the +<i>chansons de route</i> that soldiers so love, and many of +them had green branches stuck in the sides as a slight +protection against the sun and the shifting white dust. +The grass and flowers of the wayside were as if dipped +in whitewash, but the road, like all the roads of France—those +veins of her body of death <i>and</i> life—was in +excellent condition. Next we met a great line of Red +Cross convoys, and all the time we were swinging +through ruined villages.</p> + +<p>At the entrance to X. the guard stopped us with his +bayonet. Our papers being in <i>archi</i> condition, we +passed through the little village of the <i>Quartier-Général</i> +without further hindrance. In front of the Mairie there +is a quaint old fountain with its statue of three women +holding up a <i>motif</i> of flowers in a basket; near by there +is an old hostelry, <i>Le Raisin Blanc</i>, in front of which +soldiers were sitting, drinking their <i>bocks</i> and reading<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> +newspapers. Turning out again on the white road, +we pass settlements of Red Cross barracks and munition +parks, looking for all the world like mining camps in +Western towns at home.</p> + +<p>We arrived at Dugny at ten o’clock and descended +to look about for a suitable place for the installing of a +canteen, which was partly our reason for being where +we were. There is an old country house in the middle +of the little town, with a coat of arms above the +door and lions crouching on its gates; behind is a lovely +ancient park with linden and elder trees in full blossom, +and under them quiet, shady walks. It is used as an +ambulance station, and convalescing men were sitting +or lying about on the ground. We met the <i>médecin-chef</i>, +who, however, like all doctors, didn’t care twopence +for well soldiers, and was but platonically interested +in the canteen matter—just as the military count +out the sick and wounded soldiers. It’s all in the point +of view.</p> + +<p>As we stood talking a German aeroplane flew high +above Dugny outlined in a perfect sky. Little white +clouds of shrapnel from the vertical guns began to +burst about it in the clear blue, and there was a louder +sound of cannonading as the <i>avion</i> disappeared in some +far and upper ether. E. M.’s brother had been once +stationed here for months, and she told the story of his +meeting unexpectedly his cousin Casimir. They were +going different ways with different detachments, and +they “held up the war” while they embraced! Smart +officers, ahorse and afoot, convoys going to the trenches +with rations, great carts full of bread, and ambulating +soup-kitchens filled the little street. Verdun was but +seven kilometers distant, and the road lay straight before +us as we left Dugny. On the horizon the outline +of the citadel and the towers of the cathedral showed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> +against the sky. Another endless convoy of ambulances +and <i>camions</i> enveloped us in a choking white dust. +This is the lining of the front, and it is quite easy to +see where the war billions go.</p> + +<p>We passed into Verdun under the Porte de France, +and then went immediately up to the citadel through +the old drawbridge, all dating from the days of Louis +XIV and Vauban, and it was at Verdun that the sons +of Louis the Debonair met to divide the empire of +Charlemagne.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<p>We got out by the demolished barracks, and M. de +S. went to pay his respects to the colonel, who was expecting +him. As I descended I saw at my feet a beautiful +tiny bird’s nest, which I picked up with a clutching +at the heart. The birds went away that first terrible +spring of 1916, the colonel afterward told me, but they +had come back in great numbers in 1917, and were +everywhere building their nests, in spite of the continual +bombardments. The citadel was a desolate mass +of mortar, stones, rusty barbed-wire entanglements, +blackened and broken tree stumps, but everywhere, too, +were quantities of undiscourageable new green.</p> + +<p>We met a young doctor coming across the Place, and +fell into conversation with him. He had been at the +front since the beginning, and he was sad-eyed in spite +of his youth. When I spoke of the near-by tenth-century +tower toppling and half-demolished, all that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> +was left of the ancient church, and the celebrated abbey +of Saint-Vannes, and said what a pity it was that the +beautiful things of the old days had to go, he answered, +with a gesture of complete indifference:</p> + +<p>“<i>Qu’est-ce que celà fait? A nous qui restons de faire +de nouvelles choses, et mieux, que n’en out fait nos aïeux.</i> +All the comrades I loved in the beginning are gone—and +what remains, or perishes, of brick and mortar +is of little account beside the sum of living things that +is lost.”</p> + +<p>Just at this moment M. de S. appeared with the +colonel, and the young philosopher touched his cap. +We were then introduced to Colonel Dehaye, a brilliant +officer and delightful <i>homme du monde</i>, loving the arts +of peace, as I afterward discovered, as well as practising +those of war. In his hands now lie the destinies of Verdun. +He presented us each then and there with the +famous medal of Verdun and an accompanying paper +with his signature, and furthermore gave us an invitation +to lunch, which we accepted with delight after +delicate references to sandwiches and wine in the motor. +We spent half an hour walking about the citadel, and +he showed us the most recent damage—of yesterday—when +a very especially precise aim of the Germans had +destroyed nearly everything that had been left.</p> + +<p>Then we descended really into the bowels of the +earth, cemented, white-tiled, electric-lighted, artificially +aired bowels, to the very depths of the great fortress. +To get to the mess-room of the colonel and his staff we +had to pass through a long room where perhaps a hundred +officers were sitting at dinner. There was something +deeply impressive about the dim, long, low length +of it, and those groups of men prepared for battle. +Thoughts of Knights Templar and Crusaders came to +me, and there seemed something of consecration about +it all. Behind the tables on the walls were hung helmets +and arms.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus08" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus08b" style="max-width: 28.125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus08b.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span></p> + +<p>A young officer said to me once, “We don’t tell <i>all</i> +our stories there and we don’t often laugh very loud.” +From it we got into the small, well-lighted mess-room, +where kings and presidents and premiers and +generalissime, too, have dined in the past few months.</p> + +<p>The staff and Paul Renouard, the painter, were waiting, +and we sat down immediately to an excellent dinner, +though the colonel said it was entirely <i>à l’improviste</i>. +There were flowers on the table, too, but these I did +suspect were specially for us. The colonel remarked, +with the <i>hors-d’œuvre</i>, that he would take us to the +battle-field after dinner, to the famous Fort de Souville, +and the repast, instead of a meal, became the prelude +to a supreme climax. The arrival of General Pershing +was the first subject of conversation, accompanied by +the most courteous and appreciative remarks; one of the +officers told of the first day when the Stars and Stripes +had appeared in the field with the other flags, and of the +cheers that went up. And they drank to the United +States, and we drank to France; they praised the work +of women, and spoke of the immense moral and practical +aid of the entry into the war of the United States. +Whether it would shorten the conflict was another question. +To the captain sitting opposite I said:</p> + +<p>“If the soul of the war has a special dwelling-place it +is Verdun,” and told him how the thought of America +turned about it those days of February and March of +1916. “But,” I added, “there was a time when I +thought they might get through.”</p> + +<p>The commandant answered quickly from the other +end of the table: “Ah, madame, there was a time when +we thought they might get through, <i>mais ‘ils n’ont pas +passé—ils ne passeront pas.’</i>”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span></p> + +<p>And then I quoted the beautiful phrase of the <i>Commentaires +de Polybe</i>:<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<p>“<i>Et Verdun y en ruines, avec ses soldats, debouts, toujours +dans la tempête, comme il n’y en a jamais eu de plus +beaux ... avec Nivelle, et avec Pétain, avec l’image de +Raynal qui vient roder la nuit dans les décombres de +Vaux et avec le paraphe de Castelnau sur cet autre Couronné....</i>”</p> + +<p>We ended a most pleasant repast, with its great under +throb, by coffee and tilleul and a little glass of cassis +(black-currant cordial), the native liqueur.</p> + +<p>Then, on into a room where we pulled up our coat-collars +so no white would show, slung the bags containing +the gas-masks across our chests, left our flowers, +parasols, and other impedimenta, and went out through +the long, dim now empty hall to get into the autos. We +waited half an hour for ours, which had performed the +seemingly impossible feat of getting lost in Verdun. +The officers began to get impatient, and M. de S. to +make bitter remarks about his chauffeur; the colonel to +walk up and down. The commandant said, “<i>Du calme</i>,” +and the colonel answered that only sous-lieutenants +<i>savent avoir du calme</i>. “<i>Ils sont étonnants</i>,” said another +officer with four stripes on his arm.</p> + +<p>Finally our man appeared, with a story no one listened +to, Colonel Dehaye getting in with us, the other +officers leading the way in his auto.</p> + +<p>It was two o’clock, and a white, burning sun was +shining on a white, burning earth as we drove through +the crumbling streets, through houses in every stage of +ruin, to the great plain of La Woèvre, toward the dreadful, +scarred battle-field, where the chariot of God rides +the ridges.</p> + +<p>Verdun is built to reinforce the natural rampart of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> +the Côtes de Meuse, to bar the passage of the river’s +valley, and cover the Argonne.</p> + +<p>As we passed out of the town on one side was a cemetery +where sleep four thousand, on another side sleep +twenty thousand—and these are but a handful to the +numbers that lie everywhere in the white, scarred +earth around Verdun. The colonel named various battered +places as we passed—Fleury, Tavannes, etc., and +finally we climbed a steep hillside near the celebrated +Fort de Souville, where we left the motors. The abomination +of desolation over which we passed once had +been a green, smiling, wooded, gently rolling hillside. +The village of Tavannes was but a spot of white horror, +even with the ground. The hills of Douaumont and +Thiaumont had on their blanched sides only a few +blackened stumps of trees that will not leaf again. To +the left as we looked about were the fateful summits of +Le Mort Homme and Hill 304 with a white ribbon of +road running between. We walked along, stumbling +over heaps of water-bottles, haversacks, helmets, cartridge-belts, +belonging alike to the invader and the +invaded—bones, skulls, rusty rolls of barbed wire, remains +of <i>obus</i>, and mixed with what lies in the earth +of fair and brave and dear are myriads of unexploded +shells. The country round Verdun, despite the rich +blood that could render it so fertile, can’t be cultivated +for years on account of the vast quantities of shells +buried in it. A man pulls a piece of wire, and he loses +his hand, another tries to clear away bits of something +round, and his head is blown off. One of the +officers told us of societies for the demineralization of +battle-fields, but the work is slow and costly.</p> + +<p>Yet a winter’s snows had lain upon it all and spring +had breathed over it since the first awful combats of +February, 1916. I knew suddenly some complete<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span> +“heartbreak over fallen things” as I stumbled, and, +looking down, saw at my feet a helmet, and by it a +skull with insects crawling in and out the eyes, and a +broken gun-stock.</p> + +<p>Great and gorgeous patches of scarlet poppies in a +profusion never seen before splash themselves like something +else red against the white earth, or fill great +shell hollows and spill and slop over the fields....</p> + +<p>The Germans had been shelling a near-by 75 battery +that very morning, and fresh bits of <i>warm</i> shrapnel +were lying all about as we twisted in and out of the +<i>boyaux</i>. I brought away but a small bit with me, having +early discovered that a small piece is as good a +reminder as a big bit, and much easier to carry. We +passed the grave of a soldier buried where he had fallen, +a few hours before. His shallow grave, with its little +cross, was running <i>red</i>, but he was mayhap already in +his Father’s house of many mansions.</p> + +<p>In many places under the feet scarcely buried bodies +gave an elastic sensation....</p> + +<p>We first visited the emplacement of a great gun +worked by the most complicated electric machinery, +something that seemed built as strongly as the Pyramids, +revolving on its great axis, at a touch fulfilling +that which it was cast into being to perform. When +we came out, we climbed some last white scarred heights +that the colonel called “<i>Les Pyrénées</i>,” and there, +stretched out, was the whole great and fateful panorama +of Verdun—“<i>par où ils n’ont pas passé</i>.” I thought of the +men I had known who had been engaged in those dreadful +attacks, whose mothers and wives had looked upon +them again, and of others still whose wives and mothers +would behold them no more. And I had again a breaking +of the heart over the vast tangle, and cried within +myself, “Shall all the world be a valley of dry bones?”</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus09" style="max-width: 31.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>OUR PARTY ON THE BATTLE-FIELD AT VERDUN, + JUNE 17, 1917</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus10" style="max-width: 31.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>IN THE BOYAUX, VERDUN, JUNE 17, 1917</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span></p> + +<p>Then we hid ourselves in some <i>boyaux</i> well out of +sight, for we were nearing a camouflaged battery, two +of whose guns had been silenced that very morning. +In dark woods over beyond Tavannes the Germans +were intrenched, and their shells were also falling thickly +over Douaumont and Thiaumont. It was the front +indeed. It was at Tavannes that in a dreadful moment, +in a moment such as can happen anywhere, artillery +fire had been trained on thousands of men who were +rushing to the top in a great charge. And yet I kept +thinking of the words of a dead hero, “Nothing but good +can befall the soldier, so he plays his part well.”<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>At that moment the enemy began to send an unwonted +number of shells, which were exploding just +behind Thiaumont, so the colonel told the captain of +artillery—who had joined our party at the gun emplacement—to +answer, and he climbed down a steep +decline to his masked battery. In a few minutes, as we +lay hidden in the <i>boyau</i>, twenty discharges sounded; +but shells that go up, come down, and on the other +side of the hill we were watching, who shall say what +agony? I am so constituted that I cannot think of the +passage of any soul into the next life other than with +awe.</p> + +<p>We then descended into the Fort of Souville, down +850 feet, where men live and breathe and have their +being in dimly lighted, damp, narrow spaces. But it +seemed temporarily like heaven to be out of the glare +and the heat. Preceded by lanterns, an officer in front +of each one of us, we crept or felt our way up and down, +stumbling through vault-like passages, where we would +come upon men lying asleep in damp, dim places, or +writing by the light of lanterns, or preparing meals in +their kitchen, or waiting at the little dispensary, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> +then we stumbled up again into the heat, reverberating +from the white hills.</p> + +<p>On the way back we passed a little chapel installed +in an old cemented dugout. On the altar were many +flowers. I bent and peered into the dimness, and, as +I knelt, it seemed to me that never had I so understood +the words <i>Introibo ad Altare Dei</i>. I thought of the +Lamb of God, and martyrs new and old, and the catacombs +and the primitive Church.... Again men in +stress were worshiping in the bowels of the earth.</p> + +<p>We were photographed against a particularly sinister +group of blackened trees, and we picked up some helmets +and bits of <i>obus</i>. As I write, the <i>couronne</i> of one, +quite evenly exploded, lies on the little table by my side.</p> + +<p>Just before getting into town the colonel ordered the +motor to stop, and we got out, and, walking through a +field of deep, waving grass, found ourselves in the largest +of the cemeteries with its long, even lines of broad graves +where lie, in a last co-mingling, the brothers of France, +and I repeated to myself in a quiver of feeling, “<i>Scio +quod Redemptor meus vivit et in novissime die resurrecturus +sum et in carne mea videbo Deum Salvatorum meum</i>.”</p> + +<p>All was in beautiful order. The crosses bore sometimes +a name, but oftener a number only: <i>140 soldats</i>, +or <i>85 soldats</i>. The round tricolor badge hung from +every cross. There were a few graves of officers who +could be identified, their bodies having been brought +in by friends or faithful orderlies. How anything could +live on those fire-swept hills is the wonder, not that +any one died. Suddenly, again, a great sadness fell upon +me, and as the colonel pointed out the grave of an especially +dear comrade—Colonel Dubois, I think his +name was—dead in some heroic manner, I could look +no more.</p> + +<p>We finally got back into the green freshness of Verdun,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> +whose normal state, I see, is to be vine-bowered, +tree-shaded, grass-carpeted. After the scarred and +blazing battle-field, and in spite of the ruined streets, +the roofless houses, I had a feeling of refreshment, coming +from those heights where “all the round world is +indeed a sepulcher” ... and near the station is the +monument to the heroes fallen at Verdun, in 1870.</p> + +<p>Of the Cercle Militaire on the right bank of the Meuse +little is left except the walls, but it is no loss architecturally, +and <i>messieurs les officiers</i> are otherwise engaged. +The banks of the Meuse are a pitiful sight. The old +houses that reach over the water are roofless, bits of +mattress hang from broken windows, and heaps of mortar +are falling into the river. The great Porte Chaussée +of the fifteenth century, with its two huge gray towers, +is unharmed. We stopped at the theater for a moment. +A big shell last month had made a sort of pudding of +it. We crept in through a large aperture, to find the +orchestra stalls precipitated onto the stage, and the +loges sagging, ready to fall. We then went up into the +old, high part of the town, and Colonel Dehaye, a true +lover of the arts, in sadness showed us the cathedral and +the charming old buildings that surround it. The huge +church constructed according to Germanic traditions +has two equal transepts, with high and beautiful vaulting, +which is now so damaged that the roof at any +time may fall. Inside were masses of débris, and +nothing was left of the famous stained-glass windows +except powdery bits of color on the floor. The colonel +had rescued some old Spanish Stations of the Cross, +and had put in safety a few other portable things of +value. We passed out through the sacristy, which was +a scene of disorder, bits of vestment, torn altar-cloths, +and books lying about on the floor.</p> + +<p>“But,” I said, “the Germans didn’t get here?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span></p> + +<p>“Oh,” answered one of the officers, with a smile, +“<i>ce sont nos bons français</i>.”</p> + +<p>Then we descended into the crypt, the remains of the +church that Pope Eugene III built in the twelfth century. +Leading down to it is an old winding stair, with +a delicious eighteenth-century wrought-iron railing. An +artist in a white blouse, sent to restore some frescoes +dating from the twelfth century, was rescuing from too +complete destruction a beautiful figure of Christ with +something stern and immutable in His look, reminding +me of the Christ in the church of San Cosmo and San +Damiano in the Roman Forum. We then went into +the cloisters, with lovely and diverse <i>motifs</i> on their +vaultings, very much damaged in parts, a big shell +having landed in the courtyard which they inclose. +M. Renouard had stationed himself there with his +easel, before a beautiful arrangement of trees and grass +and enchanting old statues on mossy pedestals. In +front of him was a great heap of fallen masonry, and a +beautiful bit of toppling vaulting that the colonel had +had propped up by beams, though he said: “<i>Demain ou +après-demain cela ne sera plus</i>—it’s all at the mercy of +a shot.” A sculptured Holy Family, somewhat the +worse for <i>war</i>, is plastered into one side, dating from the +fourteenth century.</p> + +<p>From there we passed into what had been a seminary +until 1914, and one of the rooms with rows of <i>lavabos</i> +(not of the eighteenth century, as the colonel observed) +looked out on the great plain of La Woèvre, and again +the fateful panorama was unrolled before us. In what +had been a council-room there was an old choir high up +over the door, with a little balcony giving a Spanish +effect.</p> + +<p>Coming out, at the north side of the church, an ancient +Romanesque statue of Adam and Eve on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span> +outer hemicycle of the apse and some little windows, +also of pure Romanesque, were pointed out to us. In +the ground underneath the statue of Adam and Eve +a great shell had opened up a Roman foundation and +walls, formed of immense square blocks of stone, hidden +during ages.</p> + +<p>Near the church is the great Cour d’Honneur, once +the house of the bishop, a very perfect example of Louis +XIV, making me think of Versailles; but it, too, has +received many a blow in its lovely heart. One longed +so to bandage up all those wounds of war, preserve in +being those lovelinesses of another age.</p> + +<p>We then visited the house of Pope Julius II (I forget +what he was doing at Verdun), which, fortunately, has +not suffered much up to now, though it, too, is at the +mercy of a shot—to-night, to-morrow, or the next day. +It would make a perfect museum, with its beautiful +old door, bearing inscription and date, through which +one passes into a tiny V-shaped court with a flowering +linden-tree, and there are two romantic winding stone +stairways, with something Boccaccioesque about them, +leading to the upper stories.</p> + +<p>Though it wasn’t an occasion in which to think how +one felt, the flesh <i>was</i> weary by this time, and we went +gladly back to the colonel’s mess-room, where we had +tea, or rather, to be exact, some ice-cold champagne +<i>coupé d’eau</i>, and some sort of madeleine, a specialty +of Verdun, which gave us the little flip-up that we needed. +Another specialty of Verdun is the <i>dragées</i> (hard, +sugared almonds), but the factory, so one of the officers +said, had been destroyed the year before in one of the +bombardments. Generations of tourists having broken +their teeth on them, however, we wasted no regrets.</p> + +<p>The colonel begged us to stay for dinner, and the +cinematograph representation after, but we were obliged<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> +to regretfully decline, as we had to pay our respects +to the general at Y——, to whose courtesy M. de S. +owed the safe-conducts to Verdun. As we passed by +we looked into the long, narrow hall where the representations +are given, the sight of which the colonel +offered as further inducement. It would have ennobled +for me forever that most boresome of modern things, +had I assisted at one underneath the citadel of Verdun. +The hall was hung with flags of the Allies. With sudden +tears I saluted, ours waving among them.</p> + +<p>We thanked a thousand times the colonel and his +group of officers standing by the auto at the entrance to +the subterranean passage, and though I had a consciousness +of the uncertainty of their lives, I thought +again “Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he +plays his part well.”</p> + +<p>Now comes to mind a conversation I had before I +ever dreamed of going to Verdun, when I talked for three +hours of battles and scars with a young hero wounded +on Hill 304, June 9, 1916. He is a flashing-eyed, straight-featured, +tall, slim-waisted young hero who knows what +it is to have made, and with astounding ease, the sacrifice +of the life that he loves so, and drinks in full +bumpers. And this is part of what we said, one of a +thousand, of ten thousand, of a hundred thousand +happenings, of which Verdun is the golden frame:</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p>De G.—“There was something hanging about Verdun; +‘<i>Ils ne passeront pas, et ils ne sont pas passés</i>.’ If +the enemy could have but known how thinly, poorly, in +so many places it was defended! It was seemingly the +will of Heaven rather than the strength of mortals that +they were not to pass, not man, not artillery, but the +high destiny of nations.</p> + +<p>“When I lay during those hours at the <i>poste d’observation</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> +on Hill 304, in front of the French army, signaling +‘shell square 17,’ or 16, or whatever it might be, I could +see clearly the havoc in the German ranks as the shells +would fall. Great groups of men would be blown to +atoms and new formations would press in to take their +place. The whole horror was there before me, mapped +out in numbered squares.</p> + +<p>“I dismissed all my men except my orderly of the +fourth Zouaves, who wouldn’t have gone, anyway. It +was a work I could do alone, lying with a sand-bag +against my head, my field-glasses in my hand, and before +me my field map held down by four sticks. We +lay there just under the crest of the hill from two o’clock +in the morning until the next afternoon, watching seven +attacks. Toward three o’clock I was wounded, and +I knew it was only a question of time and chance +when I would lie like the dead man at my side, that +Dueso had been pressing his feet against, and whose +place I had been sent to take. Almost at the same moment +I caught sight of Dueso spinning around, holding +his elbows to his side, and crying out: ‘<i>Nom de Dieu! +Nom de Dieu!</i> I’ve got it in the arm!’—but trying +with the other hand to undo his <i>cravate</i>.</p> + +<p>“Two jets of blood were now spurting like two +faucets from my leg, the big artery was cut. <i>Ça y est.</i> +In five minutes I’ll be dead, I thought, and there came +a fainting away and a thinking not on God, but on still +untasted joys of the flesh and life—not even on my +mother’s grief; and waking up after years, it seemed, +and calling for water, and Dueso bending over me, +after a frantic twisting at his <i>cravate</i>, and a frantic +pulling and tightening of it about my leg, with one +hand and his teeth, and then a pleasant, happy fainting +away. A delicious sensation of ease invaded me, and +I said to myself, ‘<i>Ce n’est que ça, mourir?</i>’ (‘Is death<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> +only this?’) I have seen so many men die, and whatever +their agonies, if long or short, minutes or hours or +days, as it may happen, just before dying something +gentle and simple takes place.”</p> + +<p>E. O’S.—“The inevitable dust to dust, the natural +law fulfilling itself?”</p> + +<p>De G.—“It may be. This <i>rictus de la mort</i>, I haven’t +seen it, though I have heard men screaming and cursing +and praying in the trenches as they got their blow, and +watched their agonies, but before death something else, +softer, always happens. Unless it comes too suddenly. +I remember once being on the dunes in Belgium, and +against the yellow sand men were sitting in red trousers +and <i>chechias</i>, and one was telling a tale of laughter +when a shell burst. In a moment the blood of his +brains was flowing red upon the yellow sand, and then +it got blue, and then it sank and was no more, like the +laughing man himself from whom it flowed, and his tale +of laughter.... About nine o’clock we were brought in. +Dueso had been lying with his head under my armpit, +and his feet still on the dead man, and we would both +come out of a faint from time to time and ask for water.</p> + +<p>“Dueso! ah, Dueso! for a human being <i>il est plus +chic que moi</i>. He had been in jail for various reasons +not very <i>chic</i>, and I was warned against him when I +took him for my orderly, but to him I owe my life. +Now he is in Salonique, <i>cité à l’armée</i>, knows how to live +in those regions, hard as nails, originally from Tunis; a +dark man, with dark mustache and very big white teeth.”</p> + +<p>E. O’S.—“One thinks so often how little the common +soldier, defending honors and riches that he doesn’t +share, has to gain. There is nothing for him, in fact,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> +except to step out into anonymous death; at a given +moment to make the sacrifice of his life, or his eyes or +his limbs, knowing nothing of war except its horror, +rarely any glory, sometimes a mention or a medal, +oftener not. But,” I continued, after we had sat silent +for a while, “who will carry it all on? Few like yourself +are left, and it is not enough. France is bleeding white—France, +whose sons are heroes, not fathers!”</p> + +<p>De G.—“What does it matter if we do go? There +are the little ones coming on. It will be like something +out of which a whole piece has been cut and the ends +must be sewed together. The very old, and the very +young, the children, are these ends. We shall have done +what we were born to do. This is the immortal history +of France that we have made, her <i>chant du cygne</i>, too, +the most beautiful of her epics and it is enough to have +lived for that. To others the carrying on of the generations....”</p> +</div> + +<p>A pale rose light begins to come in at the window, +but sleep cometh not. Fortunately, if need be, I can +do without it, but I must close my eyes now. He, too, +watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps....</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br> +<span class="smaller">CHÂLONS.—CHÂTEAU DE JEAN D’HEURS.—REVIGNY, THE “LINING” OF THE FRONT</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>Each, on comparing notes, was found to have spent +the night on the outside of the bed. One of the +party, who naturally wishes to remain anonymous, +found a <i>cafard</i>, the classic cockroach, in her ear toward +dawn, and Aurora was welcomed by no hymn of praise +from her.</p> + +<p>Now we are sitting drinking lemonade on the pavement +in front of the abode of iniquity. We have been +twice through the hot town, which consists of a modern +town around the station, and a picturesque old one on +a hill at the back, to find the proper authorities for the +stamping of our papers with the military <i>permis</i> to go +to the château of Jean d’Heurs, belonging to Madame +Achille Fould, for luncheon. We caught the major by +a hair’s breadth; he was disappearing around the corner +by the military <i>commandature</i> on his bicycle. Then to the +<i>préfecture</i> for permission to telephone to Châlons for +rooms that night; on returning, found Miss M. and +Miss N. awaiting us. They have been working at the +“Foyer des Alliés” near the station. They want now to +get a much-needed canteen in shape at Châlons, and are +asking us to help. The word from the colonel of Verdun +is an “open sesame,” and we will investigate <i>en +route</i> to Paris.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Châlons-sur-Marne</span>, <i>10 o’clock p.m.</i></p> + +<p>It’s been as long as to Tipperary since the scrawl at +Bar-le-Duc.</p> + +<p>At 11.30 we got into the comfortable motor Madame +Fould sent to bring us to Jean d’Heurs’ for lunch. It’s +a beautiful old château of the eighteenth century, given +by Napoleon to the Maréchal Oudinot, and in the Fould +family since those days, though not lived in until the +war by the present generation. It made us feel quite +like “folks” as a side-whiskered, highly respectable, +rather aged majordomo received us and led us up a +broad stairway and showed us into a big library where +Madame Fould, her seven <i>infirmières</i>, and a young officer +were waiting. After that, a perfect lunch in the way of +each thing being of the freshest and most delicate and +tasting of itself. The young officer was recovering from +a wound received at Verdun last September, followed by +a trepanning, evidently highly successful, as, in addition +to all his senses, he had a thick mat of hair.</p> + +<p>The library, to which we returned for coffee, was +lined with the most precious books in the most precious +bindings, one whole side containing first editions only +from Voltaire and J.-J. Rousseau to Châteaubriand and +Taine. And I ran my fingers with such a friendly feeling +over some soft and lustrous bindings.</p> + +<p>The vast spaces of the château are now made into +wards, and relays of several hundred men are cared for +in them. White hospital beds are pushed against +elaborately frescoed walls and Empire gildings. Everything +in spotless order. Afterward we went out into +the beautiful old park, where convalescent men were +sitting or lying about under the great trees. The park +is now closed to visitors, the fair sex from neighboring +villages having been too generous in their offerings on +the altar of Priapus. It’s a lovely spot, and Madame<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> +Fould has had her hospital going since the beginning of +the war.</p> + +<p>At two o’clock we motored into Revigny, accompanied +by the handsome young trepanned officer, who +deposited us at the military headquarters for the stamping +of our safe-conducts. Mrs. C. P., who can put her +head through a stone wall, without injuring it, as neatly +as any one I ever saw, proceeded to perform the feat, +with the result that the major in command gave us all +permission for the next <i>étape</i>, Châlons. Then Mrs. +C. P.’s young son, serving with the American Ambulance, +met us, motoring over from Z——; a friend came +with him, originally from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, +rather discouraged at the quiet of the <i>secteur</i> in which +he was stationed. But all he has to do is to wait. +Everybody at the front eventually gets what’s “coming +to him.” Mrs. C. P.’s boy had on his <i>Croix de Guerre</i>, +got for fearless ambulance work at Verdun during one +of the big attacks.</p> + +<p>Revigny seen from the inside is a hole of holes—but +through it defile continually the blue-clad men of +France. Twelve thousand had already passed through +that day. In the <i>carrefour</i> of the road by the station is a +ceaseless line of convoys coming from or going to Verdun. +This once banal little village has come to have something +symbolic about it, though looking, as one passes by, like +dozens of other destroyed villages. But inside it is the +lining of the war—that thing of dust, fatigue, thirst, +hunger, sadness, fear, despondence, hopelessness, running +up and down the gamut of spiritual and physical +miseries. “Theirs not to reason why.” ...</p> + +<p>The English canteen is the only bright spot in the +whole place. Those sad-eyed men, like us, love and +regret, and are beloved and regretted; women have let +them go in fear and dread; and all over Europe it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> +the same, east, west, north, and south—all they love +they lay down at the word of command. I watched for +an hour the blue stream of heavily laden men as they +passed in, coming up to the counter with their battered +quart cups, drinking their coffee standing, in haste, that +the comrade following might be sure to get his drink, +the sweat dripping from their faces. Fifteen minutes +later a great thunder-storm broke, and thousands of +sad-eyed men were huddled together, shelterless, like +sheep, suddenly soaked; the hateful dust became the +still more hateful mud. I left it all in complete desolation +of spirit, and wondering, Is God in His heaven?</p> + +<p>Revigny was worse to my spiritual sense almost than +the battle-field—there all was consummated. Here the +men are still passing up to sacrifice.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X<br> +<span class="smaller">MONT FRENET.—LA CHAMPAGNE POUILLEUSE.—THE RETURN</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Châlons</span>, <i>10 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>We dashed into the train at Revigny during the +hail-storm, an infernal kind that didn’t cool the +air, and arrived at Châlons at six o’clock. No cabs, at +least none for us, so we begged two Quaker women with +the red-and-white star in the little black triangle on +their sleeves, who were getting into the only visible +conveyance, to take our luggage and deposit it for us +at the Hôtel de la Haute Mère Dieu, whose name so +appealed to me. We paid our share of the cab, and all +and everything departed, we on foot. Châlons seems +quite without character as one passes through the streets, +though I caught sight of several old churches and, alone, +would have lingered on the busy bridge that spans the +Marne. We got to the Hôtel de la Haute Mère Dieu +and interviewed the female keeper of that special paradise, +who said she had nothing for us, had received no +telephone message from the <i>préfet</i> at Bar-le-Duc or any +other <i>préfet</i> from any other place. Then Mrs. C. P.—the +Verdun day and the Bar-le-Duc nights having somewhat +stretched our nerves—began to get annoyed; the +desk-lady finally asked us, did we belong to the Westinghouse +Commission, which we didn’t. We then betook +ourselves to the streets. Nothing at the Hôtel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> +d’Angleterre, nothing at the Hôtel-Restaurant du +Renard. We finally asked a large, beady-eyed, determined-looking +female, standing at a door, if she had +accommodations or knew of any one who had. She +proved to be the <i>sage-femme</i> of the quarter and eyed us +askance.</p> + +<p>Just then appeared a very <i>comme il faut</i>, pretty young +woman with an expression at once so charming and so +modest that we did not hesitate to accost her and tell +her of our plight—that it looked as if we should be +passing the night <i>à la belle étoile</i> if some one didn’t do +something for us. She hesitated, looked at us, hesitated +again. Smashed down on her head at a smart +angle was the identical hat that Mrs. C. P. was wearing, +blue with a twisting of gray, from Reboux. I think +that hat crystallized things, for she ended by saying, +sweetly:</p> + +<p>“I have a room that I sometimes offer to friends; +only,” she added, “there is a horrible stairway leading +to it.”</p> + +<p>We turned our backs on the <i>sage-femme</i>, doubtless +naturally good, but soured by the constant witnessing +of the arrival on the scene of apparently superfluous +human beings (I say “apparently,” for who shall decide +which souls are precious?), and followed those neatly +clad, small feet and slim ankles up a winding stairway +that might have been of any epoch—except the nineteenth +or twentieth century, and found ourselves in a +charming little interior, spotlessly clean. “<i>C’est à votre +disposition</i>,” she said, and then a servant appeared, a +refugee from Tahure, as we afterward learned, a garrulous +refugee. I beat my breast later on when I heard +the loud bassoon, telling Mrs. C. P. that I even hated +refugees and that that one would have, if possible, to +contain her tale till I had had a night’s sleep. At the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> +moment I hated her with all the unreasoning hatred of +the beneficiary for the benefactor.</p> + +<p>Well, to make a long story short, closets were opened, +the freshest of embroidered linen sheets, the largest of +towels, were got out, and were left to us in the handsomest +of ways <i>with</i> the refugee, the owner departing +to her country house. The refugee managed to get in +part of the story of her life and she brought hot water; +she was from Tahure and left on the run with an aged +husband, just before the entry of the enemy.</p> + +<p>Then we looked about the pleasant room. The first +object I espied was a pair of manly brown kid gloves, +the next a blue gas-mask bag, and a cigarette-case, with +a crest, lying near a volume of Alfred de Vigny. (Can’t +you see them reading it together?) And there was such +a comfortable <i>chaise-longue</i> for him to rest on, and an +expensive, very “comfy” rug and many cushions. As +the refugee from Tahure proceeded to make up the bed +and sofa she interspersed the story of <i>her</i> life with remarks +concerning her mistress, like: “<i>Allez, elles ne +sont pas toutes comme cela, elle a un cœur d’or</i>”; “<i>Moi, +qui vous le dis, elle n’a pas une mauvaise pensée</i>.”</p> + +<p>At this juncture we delicately asked, But where does +she <i>live</i>? “Oh, he has given her a little château in the +environs.” This was a convenient town apartment with +the one big room giving on the Place de la République; +at the back a dining-room and little kitchen. Having +removed the dust of travel, hot water being produced +in a jiffy from the gas-stove on the kitchen range, we +descended to take dinner at one of the restaurants near +by. We were so tired about this time that the decalogue +wasn’t much to us, neither the Law nor the Prophets, +but be it remembered of us, we <i>did</i> love our neighbor +as ourselves.</p> + +<p>When we came back after supper the sofa was spread<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> +with large, crisp, spotless linen sheets, the bed the same, +the refugee gone, and here we are in this clean, low-ceilinged +room with eighteenth-century wood-panelings +and charming door-handles of the same period. There +is a crayon of the present tenant reflecting her sweet +and candid expression over the mantelpiece, on which +are two Dresden-china figures and a small white-marble +“Young Bacchus”; furthermore an etching by Hellu +of the Duchess of Marlborough, which made one feel +quite poised. In fact, there is nothing <i>demi</i> about it.</p> + +<p>The Place de la République is full of soldiers coming +and going, and there are several ambulances of the +Scottish Ambulance Corps drawn up by a big fountain +representing three women (typifying the Marne, the +Moselle, and the Agne). Over the soft, warm night is +borne the low boom of cannon. The guard has just +called out: “<i>Faites attention! Lumière au troisième +étage</i>”—so I must stop.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Tuesday, 9.30 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Sitting in the Place de la République on chairs borrowed +from a little lace-shop, and waiting for the cab +to come to take us to General Goïgoux, to whom +Madame Fould had given us a letter of introduction. +Just opposite is the inhospitable Hôtel de la Haute +Mère Dieu, and I have been telling Mrs. C. P., who has +gone to buy some fruit, of the story of Voltaire and +Madame du Châtelet passing through Châlons <i>en route</i> +from Versailles to Lunéville. At Châlons Madame du +Châtelet thought she’d like to have a bouillon at the +Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or, where they stopped to change +horses. (It still exists and is the only one we didn’t +try last night.) It was brought them to their carriage +by the <i>aubergiste</i> herself, who had learned from the indiscreet +postilion the identity of the illustrious travelers.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> +When Longchamp, the valet of Voltaire, asks to pay, +she firmly demands a louis d’or for the bouillon. “La +divine Emilie” protests, the woman insists that at her +hotel the “price of an egg, a bouillon, or a dinner is a +louis”; then Voltaire gets out and tries by amiable processes +to explain that in no country in the world did a +bouillon ever cost a louis; more cries and reproaches; a +crowd gathers; Voltaire, strong in his right, doesn’t +want to give way. Madame du Châtelet points out the +gathering crowd, now quite noisy. Finally they pay, +Voltaire commending to all the devils the hospitable +town of Châlons-sur-Marne; they depart to the accompaniment +of the gibes of the amiable inhabitants. +It may be <i>autre temps</i>, but not <i>autres mœurs</i>; it’s just +like the woman at the desk at the Hôtel de la Haute +Mère Dieu, who wouldn’t take us in, in any sense, last +night.</p> + +<p>The most awful-looking cab has just drawn up in +front of “our” house, and a smart American ambulance +officer is trying to get in.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">In the Train en Route for Paris.</span></p> + +<p>The first quiet breath I have drawn, and very comfortable +it is to sink into the broad seats, out of the +glare of the setting sun, and feel there is nothing to inspect +save the flying aspect of nature for the next three +hours.</p> + +<p>The handsome officer this morning proved to be Mr. +B., and he didn’t get that cab, which, however, we +promised to send back to him once we were deposited +at the general’s headquarters.</p> + +<p>General Goïgoux is most agreeable. When he asked +us where we were lodged, we threw a stone at the Hôtel +de la Haute Mère Dieu and told him of our Good Samaritan. +He gave a grin, if generals are supposed to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span> +grin, when we said that we had not disturbed her to any +great extent, as she had, in addition, a country place +where she really lived. We then told him of our meeting +with Miss N. and Miss M., who had asked us to +investigate the canteen prospects on our way back to +Paris. The installing of one has long been the idea of +General Goïgoux, who loves his <i>poilus</i>, and he immediately +rang the bell on his table—among his books was a +German Baedeker of eastern France—and in a moment +a captain with a sad face and a black band on his arm +appeared, and we departed in a huge military auto to +the station to investigate the great railway shed that +the general has requisitioned for canteen purposes.</p> + +<p>Going through the streets, we were held up for a +moment by a detachment of prisoners in various uniforms +and from various regiments, but all with P.G. +(<i>prisonnier de guerre</i>) marked in large letters on their +backs. A tall, upstanding set with ringing tread, +not at all unhappy-looking, despite a something set +about their expression, seemingly in very good physical +condition.</p> + +<p>Statues of the top-hatted, frock-coated political men +of nineteenth-century France have banalized the public +places of every town in the <i>doux pays</i>. They simply +can’t compete with the saints and kings and warriors of +the artistic periods—it’s too bad they have tried.</p> + +<p>At 12.30 we got back to our pleasant quarters, to +find our hostess there, in a very smart dark-blue serge +dress from Jeanne Hallé. In addition to the château, +the shop down-stairs, called “Aux Alliés,” where all +sorts of edible delicacies are sold, belongs to her together +with a tall and beautiful red-haired Frenchwoman. +This is her up-stairs resting-place during the day. We +sank on bed and sofa, exhausted by the heat, the visit +to the station to inspect the canteen facilities, which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> +seemed most promising, visits to two churches, and +luncheon in the crowded Restaurant du Renard. In the +church of St.-Alpin white-bloused experts were busy +removing the beautiful sixteenth-century stained-glass +windows. “If ’twere done, ’twere well ’twere done +quickly.” That continued booming of guns made one +realize at once their fragility and their beauty.</p> + +<p>Shortly after, a handsome young officer came in, a +gentleman, and speaking beautiful English. It wasn’t +“he,” however, but a friend of his, and we did a little +“society” talk—the weather, the necessity of learning +the languages young, the theater, that Réjane was getting +old, and “<i>L’Elévation</i>” was bad for the morals, +and fashions, if the skirts <i>could</i> get shorter—but nothing +of the war.</p> + +<p>At two o’clock another military auto was announced, +which the general had sent with a doctor to take us to +Mont Frenet, four kilometers from Suippes and six +from the German lines. The young officer departed; +we veiled and gloved ourselves and descended, and got +into the motor, where we found a large, dark, military +man inclining to <i>embonpoint</i>, who thought he was good-looking, +and started out. The first thing we met as we +got out of town on the dusty, blazing highroad was a +little funeral cortége, preceded by a priest. The body +of the soldier was draped in the tricolor, and following +to his last rest, close behind, was his <i>camarade</i>, with head +bared. He had doubtless expired in the big hospital +near by, one of those lonely hospital deaths that hundreds +of thousands have suffered before transfiguration.</p> + +<p>We were in the great plain of the Champagne Pouilleuse +that leads to Suippes, Sainte-Ménehould, and +stretches out to Reims—a plain with great, white, +chalky scars of quarries, interspersed with fields and +dark patches of pine woods. I asked the doctor about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> +the site of the ancient camp of Attila and the battle +of the Catalonian fields, but his knowledge of the matter +was vague and his interest perfunctory. I thought +afterward he might have had a more personal afternoon +planned than that of taking two objective-minded ladies +to Mont Frenet. There was once a great Roman road +from Bar-le-Duc to Reims, and all about are little +churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, mostly +touched up in the eighteenth.</p> + +<p>After three-quarters of an hour we found ourselves +nearing what might have been a modern mining settlement. +It is the great front hospital of Mont Frenet. +A model establishment organized and conducted by a +man of heart and brain, Doctor Poutrain. Young, +<i>élancé</i>, alert, he took us the rounds of his little world, +from the door where the ambulances deposit their +wounded, their dying, and oft their dead, where they +are sorted out, through the numberless wards, even to +the model wash-houses and the places where the garments +of those brought in are scientifically separated +from their inevitable and deadly live stock.</p> + +<p>As we passed through one of the wards, I saw the +doctor’s eye change, and, following it, I perceived, as +he quickly went to the bedside, a face with the death +look already on it; and in a moment, with a slight sigh, +a soul had breathed itself out—<i>en route</i> to the heaven +of those who die <i>pro patria</i>.</p> + +<p>And I thought in great awe, “All I know or ever +will know of that human being is his supreme hour.” +And so fortuitous, so sudden was it all that I had not +even time to breathe a word of prayer, nor even to +reach out for his hand. And I, come from so far, so +unrelated to him, was thus the destined witness of his +passing. I can’t get it out of my mind.</p> + +<p>Doctor Poutrain loves his broken men, and he said,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> +“I want no man who has been severely wounded or +mutilated to leave my hospital without his decoration.” +He had tears in his eyes as he stood by a bed where a +bright-eyed, thin-faced boy was lying with a hip fracture. +“He brought a comrade in, under fire, who was +shot off his back as he was carrying him in.”</p> + +<p>In one of the beds an aviator was lying, brought in +three days before; the eyes, the mouth, the whole face +had still the peculiar look of strain. Indeed, three faces +stand out in one’s mind—the captivity face, the hard, +shining face and eyes of unwounded men just from the +combat, and the faces of wounded aviators. About +this time I noticed the gloomy look deepening on the +face of our accompanying Esculapius, and it suddenly +occurred to me “he is one of those who support with +difficulty the praises of another.” For we <i>had</i> been +very explicit in praise of Doctor Poutrain’s wonderful +installation.</p> + +<p>It was a slack day, and according to the record in the +antechamber there had only been 517 brought in that +day.</p> + +<p>We have tea with the <i>directrice</i> of the <i>gardes-malades</i> +(ten or twelve women only), a friend of Madame Fould’s. +As we sat there talking I discovered that the eager +<i>médecin-chef</i> had had, before the war, as hobby, archeology +and ethnology, especially of the prehistoric races +of Mexico; that he also possessed one of the few Aztec +codices existing—all of which we discussed to the sound +of the German guns and the whirring of their airplanes.</p> + +<p>We finally made our adieux, came home over the hot, +unspeakably dusty road of the Champagne Pouilleuse, +unreasonably disappointed that nobody would give us +permission to make a little détour by Suippes, then +under fire. We got back to our headquarters, packed +our belongings, and diffidently brought up the subject<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> +of remuneration, which the <i>belle châtelaine</i> firmly refused. +I was traveling light, without a single thing +approaching the superfluous, but Mrs. P. had a breakfast-cap +and her tortoise-shell toilet things and trees +for her shoes, and she also found among her belongings +a lovely amber box, which she presented in +token of our gratitude. We <i>could</i> make the garrulous +refugee from Tahure not only happy, but speechless, +which was more to the point; and here we are, looking +out on a darkening world, and there are soldiers bathing +in the river, near stacked guns, and everywhere little +detachments are marching down dim roads, and there +are the eternal troop- and equipment-trains going to +the front—and I feel an immense regret at leaving it +all....</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris.</span></p> + +<p>As we were sitting in the dining-car, idly wondering +how on earth we were going to get from the station to +our respective abodes once the train had deposited us +at the Gare de l’Est, or planning to spend the night +there, the Marquis de M. passed through the car. His +motor was to meet him, and he gallantly offered transit, +that can be above rubies and pearls <i>par le temps qui +court</i>.</p> + +<p>When we got to Paris at 10.30 we saw in the dim +light, as we stepped into the big motor, <i>voyagers</i> departing +with luggage on their backs, or, preparing to +await the dawn, sitting on it. We got into the motor +with Comte de ——, the Marquis himself sitting outside, +“for the air,” as he said, and also because there +was no more room inside.</p> + +<p>As we rolled along through the dimly lighted streets, +the air dense and hot, a terrific hail- and thunder-storm +suddenly deluged the town, and especially the generous +Marquis outside, well punished (as usual) for his kind<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> +act. When, slipping and skidding, we finally pulled +up at my hotel, a very wet gentleman, but remembering +his manners, said, “<i>Au plaisir de vous revoir, madame</i>.” +(He must really have wished me to all the devils, where +he would never meet me a second time, hoping it was +a last as well as a first meeting.) I had to laugh, also +he, the pleasure was so evidently doubtful. It ended +by his betaking his soaking person into the auto, and I +came up-stairs to find my lamps trimmed and burning +and my beloved mother awaiting me to hear “all about +it.”</p> + +<p>So may one go to the front and return....</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II</h2> + +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br> +<span class="smaller">BY THE MARNE</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Gare de l’Est</span>, <i>Wednesday, July 25th</i>.</p> + +<p>No, it isn’t possible, even for one whose business is +not that of stopping bullets, to go toward the combat +a second time without a thrill.</p> + +<p>Few soldiers in the station; they are mostly at the +front, at Craonne and Le Chemin des Dames and other +sacrificial places, and in a week or two the empty beds +in the hospitals will be full again. Some officers are +hastening back from their <i>permissions</i> with pasteboard +boxes and other unwar-like accoutrements. One is sitting +by me, a straight-featured young man with dark-ringed +eyes, his <i>Croix de Guerre</i> and <i>fourragère</i>,<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> reading +<i>Brin de Lilas</i>. In forty-eight hours he may be dead. +Another officer is reading <i>Cœur d’Orpheline</i>, and <i>Le Pays</i>.</p> + +<p>Miss N., with something of serene yet brooding in +her being, plus a sense of humor, arrives with a telegraphic +pass from army headquarters at Châlons, which +may or may not “pass” the train conductor.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Chelles, where the arts of peace in the form of a vermicelli-factory +testify to the arts of war by having every +pane of glass broken; and once there was a celebrated +abbey at Chelles which was destroyed, with a tidy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> +amount of other things beautiful, at the time of the +French Revolution.</p> + +<p>Farther along much thinning out of the woods, the +beautiful warmth-giving, shade-giving forests of France. +In one place there is a planting of young, slender trees, +and I thought on those other children of France who +must grow to manhood, remake her soul, transmit her +immortality. The first harvest is stacked and yellow, +and nature is densely, deeply green where it had been +pale and expectant. Even the Marne, which we caught +up here, has a deeper color than in June, as it reflects +the lush green.</p> + +<p>Meaux, with its cathedral rising from the center of +the town, untouched except by time. Meaux has now +come to be a sort of joke (“<i>de deux maux choisir le +moindre</i>”) which few can resist—I’ve even heard it at +the Théâtre Français—and it’s supposed to be the heart’s +desire of the <i>embusqué</i>, far enough from the front not +to get hurt, and far enough from Paris to be out of +sight.</p> + +<p>Château Thierry, with its first vintage of white grapes, +and I bethought me how the whole of France is one +vast wine-press—“He is trampling out the vintage +where the grapes of wrath are stored.”</p> + +<p>Epernay, with its peculiar church tower. The great +building of the champagne Mercier firm near the station +has every window-pane broken, and part of it is serving +as a Red Cross station. The wave of invasion pressed +hard through Epernay that August of 1914.</p> + +<p>In the dining-car we sat at a table with two officers—an +airman, tall, deep-eyed, some sort of <i>tic nerveux</i> disturbing +his face, with the <i>Grand’ Croix de la Légion +d’Honneur</i> among other decorations; and a captain of +infantry, who had been months at Arras, and at Verdun +the terrible March of 1916.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span></p> + +<p>About the time that the cross-eyed waiter (it was +easy, poor soul, to see why he wasn’t wanted in the +trenches) threw the last set of plates with a deafening +crash down the line of diners (the captain of infantry +said it was just like the first-line trenches), the airman, +whose nerves couldn’t stand it, pursued, rather +irritably:</p> + +<p>“You don’t even read the <i>communiqués</i> any more, I +wager. <i>Oh, les civils!</i>”</p> + +<p>“I can’t truthfully say I do, always,” I answered, +feeling called on to defend the <i>sacrés civils</i>. “After three +years of it we are fatigued and bewildered by the spectacularness +of it, the great, dazzling, hideous mass of it, +and you who perish on the battle-field but perform an +act that all must some day perform, only different in +that it is far better done—<i>dulce et decorum</i>—but, after all, +the same act that we must perform against our will, at +the mercy of some accidental combination. It’s the +same outcome, ‘and one’s a long time dead.’”</p> + +<p>After a pause and a deep look, perhaps it is the look +men have when alone in the secular spaces, he answered:</p> + +<p>“<i>Choisir et aimer sa mort, c’est un peu comme choisir +sa bien-aimée</i>,” and suddenly a flash illuminated my +soul, showing me something of the <i>dulce</i> as well as the +<i>decorum</i> of dying for country.</p> + +<p>And then we looked out of the window, and there +came into my mind a completely commonplace event +that caught my attention in the first wonderment and +horror of the world war. Accompanied by her daughter, +an elderly woman, one August evening of 1914, took +the Fifth Avenue motor-bus to get some fresh air, and +they placed themselves on top. At that epoch, instead +of going straight up the Avenue, which was being repaved +around about Thirty-fifth Street, the omnibus took a +turn into Madison Avenue and reappeared again at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> +the north side of Altman’s. Now the roof of the <i>porte-cochère</i> +of Altman’s has a <i>motif</i> of bronzework. The +omnibus lurched just at this point; the head and hair +of the old lady were caught in it; she was lifted up from +the top of the omnibus, remained suspended in air for +an instant of time, then dropped to the pavement, +where she breathed out her soul. Doubtless there +are those who will understand why this completely +unimportant matter has remained in my mind—even +why I thought of it at that moment.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Châlons-sur-Marne, 36 rue du Port de Marne.</span></p> + +<p>An 1860 house requisitioned by the military authorities +for the <i>Dames de la Cantine</i>.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>6.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>Sitting in a little glass-inclosed veranda even with +the ground. The side against the house, in between +the doors and windows, is painted in a crisscross pattern +of dark green against light green, and the woodwork +is that favorite but uninspiring shallow brown; +a large, empty, double-decker cage for birds is in a +corner. The veranda leads into two low-ceilinged rooms +with parquet flooring and little squares of Brussels carpet. +In the first is a writing-table, some arm-chairs, +and a horsehair sofa is across a corner; brown wallpaper +ornamented with the inevitable oil-paintings of +“near” Corots, and “farther” Guido Renis—everything +distinctly early Victorian, and something soothing in its +atmosphere after three lustrums of <i>art nouveau</i>. After +all we’ve been through in art lately, early Victorian +isn’t as bad as we once thought.</p> + +<p>I looked for a moment into the walnut bookcase and +found bound volumes of <i>La Semaine des Familles</i>, 1850-60; +<i>Le Musée des Familles</i> of the same dates: <i>Le<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> +Magasin d’Education</i>, of the eighties; and the curious +part is that here beside the Marne it doesn’t seem of +any special country, but of a special period.</p> + +<p>The kitchen leads out of the dining-room (which +latter is the spiritual twin of the <i>salon</i>), and has an +old, unused fireplace with a high masonried shelf above +it and a beautiful ancient fireback with coat of arms. +Near the high window is a little range and the inevitable +gas-stove. I put my valise in the sitting-room +and went out into the old garden, untouched since the +winter’s sleep and the spring’s awakening. It looks +out on the road; beyond is a raised walk along the +river, and across the stream, just opposite, is the station +and the evacuation hospital.</p> + +<p>But I was feeling uneasy as I looked about, for I was +separated from my <i>carnet rouge</i>,<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> which has been unnecessarily +reft from me by a too-zealous station individual. +Miss Mitchell had met us, smiling and +waving, which ought to have been a patent of respectability, +from the other side of a bayonet, the side we +wanted to be on; but the man had a dullish eye and +didn’t see that we were birds of a feather, and, anyway, +had just been put in authority and was enjoying +his full powers, after the usual manner of the unaccustomed.</p> + +<p>So I departed, and got sopping wet in my only suit +(am traveling lighter even than the first time), and my +garments were furthermore ravaged by falling pollen +from a linden-tree under which I had confidingly stood +during the downpour. I was a sight, but I <i>had</i> to get +that <i>carnet rouge</i>. Any one who has been in <i>la zone des +armées</i> and has been separated from it will understand +the orphaned and anxious feeling that possessed me.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span></p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>A pale brightening of the western sky after the +heavy rain. Two <i>avions de chasse</i> passing swiftly to +the northeast. I wandered out of the garden, past some +modern houses (this part of Châlons, for some reason, +is called Madagascar), taking the little raised earth-walk +by the Marne. The river, always slow-flowing, +has an almost imperceptible movement in front of our +house, and there are many grasses and reeds; the banks +are weedy and little green boats are made fast to them, +and nature is a bit motley and untidy. A soldier is +fishing on the opposite side near the station. An officer +and a black-robed woman pass. Farther down, the +banks are thickly wooded and the trees glisten after the +rain; even the great railway station is a-shine, where tens +of thousands of men pass daily, together with millions +of francs of war material, and it all looks like some not +very sharp wood-cut of the sixties—the kind you +wouldn’t buy if you were looking over a lot; but, somehow, +lived in, it is charming. Then I found myself on +a path by the river, with a lush border of trees, poplar, +willow, white birch, ash, hawthorn, and clematis-twined, +wild-grape-vined bushes. On the other side were ripe +wheat-fields. Near a sycamore a man and a woman +were locked in an embrace, whether of greeting or farewell +I know not. Neither was very young—this much +I saw before I turned my eyes and went on; but when +I passed there again they were as before, their eyes +still closed; and I suddenly knew them for true lovers, +who count not moments, but were lost in some infinity; +and for all I know they may be there yet, and if not +they, then others, for the spaces of love are never empty. +To some it may be nonsense that I am talking, but there +are those who will know. All the while there was a dull +boom of cannon, and other men who could love women<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> +were giving up their lives; and I seemed to understand +little or nothing, but did not need to understand, for I +had a full heart, which is better than a full brain. And +I cried, as I walked back, “<i>Domine Deus, Rex Celestis, +Pater omnipotens</i>,” and left it all—the soft love and +the hard death—where it belongs. And I was glad +to have walked for a few moments alone by the green +Marne.</p> + +<p>When I got back I found Joseph of the 71st <i>Chasseurs +à pied</i> sitting with Miss N. Joseph thinks we are friends; +he <i>knows</i> we are friends, so different from “world’s” +people, who are suspicious and think nobody loves +them, or fatuous and think everybody does.</p> + +<p>We sat in the 1860 dining-room. There is a pressed-bronze +clock on the mantelpiece, representing a mild and +smiling Turk with a drawn sword—and there is a sideboard +you could find in Barnesville, Maryland, or +Squedunk (I forget <i>where</i> Squedunk is), and the extremely +“distant” Guido Renis decorate the brown +walls, without, however, enlivening them.</p> + +<p>And this is Joseph’s story—Joseph of the grateful +heart, Joseph with two years and a half of service, +Joseph who won’t be twenty till December, Joseph with +his young, round face and flat nose, dark under his +pleasant eyes, and a bit hollow under his cheek-bones, +and with decorations on his chest:</p> + +<p>“I never knew my parents; the Fathers brought me +up. I have had only good from them, and when they +were <i>chassés</i> I was taken with them to Pisa. I was +going to continue my studies, <i>mais la guerre, que voulez-vous</i>? +They call me ‘<i>le gosse</i>,’ I was the youngest in +the regiment. Now I am alone in the world since my +brothers were killed, one at Verdun three weeks ago, +the other last year on the Somme. I miss the letters,” +he added, simply.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span></p> + +<p>“But, Joseph, tell us how you got your <i>Croix de +Guerre</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I only happened to save the life of my captain +at Verdun. We were making a reconnaissance, and he +fell with a ball in the hip. I started to bring him in, +with a comrade who was hit by a piece of shrapnel in +the head and killed instantly. I caught ‘mine’ in the +arm, but I was still able to drag my captain in by his +feet. It was quite simple, and since then he is very +good to me.”</p> + +<p>Joseph is <i>en perm</i>, his regiment is at Reims, but he +spits blood and his voice is hoarse—he was gassed a +few weeks ago.</p> + +<p>“It smelt of violets,” he said, “and we didn’t know +that anything was the matter till an officer rushed toward +us. Eight of us never got up. I’ll never speak +clearer than this.”</p> + +<p>Joseph stayed to supper with us—a supper of <i>soupe +à l’oseille</i>, scrambled eggs, and salad, but the brown, +dull, little room gradually seemed to fill with a sifted +glory, and we left our meal and went out to find the +whole world dipped in transparent pink, and the great +Light of Day about to disappear, a reddish ball, in a +mass of color of an intenser hue. The delicate willows +were like silver candelabra reflected in the Marne, +which now was a satiny pink. The wheat-fields were +seas of burnished gold.</p> + +<p>Over all a terrific boom of cannon was borne on the +damp evening air. It seemed impossible to do other +than walk magnetically on and on toward the dreadful +sound, out of that world of surpassing beauty toward +those supreme agonies, toward Mourmelon and Reims, +where men were laying down their lives, even as we three +women walked the fields at the sunset hour. I remembered +suddenly a picture known and loved years ago—a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span> +woman kneeling by such a river-bank, her hair falling, +her face buried in her hands, called “<i>Hymnus an die +Schönheit</i>,” but over the pink-and-silver beauty of <i>my</i> +sunset world I heard the deep and dreadful tones of +<i>their</i> cannon, and the answer of the 75’s, which Joseph +likened to the <i>miaulement d’un chat</i>—and all the world +seemed askew, and I looked through tears at a golden +half-moon that was rising in the pink to add an unbearable +beauty to it all.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">In my room</span>, <i>10.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p class="right">The cannon still booming.</p> + +<p>My room also has a dark-brown paper with great +white flowers on it—some cross between peonies and +dahlias, if such union is possible—and heavy mahogany +furniture; a few books which I immediately investigated, +on a gimp and tasseled trimmed shelf, for a clue +to the one-time dwellers. Among them were two by +Victor Tissot, <i>Le Pays des Milliards</i> and <i>Les Prussiens +en Allemagne</i>; the dates were 1873 and 1875, +and they told of that other war; and I looked at Germany +through the eyes of forty years ago as I turned +the pages of <i>Le Pays des Milliards</i>, listening to the +1917 guns. History was not only repeating itself, but +tripping itself up!</p> + +<p>Joseph is sleeping in the garden in the steamer-chair. +I hear his gas-cough, a cross between a croupy cough +and a whooping-cough. We wanted him to sleep inside, +but he said “<i>J’étouffe</i>,” and took the steamer-chair +out under the spreading chestnut-tree, and sleeps the +sleep of youth, even though weary and gassed.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Thursday, 26th July, 1.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>Sitting in the garden, after lunch, where we have had +coffee under the spreading chestnut, ready to go to +Bar-le-Duc. <i>Avions</i> are whirring in the perfect blue,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> +and we plainly hear the cannon. We are to take night +shift at the little <i>Foyer des Alliés</i>. When I say that we +carry nothing with us, not more than if we were going +to take a stroll about town, one sees that the journey +will be fairly elemental.</p> + +<p>Many white butterflies with an unerring instinct for +beauty are flying in and out of the little white ash-tree. +And in spite of the boom of cannon there straightway +came to me a dear and fugitive realization that beauty +is the first thing sought by instinct, its earliest and its +last love, its imperishable means and its end. And how +every other seeking of instinct comes after perpetuation, +conservation, survival of the strong, and how it +accompanies and pushes the soul toward its transfiguration.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, under the rustling chestnut, all about me +the murmur of the gently stirring garden, I found I +was mad for beauty, and some liquid, long, unrepeated +lines came to me, I know not why:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>E il pino</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>ha un suono, e il mirto</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Altro suono, e il ginepro</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Altro ancora, stromenti</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>diversi</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sotto innumerevoli dita.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="center">...</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Che l’anima schiude</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>novella,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Su la favola bella</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Che ieri</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>M’illuse, che oggi t’illude,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>O Ermione.</i><a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>When you’re not carrying anything with you except +your money and your safe-conduct, you <i>can</i> dream till +it’s time to take the train.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br> +<span class="smaller">THE CANTEEN AT BAR-LE-DUC</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="center"><i>Epitaphe</i></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts simplement: en victimes,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et n’ayant de la guerre éprouvé que l’horreur.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts sans nourrir en leur cœur</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>La haine et tous ses maux, la gloire et tous ses crimes.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts comme ils avaient vécu:</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Assidus noblement à de modestes tâches.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui, n’étant ni très braves, ni lâches,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>N’ont su que résigner leur corps pauvre et vaincu.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts pour servir et défendre</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Des honneurs et des biens dont ils n’ont point leur part.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui se sont donnés sans rien attendre</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>De leur postérité, de l’histoire ou de l’art.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui, luttant seulement pour la vie,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ont ignoré les lois qui reposent sur eux,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mais compris en mourant qu’ils sont les malheureux</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>En qui depuis toujours Jésus se sacrifie.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis, ils le sont tous, et saints entre les morts,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ceux qu’on ne pleure guère et que nul ne renomme:</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Car, devant les héros, ils ne sont rien que l’Homme;</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Car, parmi tant de gloire, ils fondent le remords;</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Car leur don si naïf, ce don de tout leur être,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mêle aux vertus du sol les grâces d’un sang pur,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pour composer, avec tout l’or du blé futur,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Les moissons d’un esprit dont l’Amour sera maître.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse right"><span class="smcap">Georges Pioch.</span></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span></p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Châlons</span>, <i>27th July</i>.</p> + +<p>Half past four. Half an hour ago, <i>alerte, sirènes</i>. +We hastily arose from resting, and have just come up +from a really charming cellar, with nice vaulting, evidently +much older than the house itself.</p> + +<p>Returned from Bar-le-Duc this morning rather sketchy +in my mind, blurred with fatigue, in a compartment with +five silent, dead-tired officers. It’s a great human +document, night shift in a canteen. From ten o’clock +till six I watched the <i>poilus</i> fill the <i>Foyer des Alliés</i>, in +and out, in and out. From time to time the voice of +the station-master called out some fateful destination. +I was thankful for any momentary slackening of the +rush, so that when one gives coffee, chocolate, or bouillon +one can also give a word, the precious word, where +all is so anonymous. Between three and four there was +a lessening, and a short, haggard, deep-eyed, scraggy-mustached +man of forty-six, leaning on the counter, +said to me, “I am father of five,” and, showing his +blue trousers tucked in his boots, added, “I am of the +attacking troops.” He then shifted his accoutrement +and dug out from his person the photographs of the +five children and his <i>épouse</i>, and I think more and more, +“it is for the young to fight.” I can’t bear the look on +the faces of the middle-aged going up to battle.</p> + +<p>The <i>poilu</i> trying to find his purse or the photographs +of his family, among everything else in the world that +he carries on his person, pressed tightly against other +men carrying the same, feels doubtless the way a sardine +trying to turn over would feel!</p> + +<p>The next with whom I spoke was a <i>gaillard</i> with a +glancing blue eye, reddish mustache and high color, from +Barcelona, of French parents, and he insisted on speaking +Spanish with me. His brother is professor at Saint-Nazaire.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span></p> + +<p>“Every time he writes me it is about Mr. Lloyd George +instead of about the family.”</p> + +<p>This is a delicate tribute to my supposed English +nationality.</p> + +<p>“Do you think we are going to win, señorita?”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” I answer, “with the help of God. <i>Dios +y victoria</i>,” I add, piously.</p> + +<p>But as he tosses off his coffee he says, with a gleam, +“<i>Victoria y Dios</i>,” and then gives way to a comrade +who was at Craonne in April.</p> + +<p>He was a man with a softish eye and full-lipped mouth +and was probably naturally flesh-loving, and wanted +his coffee very hot, and looked approvingly at me as I +said:</p> + +<p>“<i>Mon ami</i>, I know all about it, if coffee isn’t <i>too</i> hot, +it isn’t hot enough.”</p> + +<p>He ended a conversation about an engagement he +had been in by saying: “The most awful sensation is +to see the dust raised by the mitrailleuses and to know +that you have got to walk into it and to see the men +ahead of you stepping with strange steps—and some +falling.”</p> + +<p>As I said, he was naturally ease-loving and pain-fearing, +yet that is the way <i>his</i> dust may be called on to +return to dust.</p> + +<p>There are many jokes about shrapnel and shells, +but nobody ever jokes about a bullet. It’s a thing +with a single purpose—and you may be it.</p> + +<p>Our headquarters are at ——, not far away, and it +was at Bar-le-Duc that I first saw our own men among +the French for the same strange purpose. Something +stirred deeply in my heart, with an accompanying searing, +scorching consciousness of what an elemental thing they +have come across the seas to do—quite simply kill or +be killed. It’s all to come, for “He hath loosed the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> +fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,” and it is +for the young to fight.</p> + +<p>At 3.30 they come into the canteen and ask for eighteen +fried eggs; they are oozing with money, and <i>they</i> +aren’t feeling sentimental. One of the four young +spread-eagles (he proved to be from Texas, and was +changing a big plug of tobacco from one side of his +mouth to the other) said, with an appraising look at the +counter, that he could “buy us out,” and a second +added, “And more, too.”</p> + +<p>“How about those coming in later?” I suggest, and +then I ask how long they’ve been here.</p> + +<p>“Been here? Just five hundred years,” a small one +answers, promptly, “and the next time the ‘Call’ comes +they won’t get me. They can take the house and the +back fence, too, but they won’t get little Joe. This +loving another country’s one on me!”</p> + +<p>“Don’t listen to him, lady; he’s homesick. We’re +out to can the Kaiser, and he’ll take some canning +yet, but I say next July he will be about as welcome as +a skunk at a lawn-party.”</p> + +<p>And then even the homesick one cheered up. The +simile made me think of summer evenings in New England, +but I only asked when they were to go back to ——.</p> + +<p>“We ought to have been there at 10.15.”</p> + +<p>I gave a stern glance at the big canteen clock. The +hands pointed to 3.30. They were then five and a +quarter hours late.</p> + +<p>“You don’t know ‘<i>Gun</i>court.’ It’s a fierce place,” +said one, in answer to the look.</p> + +<p>“Aren’t you busy?”</p> + +<p>“Holy smoke! She says <i>are we busy</i>! Why, we dig +ourselves in all day, and we dig ourselves out all night, +and somebody after you all the time. I don’t call this +war. We’re out for real trouble.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span></p> + +<p>“Well, you’ll get it when you see your officer,” I remarked, +unfeelingly.</p> + +<p>Just then a <i>poilu</i> whom they seemed to know approached +with his ten centimes. One of the Sammies +knocks it out of his hand onto the counter, points to +his own chest, says, “On me, a square meal,” and +opens his bursting purse for me to take whatever is +necessary.</p> + +<p>The <i>poilu</i>, hearing the chink of coin and rustle of +paper, says to me, with eyes the size of saucers, “<i>Sont-ils +tous millionaires?</i>” ...</p> + +<p>Apart from his “private resources,” which seem unlimited, +the American receives just twenty times a day +what the Frenchman does.</p> + +<p>But how my heart goes out to them, so young, so +untried, so generous—and a sea of blood awaiting them!</p> + +<p>Toward morning, when a chill was in the air, a thin-faced, +dark-eyed man with glasses shiveringly drinks his +hot chocolate. “It’s too long, the war,” he says, “two +years—even three—<i>mais cela traîne trop, nos bonnes +qualités s’usent et se perdent</i>.”</p> + +<p>“What were you before the war?”</p> + +<p>“My father has a book-shop at Chartres, <i>j’adorais les +livres et une bonne lampe</i>,” he added, so simply.</p> + +<p>And then a trench-stained comrade came up to him +and they talked after this fashion—one couldn’t have +done better oneself—while I mopped up the counter and +refilled my jugs:</p> + +<p>“This country pleases me. I will come back and +take a turn about after the war.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Mon vieux</i>, one should never return to a place where +one has been happy; one is apt to find only regrets and +disillusions. You are thinking of the young <i>boulangère</i> +here, but she herself will leave the town after the hostilities! +And then what? <i>Un seul être vous manque et<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> +tout est dépeuplé!</i> But nothing, however, counsels one +to return to a place where one has suffered.”</p> + +<p>From this point of view one must say that the life +of the <i>poilu</i> is ideal, for when he will have tried all the +fronts, including those of the Orient, the war will perhaps +be over.</p> + +<p>And then they slung everything except the kitchen +stove on their persons, and, thanking me, went out to +be killed, or, in the very best event, to get <i>la bonne +blessure</i>.</p> + +<p>One in a thousand, one in ten thousand gets it, <i>la +bonne blessure</i>, indeed, not disfiguring, not incapacitating, +and afterward, sometimes, decorations, honors. On +the other side they say, “<i>Glück muss der Soldat haben</i>.”</p> + +<p>A strange, intense blue, like some outer curtain to +the windows, announced the coming of dawn, and out +of it appeared nine men shivering.</p> + +<p>“Why are you so cold?” I ask.</p> + +<p>“<i>Il fait du brouillard</i>,” said one, with a beard in a +point and wearing a <i>béret</i>, such a man as would have gone +into an inn of Rabelais’s time, <i>en route</i> for some seat of +war; and as he drank his big bowl of chocolate he +added, “<i>Cela console</i>; toward dawn one’s courage is +low.”</p> + +<p>Then a young, stone-deaf man with blue eyes and delicate, +pink-skinned face came in with something vague +and searching in his look. I didn’t realize in the first +moment what was the matter, as I asked, did he want +coffee or chocolate, but a comrade pointed to his ears +and said, “Verdun.” He himself smiled, a dear young +smile, but sudden tears came to my eyes and I slopped +the coffee.</p> + +<p>A little before six we closed the canteen, which is +always swept and garnished between six and seven, and +went back to the house where Miss Worthington, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> +so admirably runs it in conjunction with Miss Alexander, +lives.</p> + +<p>I lay me on a sofa with my shoes unlaced—my feet +by that time were feeling like something boneless and +bruised, mashed into something too small.</p> + +<p>Seven-thirty a great knocking at the door.</p> + +<p>“<i>L’alerte! A la cave, madame!</i>”</p> + +<p>I was then in a state where a bomb couldn’t hurry +me, but, the knocks continuing, I finally got up and +went down-stairs to find the lower floor full of people, +too <i>blasé</i> to go into the vaulted cellar below.</p> + +<p>“<i>Quelle comédie!</i>” said one woman. “<i>Moi, je m’en vais.</i>”</p> + +<p>“<i>Quelle tragédie, si c’est pour vous cette fois</i>,” answered +another, pressing her baby to her breast.</p> + +<p>“The bits of shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns +firing at the aeroplanes make more victims than the +bombs,” said another.</p> + +<p>Miss Worthington appeared at that moment, but +decided, however, to go back to bed. I went out into +the hot streets; the early sun was shining in a faultless +sky. The <i>Foyer des Alliés</i> had been hastily evacuated +at the <i>alerte</i>, according to orders, so I asked for the +nearest church, where I could sit down in peace, or comparative +peace, out of the glare and the heat, not to +mention the enemy airplanes. I was directed up the +principal street, told to turn down by the river, and +was proceeding under the dusty poplars to the church +of St.-Jean, when suddenly some beauty of the morning +touched my face and a feeling almost of joy succeeded +the fatigue of the night. I was turned from +thoughts of men going to their doom, and destruction +coming from the lovely sky, and I could receive only the +morning light, and the glory of the shining river and the +rolling hills was for the moment mine; and I saw how +“dying, they are not dead.” ...</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p> + +<p>Mass was over when I got to church, but I sat +down, crossed myself, and commended, with a suddenly +quiet heart, the world of battle to its God, +and then, instead of <i>un</i>lacing my shoes in the +sanctuary, I proceeded to lace them <i>up</i>, having +walked from my abode with the laces tied about +my ankles; it wasn’t as sloppy as it sounds, considering +what was going on overhead. But I found +myself thinking of praying-carpets, and rows of +sandals outside of dim mosques, and things and ways +far from Bar-le-Duc.</p> + +<p>After twenty minutes of a somewhat hazy contemplation +of other than war mysteries, I went back to +the canteen.</p> + +<p>Betwixt the time I had left it and my return a bomb +had fallen between it and the station; a large piece of +roof had been removed from the station, and a very neat +nick had been made in the corner of the canteen where +we kept our hats and coats and hung up our aprons. +The street in between looked like an earthquake street. +I stood quite still for a second of time—not thinking—you +don’t think on such occasions. The Barrisiens, or, +in plain English, the Bar-le-Dukites, were engaged in +business as usual.</p> + +<p>I then began the cutting up and buttering of endless +large slices of bread, with a Scotchwoman, who has unmodifiable +opinions about Americans—any and all +Americans. Even when she only remarks, “I saw two +new people in town yesterday, <i>very</i> American-looking, +<i>very</i>,” you feel there’s something the matter with the +States, and if you had time you’d get argumentative, +even perhaps annoyed.</p> + +<p>Soldiers were coming in again. To one tired, deep-eyed +man, sitting listlessly, with the heavy load slipping, +I said:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span></p> + +<p>“<i>Vous avez le cafard,<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> mon ami?</i>”</p> + +<p>And he answered, suddenly, as if the words had been +ejected by a great force from his soul:</p> + +<p>“<i>Je monte demain</i>—and I can’t bear the sound the +bayonet makes going in.”</p> + +<p>I answered, “A hot cup of coffee and you will feel all +right again.” But to myself I said, “There’ll be trouble +for him; he <i>can’t</i> any more.”</p> + +<p>And then a huge Senegalese, all spinal column and +hip, waving a generous five-franc note in his hands, +came along and wanted to know if there was anybody +<i>bas mariée</i> among the ministrants, as he had a day off. +The service is quite variegated, as will be seen from +these random specimens.</p> + +<p>Last night we walked up the hill of the ancient town. +A yellow half-moon, hanging behind the fourteenth-century +tower, further decorated the scene. We sat on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span> +immemorial steps, in a little V-shaped place that framed +the valley and the town, and talked of war and wars. +I thought how the legendary Gaul had wandered over +these hills and these wooded stretches, with his battle-ax +and skin about him, and long-haired women had +waited his return, and children had played in front of +caves. As the clock on the tower struck nine a woman +appeared, waving her arms and calling out, “<i>Une incendie!</i>” +and we went higher up the steps and saw masses +of smoke and flames on one of the hills. It was the +huge barracks for refugees that was burning, and the +flames were blowing toward the near-by encampment +for German prisoners. Then we went down the ancient +roadway through the dim, warm, summer streets to the +canteen overflowing with blue-clad men, singing, drinking, +disputing. A blue mist of smoke and breath hung +about them, with a smell of hot wool and worn leather—and +it was the war. As I put on my apron I found +myself repeating the words:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts simplement: en victimes,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et n’ayant de la guerre éprouvé que l’horreur.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Bénis ceux qui sont morts sans nourrir en leur cœur</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>La haine et tous ses maux, la gloire et tous ses crimes.</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br> +<span class="smaller">THEATRICALS AND CAMOUFLAGE</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>27th July, evening.</i></p> + +<p>This afternoon Lieutenant Robin fetched us to the +theatrical representation the <i>Division Marocaine</i> +was to give.</p> + +<p>Generals thick as leaves in Vallombrosa were there +in a hemicycle about the stage, pressed close by the +flood of <i>poilus</i>. Terrible heat in the great, glass-roofed +auditorium, a slanting afternoon sun pouring itself in +like hot gold. Some thousands of spectators; thick +odor of <i>poilu</i>; blind being led in; groups of one-legged +men naturally gravitating to one another; groups of +one-armed the same. A few <i>gardes-malades</i> from the +hospitals, and ourselves the only women in the audience.</p> + +<p>We were presented at the door with some copies of +a charming, really literary newspaper, <i>L’Horizon, Journal +des poilus</i>, and there was a little paragraph, “<i>Hiérarchie +française qu’on trouve au Théâtre des Armées</i>,” +which also described the protocol of seating, “In the +first row near the stage wounded men are lying, immediately +behind them wounded men are sitting, then +come ladies, if there are any—and then come officers!” +General Goïgoux and General Abbevillers sat near us.</p> + +<p>While waiting we looked at <i>L’Horizon</i> and laughed +with General Goïgoux over a paragraph showing the +philosophy of a son of Mars under certain circumstances, +and it was the following:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span></p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p>Nature is kind. She places the remedy near the ill and often +cures, as one has seen, evil by evil.</p> + +<p>A woman, too much loved, sent me a letter so cruel that I didn’t +even have the strength to tear it up, but carried it around in my +pocket for weeks.</p> + +<p>One night, being quartered in a stable, I took my coat off and +hung it up.</p> + +<p>The next day, no letter. A cow had eaten it. Nature is kind.</p> +</div> + +<p>When General Gouraud, first in command, entered, +the “Marseillaise” sounded, a thrill went through the +vast assemblage, and we all arose. <i>Le Lion d’Orient</i> is +tall, intensely straight, his whole thin, khaki-clad body +on parallel lines with his perpendicular armless right +sleeve. Long, straight, brown hair <i>en brosse</i>, bronzed +skin. His entry was a thing not to be forgotten. I +wondered “Is it the East that stamps great chiefs with +such majesty, that can give them such calm?” and I +thought of Gallipoli—blue seas, battles, wounds, hospital +ships. Then the curtain rose on one of the most +delightful theatrical representations I have ever seen, +screamingly funny, and quite chaste.</p> + +<p>But all that <i>entrain</i>, all that life, to be snuffed out to-morrow +or the next day, or the next? At Craonne or +Reims or Verdun or wherever it may be? And how +natural that they should sing of love and women, and +say witty things concerning food and raiment and the +government, till the end!</p> + +<p>After the performance, during which nobody had +ever been so hot before, the sun moving across the hall +and grilling each row in turn, we passed out in a great +jam of <i>poilus</i>. One huge man, with the thickest of +meridional accents and red cheeks, and eyes like two +black lanterns, and a coal-black beard, was gesticulating +at a small, hook-nosed, blond man.</p> + +<p>“<i>Le Midi, le Midi—qu’est-ce que tu en sais, toi, bêta?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> +Les Anglais t’ont déjà pris ton trou de Calais, aussi je +te demande, sale type</i>, what army corps took the <i>plateau +de Craonne</i>” and he burst into a great laugh of triumph. +Then, borne on the blue waves, we found ourselves in +the open air and realized what we had been breathing.</p> + +<p>General Goïgoux presented us to General Gouraud +standing by his motor with several other generals, while +a squad of German prisoners, looking out of the corners +of their eyes, were being marched by. His mien was +dignity itself, and out under the sky one was even more +conscious of that harmony of browns and straight lines, +that something remote yet majestic in his being. As we +turned to go I saw him speaking to a blind zouave, and +he pressed his hand lingeringly on the man’s shoulder. +<i>Oh, enfants de la patrie!</i></p> + +<p class="right"><i>Saturday, July 28th, 10.30 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>All last night the strange, recurring, sinister sound of +the <i>sirènes</i> over the plain of Châlons, and it seemed to +me like cries of men of the Stone Age.</p> + +<p>These two days I have been haunted by ghosts of +beings of the twilight ages; elusive emanations, dim suggestions +of their psychologies have at moments possessed +me in this city of the Catalaunian Plains.</p> + +<p>Rested in my pink-silk wrapper, dead tired—too tired +to care whether “they” got here or not—and stayed in +bed during the <i>alertes</i>, but I thought of airmen, attackers +and defenders, in the soft summer sky, a golden half-moon +lighting a dim heaven.</p> + +<p>Dreamed, but only in snatches, of peace and the +ways of peace.</p> + +<p>At 4.30 I heard Joseph’s gas-bark and knew he was +again with us, stretched out on the <i>chaise-longue</i> under +the chestnut-tree.</p> + +<p>As I stood at the window my thoughts went twisting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> +about the stars of the gorgeous night that was so soon +to give way to another summer day, and I suddenly +saw human beings, only as tiny specks, everywhere +going forth at some word of command to their doom. +There was a flinging back of my thoughts upon me, and +I turned from my window, as suddenly the chill of early +dawn and the boom of cannon came in, and I could see +nothing for tears and I knew the beauteous earth for +what it is—the abode of mad horrors.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Paid my respects to General Goïgoux for an instant +of time (I can always get out quickly) in the old gray +house of the Rue Grande Étape, and found him as always, +<i>distingué</i>, human, untired, cordial. Officers passing +in and out of his room, and the walls tapestried with +maps. Later Colonel Rolland of the 1st Zouaves, very +jaunty in his red fez, adoring his men and adored by +them, and flicking his leg with a short cane having a +deadly knife on a spring in the top, took us to the railroad +station, to inspect the great, dreary sheds that with +time, labor, and much energy are to become <i>La Cantine +Américaine</i>. Blue-clad men were lying around like +logs in inert bundles on the earthen floor. One had to +step over legs and motley equipment to get anywhere. +A dreadful sound of hammering was echoing through the +vast spaces, without, however, seeming to disturb the +slumbers of those men, and I dare say was as a lullaby +in comparison to the first-line trenches.</p> + +<p>We stepped into the kitchen. A smiling, twinkling-eyed +<i>cuistot</i><a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> who probably had something awful the +matter with him—flat-foot or hernia or something of the +kind, or he wouldn’t have been there—with pride asked +us to partake of some of his coffee. He proceeded to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> +dip it from a great, steaming caldron, pouring it +into worn tin cups carefully wiped first on his much-used +apron. My soul responding to echoes of fraternity +enabled me to drink with a smile, which, though it +started out rather sickly, behaved all right as I returned +the cup with compliments. The <i>cuistot</i> said he +hoped the <i>cantine</i> would soon be in order, and as he +looked through the small opening through which he +shoved the cups to the <i>poilus</i>, rendered still smaller by +piles of bread and festoons of sausage, he added, “<i>Les +têtes de ces dames seront plus consolantes que la mienne</i>.” +He was a nice, human <i>cuistot</i>, though no lover of water +except for making coffee, and then, as we fell into conversation, +he added, “<i>Si la guerre pouvait finir; mais il +y a un fossé de dignité et personne des deux côtés n’ose le +sauter</i>.” These <i>poilus</i> are astounding!</p> + +<p>We then visited Lieutenant Tonzin, who is going to +decorate the <i>cantine</i> as never <i>cantine</i> was decorated. +He was at the camouflage grounds. As one knows, +camouflage is <i>de l’art de la guerre le dernier cri</i>, but the +grounds were discreetly veiled from public gaze, and we +were directed into a little garden, green-treed and sun-flecked. +In it was a trestle with a large, very clever, +plaster cast of a <i>camion</i> taking <i>poilus</i> somewhere; they +were hanging from every possible place except the +wheels, just such a sight as one constantly sees on the +roads near the front.</p> + +<p>The gayest sounds of whistling and singing issued from +the rather coquet sun-flooded house behind the garden. +Several other young artists appeared on hearing women’s +voices, loving life, adoring art with a new adoration, +and who with something of wonder and much of thankfulness +found themselves for a sweet, brief space in +charge of the camouflage work, with brush and chisel +again in hand instead of bayonets.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p> + +<p>We looked at the designs for the <i>cantine</i> decorations, +quite charming—but we delicately suggested suppressing +the figure of a too fascinating “mees” that was to +embellish the entrance and point to the <i>poilus</i> the way +to those delights. We feared some confusion of +thought.</p> + +<p>Afterward went to church at Notre Dame, and, sitting +there, drew my first quiet breath in Châlons, out +of the hot streets. Beautiful music rolling through the +gray, antique vaulting. A white bier near the altar; +some beloved child was being laid away from sight and +hearing and touch and earthly hope. As I looked about +the lovely gray spaces I remembered how in <i>La Cathédrale</i> +Huysmans says the length symbolizes the patience +of the Church during trials and persecutions; +the width, that love which dilates the heart; and the +height, our aspirations and our hopes—and some speechless +gratitude overflowed my soul because of being one +of the enduring community to whom, through the gorgeous, +terrible ages, nothing human is foreign. I had +a strange, complete sensation of brotherhood and I +saw us all of the great laughing, weeping caravan, winding +through the desert, and the Church compassionate +the spot of living waters. And how “men must endure +their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness +is all.” ...</p> + +<p>On the same site had once been a pagan temple, and +on its altar was the figure of a Virgin, and at her feet +were graven the words, “<i>Virgini Parituri</i>” (“to the +Virgin who shall bring forth”). And it had come to +pass.</p> + +<p>The most precious of the old windows have lately +been put out of harm’s way, but the ogival tops remain +with their jewels of medieval reds and blues; and on +each side, as one looks through the lovely gray vaulting,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> +are delicate windows of a later epoch, with designs in +fawn and green and yellow.</p> + +<p>As I came out behind the mourners following the little +white bier, I noticed again with a sinking of the heart +the revolutionary defacement of the splendid portals. +Men in all ages have had seasons of madness, wherein +they destroyed whatever mute and unresisting beauty +was within their reach.</p> + +<p>Again through the hot streets—an epic in themselves +of war, dust, sun, blue-clad men, blue-gray automobiles, +gallooned officers, and I realized among other things +that without uniforms war would be impossible.</p> + +<p>Bought <i>Le Champ de Bataille de l’Epopée</i>, also <i>Le +Mannequin d’Osier</i>, out of a huge stock of Anatole +France’s books, who is evidently a favorite here. I +passed through the old courtyard of the museum, hermetically +sealed <i>depuis la campagne</i>, as the porter told +me when I sought his lodge, from which the most savory +of noonday smells was issuing. Uninteresting and entirely +beside the point, Buddhist sculptures fill one side +of the court, and then, passing through the portal of a +seventeenth-century church, transported there when +the church itself was being done away with, one finds +oneself in a narrow passage on the walls of which are +hung quaint old fire-backs, <i>plaques de foyer</i>. The first +is of the eighteenth century, “<i>l’amour désarmé</i>” (love was +nearly always disarmed in those days), and this one +represented Cupid supporting a languorous lady. “<i>Le +retour du marché</i>” of Louis XVI depicted a housewife returning +with a full basket on her arm, and evoked the odor +of the porter’s <i>pot-au-feu</i>. A French soldier wounded +in the Crimea, 1855, with his colonel bending over +him, might have been any one of a hundred thousand +scenes of to-day. On one were the arms of the King +of Spain, and the date 1608, and on another those of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> +Maria Theresa and her consort, Francis III, Duke of +Lorraine. Their origins were as diverse as the history +of Lorraine itself, and I glimpsed family groups sitting +about hearths, looking at them through the flames.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Met to-day two Englishwomen coming out of the hospital. +One, nearing sixty, had something ardent in her +charming blue eyes and under austerely brushed whitening +hair; there was a suggestion of banked fires—banked +under ashes of circumstance, probably, as well +as time. The other, somewhat younger, in the full grip +of <i>l’âge dangereux</i>, had something inexorable in her regard. +When we passed on I asked who they were, and +found they were daily doers of acts of mercy and devotion, +and then I found myself looking for eternal reasons +in transient things, under the impression made by those +two women—met only in passing, but whose emanations +I suddenly caught. And I thought: Among the innumerable +phenomena of the war are these women of +various ages (though the phenomenon is most apparent +between thirty-five and sixty), brought for the first time +into personal contact with man, other than father or +brother, ministering to his wants, witness of his agonies, +awed spectator of his continual apotheosis, and all the +daily transmutations of the definite and ordinary into +the infinite and divine. The world war gives the one +chance for the twisting of conventional fives, lived along +the straightest of fines, into completely unexpected +shapes. They come from abodes of hitherto unescapable +virginities, these elemental women of indescribable +innocence, with that warm, wondering look, or +sometimes that determined and inexorable look, upon +their faces, these unchosen and unmated, to become +part of the strange lining of the war, part of the vast<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> +patchwork. Not the least strange are these pale, thin +bits, sewn into something riotous, reckless, multicolored, +heroic. It’s a far cry from Shepherd’s Bush or Clapham +Junction or Stepney Green to battle-fields, hospitals, +vanishings, potent reminders of forces withdrawn forever +from the world-sum, or, still more, of convalescences +and evocations of returning forces, but <i>not</i> re-established +order.</p> + +<p>Everywhere the subtle but deathless emanation of +the male—his heroisms, his agonies, his needs, his weakness, +and his strength.</p> + +<p>Can one wonder at the mighty tide obeying nameless +natural laws, like other tides, that flood the areas where +the manhood of the world is concentrated?</p> + +<p>Very hot. Out there in the <i>Champagne Pouilleuse</i> +men are marching in the white dust, resting in the white +dust, giving up their lives in the white dust. Am sitting +under the chestnut-tree. A soldier, in civil life a gardener, +has been sent to tidy up our garden, and its <i>belle +patine</i> will soon give way to spick-and-spanness. I +sensed such a passion of tenderness in the way he +handled his rake that I went over to speak to him, and +this is his history. He is from Cette—<i>une ville si jolie</i>—and +he speaks with the heavy accent of his part of the +world. He is a territorial and forms part of the <i>État-Civil +des Champs de Bataille</i> (civilian workers on the +battle-fields). This doesn’t sound bad, but it really +means that since he was called, eighteen months ago, +he, who all his life has planted flowers, has been digging +up dead bodies, hunting in a literal “body of death” +to find the plaques, and then identifying by means of +a map the place where they are found.</p> + +<p>“<i>Madame, je rien pouvais plus.</i> It was too terrible. +I am forty-seven years old, but I asked to be put among +the attacking troops. They refused, but sent me here.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> +Now in this garden I have found heaven again.” And +his eyes, his soft, suffering eyes, filled with tears.</p> + +<p>I asked him about his family—one son is fighting in +the Vosges.</p> + +<p>“He is six feet four and he so resembles Albert I that +they call him <i>le roi des Belges</i>. I lost my daughter a +few months ago—a beautiful girl with curling blond +hair. After her fiancé fell at Verdun, she went into a +decline. My other son is young, seventeen, but his +turn is near. I had a beautiful family.” The gardener +himself is straight-featured and straight-browed, caught +up how terribly in the wine-press of the war. “All my life +I have been gardener in great houses,” he added, with +a shudder. “The work they gave me <i>là-bas</i> is the most +terrible of all. <i>On n’y résiste pas à la longue. O les +pauvres restes qu’on trouve! O, Madame!</i>”</p> + +<p>I asked him to bring me the photographs of his family, +and his face brightened for a moment as he stood with +his head uncovered. One speaks to any chance person, +and immediately one gets a story that is fit only to be +handled by some master of that incomparable thing, +French prose.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>A while ago investigated the house. Up-stairs is a +little room toward the north, papered in a yellow-and-white +pin-stripe design of forty or fifty years ago. In +it is a yellow baroque niche with a shell design at the +top, having a temple or altar-like suggestion, in spite +of the too-large, ugly, marble-topped mahogany wash-stand +that fills it. Above the mahogany bed is a carved +wooden holy water font, a little shelf in the corner for +books, and another for a lamp, and there is a window +looking out on small gardens cut up into bits for flowers +and vegetables. As I entered it I seemed to know that +some spirit rare and strong enough to project emanations,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> +sensible even to a stranger long after, had lived, +perhaps died, in it. I settled down immediately in a +really not comfortable, too-small, brown, upholstered +arm-chair, sloping forward, and felt somehow as if I +were in choice company, and began to turn the pages +of Bordeaux’s <i>Dernier jour du Fort de Vaux</i>, which I +had in my hand as I entered. But something unseen +held my attention, not the book. The room was gently, +softly haunted, and the world of spirits was sensibly +about me.... Anyway, the plain of Châlons gives me +the creeps.</p> + +<p>Joseph, reappearing this afternoon, brought the news +that there had been another air raid on Bar-le-Duc at +noon, and they had dropped pounds of leaflets telling +of the Russian defeat, Rumanians retreating, in danger +of being enveloped. The leaflets wound up by saying +the Germans were sick of the war—they supposed the +French were—and why not have peace?</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br> +<span class="smaller">THE BURIAL OF PÈRE CAFARD</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Châlons</span>, <i>Sunday, 29th</i>.</p> + +<p>Telegram that M. de Sinçay may be passing +through. I would like to see his <i>grand seigneur</i> +contour decorate our 1860 establishment. Go to the +<i>Bureau de la Place</i>, and nothing less than a general +(Abbevillers) grasps the receiver and telephones for me +to Bar-le-Duc—but without result. They are all in +“our” <i>secteur</i> “of a courtesy”!</p> + +<p>Twelve-o’clock mass at Notre Dame. Again rolling +music, and the green vestment of the priest especially +beautiful at the end of that high gray Gothic vista. +Many, many military. I thought of an English officer +who said to me not long ago:</p> + +<p>“See how the soldier is exalted in the New Testament. +It is certainly not the man of law, the money-changer, +the man of politics, nor governors. When Christ has +an especial lesson to show, how often He shows it +through the soldier, even unto the servant of the centurion.”</p> + +<p>On returning, found Mrs. S. and Miss E. arrived from +the village of the fifteenth-century towers,<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> and the khaki-clad +sons of Mars from over the seas, their hearts filled +with patriotism and their tank with American <i>essence</i>. +Coffee under the chestnut-tree, lovely sun filtering<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> +through, and the little white butterflies flying about the +little white ash-tree; and we told stories, being all of +us souls that laugh, which we did, till we couldn’t +breathe, at the story of the woman’s-preparedness +meeting in a certain transcendental town where the +head of the assembly in solemn accents besought as +many as felt drawn to such work to become automobilists—“and +the moment the Germans set foot in New York +rush the virgins to the West, preferably Kansas City.” +In the town of brotherly love, where a like assemblage +was held, an immediate position was available, March, +1917, with a commission of major-general, to look after +dead soldiers’ widows for another blinking female. <i>Oh! +là, là!</i>—and when one thinks we’ve <i>got</i> to win the war!</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Have just laid down <i>Le Mannequin d’Osier</i>, completely +dazzled by that first chapter, so monstrously clever, so +diabolically lucid, so icily logical, so magnetically cynical, +and I said to myself, after all, “one can only write +of war in between wars.” I long for a friend to read +with me the pages where M. Roux, on short leave during +his years’ military service, says to M. Bergeret, “<i>Il y a +quatre mois que je n’ai pas entendu une parole intelligente</i>,” +to the paragraph where M. Bergeret says, “<i>Mais +nous sommes un peuple de héros et nous croyons toujours +que nous sommes trahis</i>.” It stimulated a desire for the +discussion of things as they are, over against what one +idiotically hopes they may be, with a bit of imagination +concerning the future thrown in.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 29th, evening.</i></p> + +<p>In the afternoon we all went to another theatrical +representation in the big hall, given by the <i>1er Régiment +de Marche des Zouaves</i>. Again immense concourse.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> +Again the “Marseillaise,” and again the <i>Lion d’Orient</i> +made his majestic entry, and dozens of generals and high +officials followed him, and again all sat forming their +glittering hemicycle in front of the stage. Again a few +nurses, some wives of officers, and the thousands of +<i>poilus</i>.</p> + +<p>A great poster read: “<i>Vous êtes priés d’assister au +convoi, service, et enterrement du Père Cafard, assassiné +par le Communiqué.</i></p> + +<p>“<i>Le deuil sera conduit par le Pinard, le Jus, la Gniole, +le Tabac, et tous les membres du Chacal hurlant.</i>”</p> + +<p>It appears that those of the 1st Zouaves still in hospital +had had a rise in temperature at the thought that +their representation might not equal that of the Moroccan +Division of Friday. The <i>Compère</i> was made to look as +much as possible like Colonel Rolland—adored by his +men. “<i>On R’met Ca!</i>” has been given in the trenches +all over the front, and was just as funny and amusing +as the other, but there was a strange intermezzo about +three o’clock, when the dreadful sun, shining through +the glass panes of the sides (on the roof great squares of +canvas had been spread), began to get fainter. It was +like being in the hot-room of a Turkish bath. Suddenly +a darkness fell, accompanied by a deafening and +terrifying noise of a heavy rattling on the roof and a +beating in at the sides; the voices and music were +completely drowned and the performance had to be +suspended. Even the officers were beginning to look +about—when the lights suddenly went out and we found +ourselves in Stygian blackness at 4.30 of a summer +afternoon, the terrific noise continuing, with the under-note +of the stirring of the thousands assembled. A +nameless fear, or something akin to it, went through +the vast assemblage. Finally we realized that it was +heaven, not the enemy, bombarding us, as hailstones,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> +even by the time they had gone through many hot hands, +as big as turkey eggs, were passed about. There was +the sound of breaking glass, water began to rush in, the +heavy canvas, spread on the roof as protection against +the sun, and also to prevent the light from being seen +from the air, alone prevented the roof from breaking in. +Finally the lights reappeared and the performance proceeded +to the diminishing sound of heavy rain—but it +was a strange experience. Even those generals of Olympic +calm had begun to “think thoughts” at one moment. +It would have been a big “bag,” had anything +been doing, and we all knew it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. S. and Miss E. have been persuaded to stay at +the house by the Marne, rather than at La Haute Mère +Dieu, and we have arranged to double up.</p> + +<p>I am to motor back to Paris with them to-morrow.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br> +<span class="smaller">A PROVIDENTIAL FORD</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>July 31st</i>.</p> + +<p>Yesterday, at 8.30 in the damp morning, Lieutenant +Robin appeared with my military pass to +return by auto instead of by train, and I said a special +farewell to the gardener, carrying our bags out to the +motor in a passionate tenderness of courtesy. Miss +Nott and Miss Mitchell bade us Godspeed, and we +passed over the Marne and out of town. At the <i>consigne</i> +examination of our papers, our charming chauffeuse +excited much attention. An officer standing there with +pasteboard box and leather bag asked if we would give +him a lift. The road was unusually empty and he had +been awaiting an act of Providence for two hours. We +were it.</p> + +<p>He would be in ordinary times a Frenchman of the +stereotyped banal sort, and he was entirely without +charm, though I dare say he is known as a <i>beau garçon</i> +in Lyons, where before the war he was <i>marchand de +bois</i>. But the war transmutes everything it touches, +and he, too, had undergone the subtle change. He said, +quite simply for a man naturally fatuous, “<i>Je ne retrouverai +jamais ma vie d’autre fois</i>.” I seemed to see +what that life had been. Small but good business transactions; +some success with women, as I said he would +be considered as handsome; the theater; reading newspapers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> +in a café; talking of the happenings of his quarter +of the town—and the lamp of his soul burning only +dimly. But even he has been caught up in the “chariot +that rides the ridges” and must partake of <i>la haine et tous +ses maux, la gloire et tous ses crimes</i>. We drop him at a +crossroad and he takes a muddy side-path to the village +where his regiment is billeted.</p> + +<p>At another crossway just out of the village of Vertus +another officer was waiting. We called out, “Is this +the road to Epernay?” And then, “Do you want a +lift?” This time it was a dark-eyed young man with +a kindling glance and something responsive and mercurial +in his being, giving a sensation of personality, +awake, running, a-thrill. He had twenty-four hours’ permission +to go to Paris to see his mother, and had arrived +to see the train pulling out of the little station. He +also was waiting Fate at the crossroads, and crossroads +in war-time are a favorite abode of Fate. He had been +wounded near Suippes, lay twenty-four hours in a shell-hole, +and was finally brought in by some man he didn’t +know, whose head was blown off as he was pulling him +into the trench. Something deep rustled in my heart +at the vision of the splendor of that anonymity. Six +months in hospital, six months of convalescing, and then +a hunger for the front—<i>quorum pars fuit</i>.</p> + +<p>We were passing through a beautiful country of vineyards, +Vertus, Mesnil, Avize, in the loveliness of graded +greens, malachite, beryl, emerald, jasper, and stretches +of aquamarine where the grapes had been powdered +with the <i>mélange de Bordeaux</i>. Everywhere were little +sharp, steep hills, their plantings taking all kinds of +lights as they turned to east or west or south.</p> + +<p>At Epernay we wound about the streets till we came +to the Hôtel de l’Europe, marked with a star in the guide; +but you see no stars when you get into its encumbered,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span> +dull little courtyard—as slightly modern as possible—ask +for luncheon, any kind of luncheon, and find one +can’t have it or anything till twelve, the only fixed +thing, except the <i>consigne</i>, I have discovered in the war +zone. We went across the square to the Café de la +Place, where we had <i>œufs sur le plat</i>, a yard and a half +of thin, crusty bread, a thick pat of yellow butter, and a +bottle of Chablis, that poured out pinky into our glasses. +After which, reinforced and most cheerful, we went to +the Place du Marché, where were many signs of the campaign +of August and September, 1914. Among débris +of bombarded buildings the fruit-market was being +held. Plums, peaches, and apricots were of the most +delicious, and we got pounds of them, which later were +to be smashed and mashed and to ruin our dressing-bags +and our clothes and the motor seats as we bumped +along. It all came from Paris except the tiny, sweet, +white grapes.</p> + +<p>Epernay seems banal, driving through it, but if one +thinks a bit, all sorts of things flash into the mind. It +has a Merovingian past, and has been pillaged innumerable +times by innumerable hosts. It belonged to the +Counts of Champagne, to Louise of Savoy; Henry IV +besieged it in person, and Maréchal de Biron fell by his +side. Now thinking of its great champagne industry, +into mind come memories of dinner-tables around which +sat white-vested, decorated statesmen, even unto the +kind that did not prevent war, and lovely women, +and the toss of repartee, and flash of jewel and white +throat, and all the once-accustomed things no longer +ours.</p> + +<p>As we got out of Epernay a terrible temptation assailed +us. Three law-abiding women, by reason of +original sin, I suppose, were drawn to take the forbidden +road to Reims—Reims, the scarred, the pitiful—Reims,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> +whose cannon sounded even now in our ears—rather +than the straight path of duty and <i>sauf-conduits</i> to +Paris.</p> + +<p>“After all, we’re not here to go joy-riding in the war +zone,” said one, virtuously; and then prudence, most +dismal of virtues, triumphed, bolstered up by a look +at a well-guarded bridge, and I told the inspiring story +of the principal of the school my mother went to, whose +last words to every graduate class were, “What is duty, +young ladies?” And the young ladies were expected to +respond, “A well-spring in the soul.” It isn’t (and +never has been), and our eyes kept sweeping the hill +between the Epernay road and that great plain of Champagne +in the midst of which is set the broken jewel of +France. A military auto passed as we stood there, and +an officer waved us onward. We let that hand pointing +us to Paris decide. It was the triumph of prudence—plus +a lively sense of favors to come. Some one muttered, +“Had we been going to take the boat on Saturday, +oh, then mayhap, mayhap....”</p> + +<p>Dormans. Several kilometers before we got into Dormans +little crosses began to show themselves along the +roadside. All through here was heavy fighting during +the battle of the Marne. The first grave we stopped by +bore on its little cross the words, “<i>Trois Allemands</i>,” +and it was neatly fenced up with black sticks and wire. +We started to climb the hill, and among the malachite, +the beryl, the emerald, the jasper, and the aquamarine +vines were many other graves. Sometimes it would be +“<i>20 Français</i>,” the red-and-white-and-blue <i>cocarde</i> +decorating the cross. Once it was “<i>30 Allemands</i>.” +On another was the name “<i>Lastaud, le 3 septembre, +1914, souvenir d’un ami</i>.” I thought how friendship has +been glorified in this war.</p> + +<p>But mostly it was the continuous gorgeous anonymity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span> +of the defenders of the land that clutched the heart +and with them the invaders, pressing their bayonets +and their wills into a land not theirs. I was once more +again before the awful tangle of the world as I looked +at these resting-places. Over beyond the crest of the +hill and the forest was Montmirail. Just a hundred +years before, Napoleon had put these names upon the +scrolls of history, and again and then again they had +resounded to marching feet, the terrors of invasion, the +heroisms of defense. One of a group of soldiers passing +called out as we stood by one of the German graves:</p> + +<p>“I came through here in 1914.”</p> + +<p>“But you still walk the earth,” I answered.</p> + +<p>“I got a ball in the hip, all the same, on the top of +that hill,” and he pointed across the road. “<i>Mais j’ai +eu de la chance.</i>” And a look of a strange and pitiful +wonder that he was above the earth, not under it, +flashed for a moment over his young face; then he +touched his cap and went singing down the road with +his companions, and I caught the refrain, “<i>Ces mots +sacrés, ces mots sacrés, gloire et patrie, gloire et patrie</i>.”</p> + +<p>And somehow, after Dormans, we were all quiet. I +only remember long, gray villages, mostly eighteenth +century, and many blue soldiers walking about their +broad, central streets, and signs of billetings, “<i>30 +hommes, 2 officiers</i>,” “<i>5 hommes, 2 chevaux</i>,” black-robed +women coming out of little Gothic churches, and children +playing, and in between the villages great avenues of +poplar and plane trees. Then we lost the Marne and +picked up the Seine, and passed La Ferté, and Meaux, +seen from the inside, preserved its flavor of “<i>autres temps, +autres mœurs</i>,” in spite of the 1917 soldiers billeted there, +walking hand in hand with girls who don’t have a ghost +of a chance, in military towns, to get through the war +as they began it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p> + +<p>Entered Paris in a fine drizzle of rain at 6.30. Our +charming chauffeuse dead tired after the long day, but +steering us so prudently and yet so quickly through +the wet, crowded streets. Give me a good woman +chauffeur <i>any day</i>!—not simply when coming from the +front! She takes no chances, but she makes good time +and she gets you there. But somehow one leaves one’s +heart at the front, and I thought to myself as I got to +the hotel door, “It’s not so good, after all, to feel <i>just +safe</i> and to be comfortable.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III<br> +<span class="smaller">LORRAINE IN AUTUMN</span></h2> + +<p class="center">“<i>L’élégante et mélancolique Lorraine</i>”</p> + +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br> +<span class="smaller">NANCY AND MOLITOR</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>1.30 p.m., Tuesday, October 9th.</i></p> + +<p>Passing Meaux. Square gray tower of its cathedral +against a gray sky, the gray hemicycle of its lovely +apse cutting in against reddish-gray roofs; gray houses +with old towers built into them; yellowing acacia and +plane and willow trees; level corn-fields stripped of +their harvest, pheasants and magpies pecking in them; +golden pumpkins; and <i>betteraves</i> showing red and vermilion +roots bursting out of the ground; everything +wet—wet.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ligny-en-Barrois.</span></p> + +<p>Two American soldiers walking up a muddy village +street in the dusk; rain falling; a cinnamon-colored +stream slipping by; and a quantity of shabby, wet +foliage and wetter meadows.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Gondrecourt</span>, <i>5.40</i>.</p> + +<p>In the extreme point of the angle where the Nancy +train seems to turn back to Paris and where many +American soldiers are billeted. Cheerless, dimly lighted +station. Groups of our men standing about, high piles +of United States boxes, marked “Wizard Oats.” Some +persuasion of black-frock-coated “sky pilot” walking +up and down and humming, “Pull for the shore, sailor, +pull for the shore” (there <i>was</i> a lot of water about!), +and then in the darkness the train slipped out. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> +and in all the dim, wet Lorraine villages about are damp, +puzzled, homesick, forlorn, brave, determined, eager +young Americans.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, Nancy</span>, <i>Tuesday evening</i>.</p> + +<p>Cabs at station, hot water, writing-paper, meat, +warmth, all sorts of things you don’t always get on Tuesday +in Paris. Everything, in fact, except light. Dining-room +full of officers. <i>Chic atmosphère de guerre</i> began +to envelope me, not yet experienced that day. +Started from Paris tired and not particularly receptive, +but was conscious of a slow quickening of sensibility as +the hours passed, drawing me within the zone of armies.</p> + +<p>This “chic war atmosphere” is like nothing else. +Impersonal and larger lungs are needed to breathe it. +We no longer, so many of us, read of their battles, but +they still fight them, these blue-clad men out here. In +the coal-black evening, stumbling from the station, one +realizes it all once more—and there is some lighting of +the soul.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>October 10th.</i></p> + +<p>Nancy in rain and storm, and all night the sound of +cannon and gun and mitrailleuse turned against sweet +flesh and blood, the sons of women dying in agony hard +as their mother’s pain, and no way out. Never were the +imaginations of men less elastic; little groups everywhere +are hourly setting this cold grind in motion with +a word or a gesture, around green tables or bending +over maps—in a few small spaces deciding the agonies +of millions.</p> + +<p>An <i>avion</i> almost tapped at my window once toward +morning and reminded me of a young aviator with +whom we talked in the train last night, his face a-twitch, +strange eyes, gloomy, set mouth, once <i>jeunesse dorée</i>. +A hard look as he answered:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span></p> + +<p>“<i>Avion de chasse, il n’y a que cela.</i>” He had been +“resting” in the cavalry, where there was little movement, +and he couldn’t stand it. As for the trenches—</p> + +<p>“<i>O les tranchées! Être avec des gens que je ne connais +pas, sous des conditions indescriptibles; non, je n’en peux +plus.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Better to fall from the heavens?” I asked him.</p> + +<p>And then I realized the disarray of nerves, the complete +unfitting of the being to an earthly habitat, in the +knowledge that life is measured by an almost countable +number of hours or days, scarcely weeks, and rarely, +rarely months, and the calling on help from the flower +of sleep to fit one for acts impossible to normal being.</p> + +<p>I must say this very evidently “made-in-Germany” +hotel is most comfortable. <i>Jugend-Stil</i> designed bed, +exquisitely clean; great white eiderdown; a munificence +of brass electric-light fixtures representing leaves, with +frosted shades running from pale pink to pale green, +and giving plenty of light; the iron shutters tightly +pulled down, of course. Large wash-stand with a huge +faucet for hot water, bearing the name “Jacob”; the +heating apparatus by Rückstuhl; the telephone, “Berliner-system”; +electric light and lift the familiar +“Schindler.” Wardrobe and mirror over wash-stand +have, like the bed, a design, not of conventionalized +flowers, but of flowers devoid of life. The inexpressibly +sloppy <i>mollesse</i> of <i>art nouveau</i> is in such contrast to the +beautiful precision of touch of the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>At 9.30 E. M. came into my room and said, “We’d better +doll up and be off.” I leave it to the gentlest of +readers to surmise what we did before being off, and I +would like to say here that one doesn’t always “doll +up” for others; the process gives to one’s own being a +sense of completeness most sustaining. It comes after +that of having one’s clothes put on properly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span></p> + +<p><i>En route</i> to the Prefect’s we met the tall, good-looking +blond young son of Jean de Reszke, “<i>très chic, cherchant +le danger</i>”; “<i>en voilà un qui n’a pas froid aux yeux</i>,” the +only and adored child of his parents. It’s not a very +promising situation for them. But again I thought, +“Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he play +his part well,” and started to ponder on the incalculable +growth of filial piety, and of the love of mothers, and +their griefs, when, suddenly walking along the gray +streets of Nancy, the scene shifted, and it was the +Metropolitan Opera House that I saw—the lights, the +red glow, the boxes, the jewels; the warmth, the stir +of the orchestra, the quiet of the listening house, were +about me. It seemed to be the second act of “Tristan +and Isolde” after the duo, when King Mark makes his +noble entry and in those unforgetable accents begins +his broken-hearted apostrophe to Tristan, “<i>Tatest du’s in +Wirklichkeit, wähnst du das?</i>” And all that unsurpassed +and unsurpassable art of the great Polish brothers +was again evoked; one now gathered to his rest in stress +of war, the other knowing a greater fear than for himself.</p> + +<p>Then I found myself in the Place Stanislas under +gray morning skies, instead of the gleaming twilight +web. I felt suddenly and acutely the turning of the +seasons and the inexorable advent of winter through +which unsheltered flesh and blood must pass. That +ravishing of the spirit I knew in the warm June sunset +was mine no more.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p class="right">Waiting for the motor to drive to Lunéville.</p> + +<p>Went with Madame Mirman, the wife of the <i>Préfet +de la Meurthe et Moselle</i>, to visit Molitor. It is a huge +collection of barrack-buildings which for three years +has contained that terrible precipitation of old men,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> +women, and children from the devastated districts +around about. They are received in every conceivable +condition of hunger, dirt, disease, and distress of soul. +They had been living in the woods and fields that first +summer, and the children running the streets of half-ruined +towns, before being brought to Molitor.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus11" style="max-width: 20.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus11.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>SISTER JULIE</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus12" style="max-width: 31.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus12.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>BAS-RELIEF OF THE REFUGEES</p> + <p>As they passed at Evian—but typical of any group anywhere.</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>We went first to the school-building, and into the +kindergarten room where rows of children were making +straight lines with beans on little tables. Very hot and +stuffy in the hermetically sealed room, every child sniffling +and sneezing and coughing. There are always +faces that stand out, and in this room, as the children +rose and sang a song with patting of the hands, there +was one child of five with gestures so lovely and movements +of the body so rhythmic that one realized afresh +the eternal differences in the seasoning of the human +<i>pâte</i>. She was between two clumsy, wooden-faced children, +one with a peaked forehead, the other with a heavy +jaw.</p> + +<p>We then went up-stairs to a class-room of older boys, +and after we had spoken to the schoolmaster I noticed +a handsome boy with shining eyes and a firm mouth. +The master, who was new and wished to become acquainted +with his pupils, had written the following questions +on the blackboard: “Whence do you come? +What was the occupation of your parents? Are you +happy at Molitor?” etc. Well, that little boy of eleven, +when asked what he had written, turned out to be a +sort of cross between Demosthenes and Gambetta, and +read from his slate an impassioned apostrophe about +“<i>le flot envahisseur des barbares, quand délivrera-t-on la +France martyrisée de la main destructrice de l’ennemi?</i>” +and to the question, “Are you happy at Molitor?” the +answer was, “<i>Oui, on est bien à Molitor, mais rien ne +remplace le foyer; quand on a perdu cela, on a tout perdu</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span></p> + +<p>The face of the master showed some embarrassment +at any restrictions on happiness at Molitor, but the +boy, whose eyes had begun to flame, continued: “<i>O +quand viendra le jour de la Revanche, le jour sacré de la +délivrance?</i>” and wound up with something about his +blood and the blood of his children. His father, who +was dead, had been employed in the customs at Avricourt, +and his mother now cooked in one of the Molitor +buildings. Then we passed through a room where +some fifty women were sorting and stemming hops; the +strong, warm odor enveloped us and the eyes of the +women followed us.</p> + +<p>Then out across the immense courtyard to one of the +dormitory buildings. Rows of beds, and above them, +around the walls, a line of shelves on which is every +kind of small article that could be carried in flight, from +trimmings for Christmas trees to shrines and little +strong-boxes.</p> + +<p>As we entered the first room, Madame Mirman said +to an old woman with deep, soft eyes:</p> + +<p>“<i>Comment ça va-t-il aujourd’hui?</i>”</p> + +<p>And with such grace she answered:</p> + +<p>“<i>Oh, Madame, c’est la vieillesse, et on n’en guérit pas.</i>”</p> + +<p>Another woman, nursing a rheumatic knee, when +asked about her son, who had been at Molitor on a +three days’ permission, put her cracked old hand over +her heart and said, “<i>Voir un peu sa personne fait oublier +tout</i>.”</p> + +<p>In all the big rooms near the long windows women +sit bent over embroidery and passementerie frames. +One of them, with thin hair and horny hands, was working +with extreme rapidity on a bright <i>pailleté</i> strip for +an evening gown, a design of silver lilies on white tulle, +in such contrast to her worn face and bent figure.</p> + +<p>Many were working at lovely and intricate tea-cloths,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> +with designs of the Lorraine cross, and +thistle, oak and acorn designs, that had been handed +down through generations. Some of the work Madame +Mirman is able to dispose of directly, while some is +contracted for with big shops.</p> + +<p>When we came down-stairs there was a great sound +of young feet and voices and various noises of well-cared-for +children, just dismissed from the seats of +learning, coming up the stone stairway to their dinner.</p> + +<p>It’s the threading up of all these destinies, this web +of the France to be, that is the great problem. And +oh, how terrible is this uptearing of human beings, this +ghastly showing of the roots! I have seen it wholesale, +east and west. I remember especially the first two +evacuations of Czernowitz and the adjacent towns and +villages during the Russian advance through Galicia. +They would flood the streets of Vienna by the tens of +thousands, in pitiful groups, always the same—old men, +women, and children; and it’s all alike, it’s war, the +ruthless, the indescribable, and everywhere the children +paying most heavily. Could the war-book of <i>children</i> +be written no eyes could read it for tears....<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<p>We went back to luncheon at the Prefecture, where I +met M. Mirman, one of the most striking figures of the +war. Since the 12th of August, 1914, when he took +up his duties as <i>Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle</i>, his handsome, +straight-featured face has figured at every gathering +of sorrow or relief. As he sat at his table, surrounded +by his six children, he talked of those first days when +Nancy was in danger and it was not known if <i>le Grand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span> +Couronné</i> on which Castelnau had flung his <i>paraphe +could</i> protect them, and then he told of many urgent +present needs.</p> + +<p>After lunch we drove with Madame Mirman to her +favorite good work, <i>l’école ménagère</i>.</p> + +<p>When we got there the elementary class, girls of thirteen +to fourteen, were chopping herbs and onions to +make seasoning for soups in winter, and putting it up +in stone pots. Another class was kneading and rolling +out dough. Then we went into the great sewing-room +and turned over the books of miniature sample pieces +of underclothing. When the girls become expert they +are given material and make their own trousseaux.</p> + +<p>With a sigh Madame Mirman said: “But I am sad +for these girls. The men who might have been their +husbands lie dead on the field of honor, and there will +be no homes for them.”</p> + +<p>Something chill and inexorable laid its hand on me as +I thought: only graves, and they leveled out of memory +by time; except in the hearts of mothers, to whom <i>voir +un pen sa personne</i> is the supreme joy, and the knowledge +that it can be no more the supreme sorrow.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Hôtel des Vosges, Lunéville</span>, <i>11.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>A long day. Many pages of the book of life and +death turned. Just before leaving Nancy, made a little +tour of the battered station. Scarcely a pane of glass +left anywhere, but in and out of it is the ceaseless movement +of blue-clad men. A few flecks of a strange, dull +amber in a pale-pink sky, the true sunset sky of Nancy. +A bishop with a military cap and a chaplain in khaki +pass, lines of <i>camions</i> and Red Cross ambulances. Suddenly, +beyond the station, a dark-winged thing against +the sky is seen to drop, right itself for a moment, then +a column of smoke goes up from it, then a flame, then<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> +there is a falling of something black just behind the twin +Gothic towers of St.-Léon. The streets filled instantly, +“<i>C’est un des nôtres</i>,” said a man with field-glasses, +and then, death in the sky not being unusual here, they +went about their business, and the long, delicate towers +of St.-Léon got black as ink against the flaming sky. +But a man’s soul was being breathed out in some distant +beet-root field or in the forest of Haye. Peace to +him!</p> + +<p>The next thing I saw, that has become a familiar sight +in the last months, was an American soldier on some sort +of permission, and hanging from his arm, neatly bound, +was a pretty little “dictionary”—from whom, however, +came sounds of broken English. The British Expeditionary +Force saved the classics from destruction at one +time; now “salvage” seems to be rather the turn of +the American forces. One can only philosophize on the +indestructibility of matter.</p> + +<p>The Place Stanislas was a bit out of our way, but when +I saw the lovely Louis XV knots of pink that the orb +of day was tying in the sky before he quite departed +I begged for three minutes in its pale loveliness. Against +the delicate ribbons of the sky were urns and figures, +urns with stone flames arising from them, softly glowing, +or stone flower-twisted torches held by winged beings, +children and youths or angels I knew not—but I did +know in a flash just how and why the Place Stanislas +came into being.</p> + +<p>In the gray streets were blue-clad, heavily laden men, +and the chill autumn twilight was falling about them. +Oh, Nancy! dream of the past and yet with so much +of the hope of the present within your gates!</p> + +<p>As we sped out of town, through the vast manufacturing +suburbs, I turned and saw a bank of orange glory +in the west, cut into browns and reds, with little threadings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> +of gray and green and blue, for all the world like +an ancient Cashmere shawl with light thrown on it.</p> + +<p>Night was falling as we passed through St.-Nicolas du +Port. The two immense towers of the church, which +dominate the landscape, were cutting black and cypress-like +into the sky. The streets were full of dim figures—soldiers, +overalled men, and many trousered women +coming from munition-factories, with baskets and clinging +children, hurrying home to get the evening meal.</p> + +<p>We two American women found ourselves threading +our way through it all in a Ford which E. M. was +driving herself, the Ford which in the afternoon had +allowed itself caprices only permissible to lovelier objects, +and there, close behind the French lines, we talked +of love and marriage, and the Church. And these things +had been and are for one, and for the other all to come.</p> + +<p>Among its various imperfections, the Ford was one-eyed, +and our little light did not cast its beams very far. +We got tangled up into a long line of <i>camions</i>, with +blinding headlights, quite extinguishing us as we hugged +the right side of the road. Finally we reached the outpost +of Lunéville, where the guard stopped us, dark and +disreputable-looking as we were, flashed his lantern, +saw the lettering on the auto. We cried, “Vitrimont,” +and then passed on. The chill night had completely +fallen, but in the dark fields rose darker crosses that +only one’s soul could see. Peace to them that lie beneath!</p> + +<p>Into town safe; drew up at the door of the house +that was once an old Capuchin monastery, groped our +way through a dark garden to find a warm welcome from +Mademoiselle Guérin, a shining tea-table, an open fire, +many books, things seemed <i>too</i> well with us.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br> +<span class="smaller">EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EMANATIONS</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>October 11th, 7.30.</i></p> + +<p>Awakened at five o’clock to the sound of cavalry +passing under my windows. I have three, and +got the full benefit of the hoofs. I looked out into a +bluish, late-night sky; endless shadowy lines of men +that I knew were blue-clad were defiling, and there was +a faint booming of cannon. Everything that the pitchy +blackness of the streets of Lunéville prevents the inhabitants +from doing between 5 and 8 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> they do between +5 and 8 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> The hour was set back on the 7th, +which is why we have suddenly so much morning and +these chopped-off afternoons. It makes the streets of +the old town “hum” in the early hours. No Taubes; +the sky too threatening. Again <i>chic atmosphère de guerre</i>.</p> + +<p>My big room is charming. The doors have panelings +of the great epoch of Lunéville, but on the walls is a +fresh papering of a pinkish <i>toile de Jouy</i> design, in such +good taste, an abyss between it and the <i>Jugend-Stil</i> of +the “Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre”; over each door +is a lunette containing a faded old painting.</p> + +<p>The pink-curtained windows have deep embrasures; +a fresh, thick, pale-gray carpet quite covers the floor; +on the mantelpiece is a bronze clock, a large Europa +sitting on a small bull. I suspect <i>it</i> is 1830. In one +corner a commodious Louis XV <i>armoire</i>. On one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> +its doors is carved a peasant’s house and a hunter aiming +at a deer half-hidden in some trees. On the other +is a fishing scene and a bridge, and in the distance a +château. The panels are inclosed in charming Pompadour +scrolls, and there is an elaborate wrought-iron +lock of the same period. It seemed to epitomize the +life of Lorraine, as well as “the reign of the arts and +talents.” Discovered last night that the electric light +is in the right place, so that a lady can dress for dinner +or read in bed with equal facility. There is all the hot +water one could wish, an open fireplace, but it was with +a sigh that I said, as I heard the cannon, “<i>Rien ne +manque</i>.” The maid, who had been in England, put +our things out last night with a dainty touch, the ribbons +on top; my pink satin négligé was placed with +art across the chair by my bed. In E. M.’s room, +equally comfortable, her pale-blue one was also tastefully +displayed. Somehow, all the physical comfort is +so insistently in contrast with what is being gone through +with a few kilometers away, and though my soul can +be supremely content without any of it, I looked for +the moment with a new appreciation on this flicker of +comfort behind that dreadful front.</p> + +<p>Again we groped through the Place Léopold after dinner +at Mlle. Guérin’s, feeling our way slowly under completely +remote stars, Jupiter so gorgeous that for a moment +my heart was afraid. Then I became sensible of +ghostly and lovely companions, the amiable secrets of +whose amiable lives have been revealed to me in many +a tome since I crossed that square in those linden-scented +nights of June. Did linden scent, on which a +long chapter could be written, have anything to do with +their morals, I wonder? However that may be, I +thought of Duke Léopold going from the château through +the park to the house in the rue de Lorraine to see the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> +Princesse de Craon, who bore twenty children here in +Lunéville, preserving her beauty and her husband’s +love, and that of Duke Léopold as well, evidently having +the secret of squaring the circle without breaking it +(unknown in the twentieth century, when everything +“goes bang” if it is but breathed upon). Then of the +wild and witty Chevalier de Boufflers, painting and +making verses, loving and forgetting, whose mother, +beloved of “<i>Stanislas, Roi de Pologne et Duc de Lorraine +et de Bar</i>,” was the bright particular star of Stanislas’s +Court, as his grandmother had been of Léopold’s. And +how often <i>La divine Emilie</i> and Voltaire passed through +the Place Léopold in their coach to be put up at the +Palace and contribute to the gaiety of nations. They +and many others filled the square, and I was thinking +of discreet sedan-chairs coming from rendezvous rather +than of the uncompromised and uncompromising lamp-post +that finally got me, minus the light.</p> + +<p>Now I quite dislike getting up from this literally +downy couch, with its dainty pink-lined, lace-trimmed, +white-muslin covered eiderdown and its heaps of soft +pillows, to investigate further their <i>amours</i>, and in +general the <i>arts et talents</i> of the eighteenth century, but +so I willed it, and so it must be done. For some reason +nervous energy is at a low ebb. There are moments +when I throw my life out of the window, when nothing +seems impossible and most things quite easy, but to-day +the gray world outside, <i>l’élégante et mélancolique Lorraine</i>, +I would consider well lost for converse with a beloved +friend by my fireside.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>October 12th.</i></p> + +<p>Nothing to be found in Lunéville on an October night +except your soul, and if you don’t keep it fairly bright, +you won’t find even that. Oh, woe is me! about six +o’clock mine was suddenly too dark and sad for words,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> +so I betook me to the downy couch of the morning, +with a batch of letters and various books given me by +M. Guérin at lunch, some old, some new, concerning +<i>l’élégante et mélancolique Lorraine</i>. The Hôtel des +Vosges is ahead of any Ritz that was ever built, and, +what’s more, in it your soul’s your own, even if it is +a poor and dark and trembling thing.</p> + +<p>My “<i>Symphonie Pastorale</i>” letter to —— returned +to me. Have just reread it and pinned it into the +Journal. It’s all part of the same.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Aix-les-Bains</span>, <i>vendredi, 27 août, 1917</i>.</p> + +<p>... The orchestra, pale, emasculated, having the minimum +of strings—the musicians of France are dead or +in the trenches—seemed without accent during the first +part of the program. “<i>La Chasse du Jeune Henri</i>” of +Méhul, “<i>Les Eolides</i>” of César Franck, something of +Grétry, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, <i>enfin</i>, one of the usual war-time +programs. But then followed the “<i>Symphonie +Pastorale</i>” and the master’s voice suddenly swelled the +thin sounds, triumphant in the beauty of his order and +splendor.</p> + +<p>A.—(<i>Sensations agréables en arrivant à la Campagne. +Allégro ma non troppo.</i>) I felt myself invaded by a +familiar but long-untasted delight as my ear received the +gorgeous consonances, and the lovely theme of the violins +drew me to an interior place. My fancy was set +a-wandering in a world of green glades, and broad +meadows covered with asphodel and belladonna and +fringed by dark plantings of pines, such as the master +had wandered in, and “upon my eyes there lay a tear +the dream had loosened from my brain.” In deep +serenity I found myself thinking on appearances of +“things wise and fair,” feeling myself in some way included +in a company of paradisaical beings.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span></p> + +<p>Suddenly an almost unbearable spiritual exasperation +succeeded the delight, and I saw a scarred and dreadful +scene, like to the lunar landscape of the battle-field of +Verdun, and I knew that my dwelling-place was a world +of blood-madness. I tried to beat off the invading horror. +Hot tears of protest came to my eyes, a feeling +of suffocation clutched my throat, and a something +burning wrapped my soul. Delight was dead.</p> + +<p>B.—(<i>Au bord du Ruisseau. Andante molto moto.</i>) +The master spoke again, in a voice of purling water over +smooth stones and through soft grasses; the music of +the lower strings, monotonous, hypnotic, possessed my +fancy. Again the joy with which he was looking on the +beauty of the exterior world tried to communicate itself +to me. But my eyes fell on a white-haired man +seated near me, a black band about his arm, dozing or +dreaming, I knew not which. He awakened with a +start and groan, and was doubtless thinking on combat +and empty places and “heroes struggling with heroes +and above them the wrathful gods.”</p> + +<p>And I thought of Veiled Destinies and high and nameless +sacrifices and children at evening and silent firesides, +and broken loves and other visible and invisible +things.</p> + +<p>C.—(<i>Joyeuse réunion de Paysans. Allégro.</i>) Expressing +the master’s deep belief in the goodness of humanity, +its deathless adorations, its inextinguishable hopes.</p> + +<p>But the houses of the peasants are empty, even here +in Savoy, and husbands and fathers and sons will cross +their thresholds no more. “The ancients have ceased +from the gates, the young men from the choir of the +singers.”</p> + +<p>I sat by the stream among the peasants and remembered +suddenly two combatants, an Austrian and a +Serb, visited in a hospital in Vienna that first winter of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> +the war. One had lain by a frozen brook across a fallen +log for two days, his hands and feet alone touching the +ground, and when he was brought in they were black +and swollen, and as I saw him he was but a trunk of a +man with dull eyes. And the other, the Serb, with +something wild and burning in his look, and restless +hands, had fallen with his feet in a stream, and he, too, +would walk no more; and so one thinks of brooks and +sweet, moving waters these days.</p> + +<p>(<i>Orage—Tempête. Allégro.</i>) The sudden D flat, the +world in noise and horror and protesting hate, and hard, +bright-eyed men meeting from East and West, the sons +of the world falling for the sins of the world; and +there is no way out, for all words save that of peace +may be spoken. And I thought on the loneliness of the +mind, and knew it for as great or greater than that +of the heart, for mostly humanity lives by its personal +throbs, its desires and its hopes and fears, and these +are of such abundance that there are always contacts. +But the loneliness of the mind is a world where there is +scarcely any sound of footsteps, few voices call, and +sometimes it is deathly cold, and that is why I write to +<i>you</i> to-night.</p> + +<p>I listened again. (<i>Joie et sentiments de reconnaissance +après l’orage. Allegretto.</i>) And I suddenly realized how +unsubstantial, for all their thickness, are the towers +wherein each dwells isolated from some near happiness, +shut off from some close beatitude, that for a dissolving +touch might be his own. And I found that the completed +harmonies of the lovely finale, “<i>Herr, wir danken +Dir</i>,” were seeking my mortal ear, and my soul was being +regained to tranquillity. My mind was turned from untimely +vanishings, or the despair of men of middle life +who go up to battle, and from all the company of those +who “have wrapped about themselves the blue-black<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span> +cloud of death,” and I saw again visions, felicities, progressions, +accomplishments. Then, not bearing less +beneficent harmonies, I went out, and Hope, with +lovely, veiled, outcast, undesired Peace, accompanied +me through the warm Savoyan night. But they left +me at the door of my dwelling, as the one-armed <i>concierge</i> +saluted me, and the one-legged lift-man (symbols +of my real world) took me up-stairs. Now I am alone +with thoughts of him who gave to melody its eternal +fashion and to music itself its furthest soul, and would +that you had listened with me!... You who will not, +Peace!...</p> + +<p>M. Guérin’s book-loving, artistic, perceptive son, <i>en +permission</i>, with a dreadful cold, was at lunch, Colonel +——, and several other men. Mr. G., whose family have +been part owners of the Lunéville porcelain-factories for +one hundred and fifty years, is charming, erudite, and +afterward, over our coffee by his library fire, we talked +politics and literature and music. I had just been reading +Madame de Staël’s <i>De l’Allemagne</i>, not at all in +favor just now, which I had picked up on her centenary.</p> + +<p>“<i>Une exaltée</i>,” said one of the officers.</p> + +<p>“That is not enough to say of one who always had +the courage of her convictions,” I answered, and recalled +the conversation between her and Benjamin Constant +when under the Consulate he threw himself into the +opposition.</p> + +<p>“<i>Voilà</i>,” he said, “<i>votre salon rempli de personnes qui +vous plaisent; si je parle demain, il sera désert; pensez-y</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + +<p>And she answered, “<i>Il faut suivre sa conviction</i>.”</p> + +<p>“She certainly followed out her convictions; but what<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> +did Madame de Staël know of the Germans?” pursued +the colonel. “She saw them in the quite factitious +setting of the Weimar Court, and was intoxicated by +the play of mind. Those <i>beaux esprits</i> presented the +character and the future of their race, through rose-colored +clouds of Romanticism, to one of the most +charming and gifted women another race had ever produced, +<i>et puis elle rentre et elle écrit de l’Allemagne! +Cela serait comique si ce n’était pas si triste.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you think both sides played up,” I asked, +“at those Weimar suppers? She was under the charm +of philosophers and musicians, and they under the +charm of her wit and appreciation. I keep thinking +how they all enjoyed it—and how those black eyes +flashed under the heavy red-and-gold turban.”</p> + +<p>“Without doubt it was more than agreeable. I only +complain that she was in a position to mislead succeeding +generations, and did so. She seems to have had no +<i>flair</i>, and because she got the personal enthusiasm, the +hot striking of mind against mind, that was at once her +gift and her delight, she glorifies a nation that later +makes furious attempts to destroy hers.”</p> + +<p>I then remarked, but a bit warily: “Talking of +centenaries, I have just had in my hands the discourse +of Wagner on the centenary of Beethoven. It has fire.”</p> + +<p>“We won’t talk of Wagner, the mere memory of a +phrase scorches one’s ear. Beethoven, yes, for all time, +but we French can’t listen to Wagner now. He’s like +a hot iron on seared flesh—or a rake in a wound. We +want nothing more to do with the Lohengrins and the +Tannhäusers and the Siegfrieds. I only wish they had +been annihilated with their Walhalla.”</p> + +<p>“These beings, however, were potential in the German +race. Madame de Staël got their projections, together +with the metaphysics of Goethe and his contemporaries,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> +and carried away with her the memory of +a blue-eyed people lost in metaphysical dreams, passionately +loving poetry and music.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, and presented them to us as an example of all +the social virtues. Look at history,” said another officer, +with a gesture toward the east.</p> + +<p>One <i>can</i> talk of other things besides the booming of +cannon, even in Lunéville—but not with complete +pleasure.</p> + +<p>Then E. M. and I departed to take a <i>tournée</i> about +the country. But the Ford reposing in the Guérins’ +garage was completely unresponsive; it might have been +dead. It appears it hates cold weather. A dozen +officers are billeted in the Guérins’ house; two of +their orderlies and the butler tried to crank it. The +only signs of life were in the handle, which from time +to time flew round with extraordinary rapidity. We +called out to one not-over-cautious soldier, “Be careful; +you will break your arm.”</p> + +<p>He only answered:</p> + +<p>“If that happens I shall have two or three months +of tranquillity.” And that’s how <i>he</i> felt anent the +breaking of his arm!</p> + +<p>At last we found ourselves on the road bounded by +the meadows of the silent crosses, skirting the hill of +Léomont, with its great scars of 1914 shell-holes, beneath +which is a little village with the strange name of +Anthelupt. The Romans were all about here and it +was once “Antelucus” (before the sacred grove), and +afterward was a dependence of the priory of Léomont +built on the site of the ancient temple to the moon. +Then we found ourselves on the broad ridge of road leading +to Crévic. Great stretches of Lorraine, <i>l’élégante +et mélancolique Lorraine</i>, were flung out before us under +rain-clouds and sunbursts—lovely stretches, with fields<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> +of mustard greedy for the light, blowing patches of +red-stemmed osier, and everywhere fields of beet-root +in which women and old men and little children were +working, piling high red-white mounds or separating +the wilted leaves into greenish-yellow piles.</p> + +<p>Crévic is shot to bits. Of the château of General +Lyautey<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> but a few crumbling walls remain. Though +the piles of stones and mortar are covered with the +green of three summers’ growth, still the cannon are +booming to the east and north. The perfectly banal +church is intact. People were walking about the streets +and improvised roofs cover some sort of homes, and +there seemed many very little children. We passed out +over an old bridge in a dazzling sunburst, while a great +curtain of rain hung to the west near Dombasle, the +smoke-columns of whose hundred chimneys caught and +held and reflected the gorgeous afternoon light, and +there were other great stretches of unspeakable beauty, +soft, rolling, and radiant—crying out about the generations +that have bent over them.</p> + +<p>The great village of Haraucourt has a lovely destroyed +church of pure Gothic that workmen are at last +roofing over; but three winters have already passed +over its beauty, unsheltered and unguarded. We go +out through the village in the direction of Dombasle, +and suddenly against some gorgeous masses of clouds +we see an <i>avion de chasse</i>, “type Nieuport,” as E. M., +who has ample reason to be expert in things aerial, tells +me. There is a moment when it is a great silver brooch +pinning two gray velvety curtains together, where a +ray of blinding light falls. Then it makes a series of +marvelous <i>vrilles</i>, and I say to her, “How can men who +do that love finite woman?” A great observation +balloon, <i>saucisse</i>, hung in the sky, and another broad<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> +shaft of light lay on the far hills behind which lie intrenched +gray-clad men with pointed helmets.</p> + +<p>At this moment a <i>panne</i>. The only thing in sight is +a long line of war-supply wagons drawn by tired horses, +and women and old men and children bending over their +eternal piles of beet-root. But E. M. said, “Sooner +than change that tire, I’ll bury the Ford by the road.” +So we bumped and crawled along till we met a line of +<i>camions</i>. The first was driven by a handsome, tall, +very small-handed, extremely polite Frenchman, who +knew Fords, having been four months with Piatt Andrew +at the Field Service Ambulance in the rue Raynouard, +and who agreed to change it for us.</p> + +<p>A hail-storm, like a pelting of diamonds, as sudden +bursts of light caught it, came up in the middle of the +operation, which was finally completed with expressions +of mutual satisfaction. The shining storm was withdrawn +like a curtain, showing the sun on the great +stretches, and Dombasle with the smoke of its hundred +chimneys was a thing of inexpressible beauty, while behind +it were the great towers of St.-Nicolas du Port, +for which we decided to make a dash. We got into it, +through Dombasle, as a perfect rainbow rose from the +Meurthe and disappeared into the horizon, where the +gray-clad men with the pointed helmets are intrenched.</p> + +<p>“For luck,” said E. M.</p> + +<p>But I asked, “Whose luck?” the rainbow evidently +being neutral.</p> + +<p>We had some difficulty in finding anything but the +towers of the church. There is no square in front; +tiny streets encircle it on all sides. But we at last got +into the narrow street in front of the cathedral, which +is called “<i>Des Trois Pucelles</i>,” in memory of the three +young girls to whom St.-Nicolas gave a <i>dot</i>. I was not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> +alone in remembering that he is the patron saint of +those contemplating matrimony.</p> + +<p>The church is of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, +and among the largest of the Gothic churches of Lorraine. +Swelling-breasted pigeons with gorgeous pink and red +and green and purple upon their throats were nestled +against the beautiful carvings of the gray portals, and +much soft cooing was going on. Above the central +door, in the <i>trumeau</i>, is a statue of the saint said to +have been done by the brother of Ligier Richier, and I +thought of the lovely Gothic fireplace by Ligier Richier +himself taken from St.-Mihiel, and now at Ochre Court +in Newport.</p> + +<p>Noble interior, though the pillars have had the beautiful +sharpness of their chiseling blunted by much painting +and whitewashing. There are remains of early +frescoes on some of the croisillons, and near a door I +found a tiny, ancient painting representing scenes in +the life of St.-Nicolas, inclosed in glass in a modern +varnished wooden frame. Somewhere in the pavement +of the church is a certain potent slab, and she who steps +upon it is married within the year. Its exact position +is not known, but I told E. M. to take an exhaustive +walk about and commend herself to heaven and the +saint.</p> + +<p>When we came out into the ancient streets the western +sky was aflame and there were translucent pale greens +ahead of us. We turned again toward the open road and +Dombasle, named after a monk of the fifth century. +Hermits brought the first civilization to these forests, +followed by the great bishops and the builder-monks, +who constructed the immense abbeys and the churches +of Lorraine. Dombasle from some mysterious wilderness +had become what I saw it that afternoon. From +the chimneys of its munition-factories, against the amber<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> +sky, there poured and twisted a wonder of gray and +white and deep brown and violet smoke. The darkening, +soot-blackened streets were overflowing with human +energies spilling themselves into the greedy war-machine. +There are vast monotonous workingmen’s +quarters, and everywhere children, little children, being +trampled in the wine-press....</p> + +<p>It was dark when we drew up in front of the house of +the <i>maire</i>, Mr. Keller, the celebrated house where the +Prince de Beauvau was born, where the beautiful +Princesse de Craon had most of the twenty children, +where the Treaty of Lunéville was signed in 1801, and +where, in 1914, the <i>maire</i> lodged the generals of the +German army. Madame was still at her hospital, so +we left our cards and came back to the hotel.</p> + +<p>Now I must leave the almost Capuan delights of this +pleasant room to motor a hundred kilometers. Nancy, +Toul, the antique Tullum, and back, is the program. +It’s raining, it’s hailing, it’s blowing, but I bethink me +of St.-Mansuy and St.-Epvre, the great Bishop of Toul, +and those other saints, St.-Eucarius and St.-Loup, starting +out in all kinds of weather, and of the <i>œuvre</i> that we +are to visit, founded last summer for children gathered +in 1917 from villages where there had been bad gas +attacks. The history of Lorraine piles high about me—the +cannon boom. What a day to lie with your life’s +blood flowing from you in wet beet-root fields.... +The motor horn sounds.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br> +<span class="smaller">TOUL</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>October 13th.</i></p> + +<p>We lunched at the Café Stanislas yesterday after +the wildest of drives into Nancy, the Ford +seeming like an autumn leaf in the high wind. We did +ourselves well, even I, who care not a farthing what I +eat except to “stoke the engine.” The proprietor, who +left Alsace as a boy after 1870, stood and talked to us, +as we ate our <i>œufs au beurre noir</i>, as French people alone +can talk. He said “they” came only with fire and +sword; the great Napoleon, who came with the same, +had also his “Code” in his pocket. Then he spoke of +the marvelous administration of Germany, the order +and the use made of each one’s capacities, which was +why they could <i>tenir</i>.</p> + +<p>“We only ask for a leader here in France, to be <i>bien +menés</i>. All other things we have in abundance. But +if a department is to be organized or reconstructed, it +seems always to be given into the hands of some one +knowing nothing about it.”</p> + +<p>In between I kept looking out where against gray +skies beings half child, half angel hold up stone flames, +and <i>panaches</i> leaning one against the other. The gilding +of the <i>grilles</i> has a dull gleam through the wet. The +statue of Stanislas <i>le Bienfaisant</i> was black and big. +Everybody was talking about the unexpected visit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> +the German <i>avion</i> in the bad weather the night +before.</p> + +<p>The station was further devastated, a train moving out +was wrecked and many <i>permissionnaires</i> killed, a house +near the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre was totally +demolished, the <i>avion</i> flying very low, not more than +twenty-five meters above the town at one time. After +lunch we went over to the prefect’s house, from where +we were to motor with him to Toul. He could not go +with us, as he was out investigating the damage of the +night before, but one of his daughters was waiting for +us in the Prefecture motor.</p> + +<p><i>Le Grand Couronné</i> was but a ridge of mist and clouds +as we passed out of town, but it was there that the +Germans were held up and Nancy was saved that first +September of the war, there that was written the +<i>paraphe de Castelnau</i>, and from there the German Emperor +had looked into France.</p> + +<p>I never should have known Lorraine if I had not seen +it gray and wet under its autumn skies, bands of lemon +and amber at sunset finishing the garb of its gray days. +As we sped along I could just distinguish the landscape—villages +lost in the immense stretch of the plains, and +great forests of beech and oak in which are strange, +mysterious ponds (<i>étangs</i>), and before my mind passed +for an instant images of those solitaries of the twilight +centuries, slipping through them with staff and scrip, +after the Romans, and bringing to the land the things +Rome tried to destroy.</p> + +<p>A beautifully kept straight road leads to Toul. From +time to time one sees rusty barbed-wire entanglements +and camouflaged trenches, for, on this road, had the +Germans taken Nancy, they would have come to Toul, +as they did in 1870. Outside the town are double ramparts, +where the guard stopped us, but the military<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> +chauffeur cried the magic words, “<i>Monsieur le Préfet</i>,” +and we passed in through the Porte de Metz, dating from +the time of Vauban, then skirted the town, to get to the +barracks of Luxembourg, where hundreds of little children, +first gathered together by Madame Mirman, are +now being taken care of by the American Red Cross. +It is conducted by Doctor Sedgwick, unfortunately in +Paris. It seemed a dreary spot that afternoon, and it +has since been confided to me that the weather is always +dreadful there. The barracks are after the new model +of groups of one-storied houses, which, it appears, have +also disadvantages, as well as the large buildings they +superseded.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<p>It was raining and hailing and blowing as we made +blind dashes from one to the other with the French +directors. A consolation to find oneself in the dormitories +where many blessed tiny babies lay asleep (or +howling!) in little cots or perambulators, out of the +horrid cold.</p> + +<p>They are not always orphans, but their mothers work +in the fields of Lorraine or in the munitions-factories. +Doctor Peel, second in charge, came at last from a distant +building, and met us in the school-room, out of which +a hundred noisy, warm, well-fed children were scuffling. +Tea was offered us, but we came away; time was short +and I was a-hungered, after the cold, windy, wet desolation +of the Luxembourg barracks, for a sight of the +beautiful cathedral.</p> + +<p>Some one said, “Why ‘sight-seeing’?” but I said, “It’s +soul-seeing.” And there was some lifting of the being +as we stepped into the loveliness of the pale-gray vaulting +of the church of St.-Étienne. At the end of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> +apse was an immense, high, narrow, blue window, and +it reminded me of Huysmans’s phrase about the cathedral +of Chartres, “<i>Une blonde aux yeux bleus.</i>” We +stepped over worn <i>pierres tombales</i>, and as I stood on +one of them, whose date, scarcely decipherable, was +fifteen hundred and something, I looked up and saw in +the wall a new marble plaque, and it was to the memory +of “<i>Jean Bourhis, aviateur-pilote, chevalier de la Légion +d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre, né 1888.... Mort glorieusement +pour la Patrie, le 22 mars, 1916.</i>” And so one’s +thoughts are jerked from the past into the dreadful, +sacramental present.</p> + +<p>Close by the cathedral is the Hôtel de Ville, once +the Episcopal Palace, a gem of the eighteenth century. +We stepped from the little square in front of the church +into the wet, wind-swept garden. At one end is a flat, +round fountain, and behind it is a moss-grown statue of +a woman in contemplation, and one side of the garden +is hedged in by the flying buttresses and gargoyles of +the cathedral. Broad, low steps lead down to its gravel +walks from the terrace of the Palace, onto which open +long windows, forming a great hemicycle. I did not need +to see it under warm, sunset skies, with the linden-trees +of the garden in full blossom, to be possessed of its +charm.</p> + +<p>An American soldier was coming out of the cathedral +as we issued from the garden in a gust of wind which +blew my umbrella wrong side out, and when I and it +were righted he was gone. But it’s all a part of +history.</p> + +<p>We went for a moment to St.-Gengoult, the old +Gothic church in the rue Carnot. (Like every town in +Lorraine and in the whole of France there is a rue Carnot, +and it’s horribly monotonous when your soul is +aflame.)</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p> + +<p>As we entered, a thick rich light came through the +ancient windows.</p> + +<p>A black-robed woman was sobbing before a grave and +pitying statue of St.-Anne—sixteenth or seventeenth +century, I didn’t know which—and a pale, tiny child +with a frightened look was standing by her. Again I +thought on the oceans of fear children have passed +through in this war, and again I besought God to take +care of His world.</p> + +<p>As I passed up the central aisle I saw two American +soldiers kneeling before the high altar. That spot of +khaki and its young, unmistakable silhouette under the +gray vaulting of that old church suddenly seemed +momentous beyond anything I had ever seen. It was +the country of my birth and my love pursuing its gigantic +destiny down an endless vista, crowded with uncountable +khaki-clad forms, men with souls. The two +anonymous soldiers became typical of each and every +Miles Gloriosus since the world began, and as they knelt +there on the altar steps I knew that they had been +laid on that other dreadful altar of the world’s sin....</p> + +<p>An open door showed us the way to a lovely Gothic +cloister of the sixteenth century, surrounding a tree- and +flower-planted court. It had a few fresh chippings on +its <i>belle patine</i>, the results of a bomb which fell in it +a few months ago.</p> + +<p>Long lines of soldiers’ socks were hung on strings +across one corner of it, and soldiers were sitting in a +little room-like corridor, leading I know not where, +reading newspapers, whistling and writing. Then, out +through a delightful sixteenth-century door into the +streets, the loveliness of Toul imagined rather than +really perceived, for the rain was falling again. Khaki-clad +men of the <i>Division marocaine</i>, together with blue-clad +companions, were threading their way through the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> +narrow streets, and there were few women and children. +I thought how I had seen the two towers of the church +shining from afar as I passed by in the train that June +evening with the two Bretons whose fate I shall never +know.... Did the one from Nantes return to hold his +first-born in his arms? Or the fiancé return to consummate +his nuptials?</p> + +<p>Then I caught sight of my own two soldiers standing +at the door of a little tobacco-shop. I suppose it was +the nearest resemblance to anything familiar in Toul, +and they were rather cuddling up to it. They smiled +broadly when they heard themselves addressed in what +they termed the “blessed lingo,” and called it “some +luck.”</p> + +<p>“I was just thinking, ‘me for the coop,’” genially +continued the biggest, raw-boned, lantern-jawed one who +had a bad bronchial cold and wore a muffler about his +throat. He turned out to be from Omaha; the smaller +one was from Hackensack, N.J. (with an emphasis on the +N.J.). We talked about simple and unglorious matters, +what they had for breakfast, among other things, +and it was, in parenthesis, what any Frenchman would +call a dinner—ham and eggs and oatmeal and white +bread (which none save American soldiers get in +France these days) and jam and coffee. They were +from Pagny-sur-Meuse near by—pronounced “Pag-ni” +by the Omaha man. The Hackensack man avoided it. +He quite simply wanted “the war to begin,” so that +he might “show the Germans how.”</p> + +<p>“We’re sure to lick ’em in the spring,” the one with +the cold said, “but it’s a long time waiting for the fun +to begin, and I haven’t been warm since I got here.”</p> + +<p>I asked them how they came into France.</p> + +<p>“All I know is that after we got off the boat we were +three days in some sort of a milk-train; there wasn’t<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span> +room to sit, let alone lie. We drew lots and I got the +baggage-rack; but what saved us was that we could +get out at every station, and, believe me, the fellows +that got drunk were the only ones that pulled in all +right—the others were sent up to hospital soon as they +arrived.”</p> + +<p>In the best and most persuasive of Y.M.C.A. manners +I said to this special Miles Gloriosus:</p> + +<p>“It isn’t a remedy, however, that you could really +count on.”</p> + +<p>“But I say,” answered the Omaha man, “you’ll own +up that it’s worth trying.”</p> + +<p>It was getting late and, the Omaha man having the +best of it, we parted with smiles of mutual appreciation. +It’s all so simple—and so momentous.</p> + +<p>Then back to Nancy, running swiftly over a white +road, the gray sky very low, and on either side green +and yellow and brown fields, and the oak and beech +forest of Haye. The <i>Grand Couronné</i> for a moment was +divested of its mists, and some brightening of the western +sky touched its ridge with a subdued splendor; and +then we got into Nancy and were deposited at the Prefecture, +where we made our adieux. We proceeded to +the garage of a stoutish, blond man of pronounced Teuton +type and accent, with an uncertain smile—and a +coreless heart, I think—who cranked <i>la Ford</i> (by the +way, Fords change their sex in France), and we started +out through the town that night was enveloping, with +but one dull eye to light us to Lunéville. We thought +the trip might prove fairly uncertain, but didn’t know +how much so till there was an impact, in the crowded +suburb, and a horse’s form with legs in air, looking +as big as a monster of the Pliocene age, showed for an +instant on our radiator, then fell to the ground. A +crowd immediately gathered, while the driver of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> +cart proceeded to tell us what he thought of us in particular +and women drivers in general. But, though unfortunate, +we felt blameless, as the horse had been tied +<i>behind</i> the wagon standing at the curb and there was +no light, except something very dim coming from a green-grocer’s. +We departed to the <i>commissaire de police</i> with +the man and a couple of gendarmes, explained that we +were willing to do anything and everything if he would +only let us proceed to Lunéville, gave the magic name +“Commission Californienne,” and equally potent reference +to the <i>Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle</i> whose house +we had just left. Then with beating hearts and a +chastened outlook on life—I use the word “outlook” +rather wildly; we couldn’t see anything—we passed out +through the great manufacturing district. Every now +and then our feeble ray was swallowed up by the great +lamps of a military auto or the large round headlight +of a <i>camion</i>. As we passed through St.-Nicolas du Port +and Dombasle the blue of the soldiers’ tunics took on +a strange ghoul-like color, a white incandescent sort of +gray, and the moving forms seemed twice their natural +size. We couldn’t see the streets at all, and the only +thing we wanted to do in all the world was to get to +Lunéville and run <i>la Ford</i> into the garage of M. Guérin.</p> + +<p>When that was accomplished we decided to say good-by +to the proud world, sent regrets to Mlle. Guérin, and +had a much more modest repast served in my room by +the deft maid, whose husband got typhoid fever in the +trenches and died at Epinal last year. Later the mistress +of the house came up to know if we were comfortable, +and told us her husband, too, had died of it in +hospital at Toul. And then I read <i>Les Vieux Châteaux +de la Vesouze</i>, a modern <i>Etude lorraine</i>, and <i>Promenades +autour de Lunéville</i>, printed in 1838, to the accompaniment +of rattling windows and the heavy boom of distant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> +cannon. All else was quiet. Near my room is a +device plastered on the wall, <i>Qui tient à sa tranquillité sait +respecter celle des autres</i>. Isn’t it nice? It makes one +steal in at night, get into slippers immediately, and ring +gently in the morning.</p> + +<p>It is still raining, hailing, blowing—dreadfully discouraging +weather to investigate the amours of the +eighteenth century, and I have a couple of twentieth-century +idyls right under my eyes, too. I had planned +a stroll in the park to trace the steps of Léopold and +Stanislas to the doors of the fairest of ladies, and Panpan +and St.-Lambert and the Chevalier de Boufflers, +and all the other <i>charmeurs</i>. I’ll either have to leave +them out of the Journal or do them in some half-dream +when I’m back in Paris and warm! What <i>they</i> did in +this sort of weather I don’t know, except that when they +knocked at a door or tapped at a window they were sure +of tender welcomes, they and the easy verses that accompanied +them.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br> +<span class="smaller">A STROLL IN NANCY</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>October 15th.</i></p> + +<p>I spent yesterday a-wandering in the old streets of +Nancy, between gusts of wind and rain and great +bursts of sun. After much coaxing, <i>la Ford</i> was cajoled +into taking the road at 9.30, but as we got to Nancy and +into the Place Stanislas suddenly her front wheels +spread apart. E. M. gave one glance, but not at all +the glance of despair she would have given had it +happened on the road, and then flew to seek her waiting +bridegroom at the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, while +I, less enthusiastically, sought the blond chauffeur of +the coreless heart. He seemed quite human, as, unscrewing +the bar in front, which crumbled softly like a +piece of bread, he held up a piece and said, “<i>C’était fait +pour vous casser le cou</i>.”</p> + +<p>Seeing the American flag flying from the ground-floor +window of one of the beautiful old buildings of the Place +Stanislas, I went in to find Mrs. Dawson installed in +charge of the Nancy branch of the “American Fund for +French Wounded.” It was another novelty for Stanislas +to look upon out of his <i>right</i> eye! He’s been kept busy, +these past three years, looking about him. The large +room was filled with furniture M. Mirman is collecting +for refugees—wardrobes, tables, chairs, in and on which +were piles of shirts, vests, sweaters, <i>cachenez</i>, handkerchiefs,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> +all from over the ocean. And really, when one +investigates the comfort-bags filled by too-generous +American hands, one has a cupidous feeling. There is +a lavishness in the matter of Colgate’s tooth-paste, for +instance, which one can rarely get for love, and not +at all for money, in Paris!</p> + +<p>I came away in a gray, slanting rain that made the +Place Stanislas look as if Raffaello had done it over and +framed it beautifully in gray. Great scratchings of +rainfall, and soldiers and women hurrying through it. +But <i>le geste</i> is not like the days when Raffaello painted—there +are no skirts to lift up, or, rather, none that +need lifting.</p> + +<p>Then I crossed over to the Place de la Carrière, +where <i>souvent en ces aimables lieux des héros et des demi-dieux</i> +had held their tournaments, and then into the +church of St.-Epvre to get a Mass. The stained-glass +windows, modern and very expensive-looking, were +crisscrossed with broad stripes of paper on the side +toward the railway, where the shocks from the frequent +bombing of the station are especially felt. Everywhere +in Nancy the windows are broken, or crisscrossed +with paper, or both. The church was blue with +military.</p> + +<p>Afterward I walked through the Grande Rue. The +ducal palace of the early sixteenth century, begun by +René II, has its door scaffolded and sandbagged. It is +the celebrated <i>Musée Lorrain</i>, whose treasures are now +removed further from the frontier. It is here that the +body of Charles III lay in such magnificence that there +arose the saying in the sixteenth century that the three +most gorgeous ceremonies in the world were the consecration +of a king of France at Reims, the crowning of +an emperor of Germany at Frankfort, and the obsequies +of a duke of Lorraine at Nancy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p> + +<p>I continued down the Grande Rue between groups of +<i>poilus</i>, officers, and the usual Sunday population coming +from Mass, or getting in last dinner provisions, to the +Porte de Graffe of the fourteenth century, beyond which +is the Porte de la Citadelle, and then the garrison. As +one walks along, the snatches of talk one overhears are +“<i>Bombardé deux fois</i>,” “<i>Pas un vitre qui reste</i>,” “<i>Volant +très-bas</i>,” etc.</p> + +<p>I came back through the park. In it is a modern +iron bandstand, fortunately copied after the delicious +designs of Jean Lamour—only <i>he</i> would have done something +to relieve the heavy iron roof. And he quite +certainly caught his inspiration musing about the park +one autumn day, for everywhere I saw charming repetitions +of his <i>grilles</i> in that delicate tracery of yellow leaf +against gray trunk and branch.</p> + +<p>Old houses give on the park, where one might dream +dreams, and find the world—perhaps well lost. Many +windows broken, and more crisscrossing with bands of +paper.</p> + +<p>It was getting to be 12.30 when, having been as much +of an angel as the three dimensions permit, I emerged +on to the Place Stanislas to see E. M. approaching +with a young blue-clad aviator, with something distinguished +yet modest in his bearing, of whom I instantly +thought he is one of those <i>qui cherche sa récompense +plutôt dans les yeux de ses hommes que dans les +notes de ses chefs</i>—and so it proved to be. He didn’t +even wear the <i>brisquets</i> of his years of service on his +arm.</p> + +<p>“<i>Tout le monde sait que je n’ai pas été trois ans sans +rien faire</i>,” he said, later, during lunch, which we took +in the Café Stanislas, crowded with gallooned and decorated +officers. Several red-and-white marked autos of +the General Staff were waiting before the door, where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> +Stanislas also could see them, and those beings, half +human, half divine, of the sky-line, framed it all. Afterward +I again removed my three dimensions, hunting for +M. Pierre Boyé, the great authority on all things of +Lorraine, M. Guérin having given me a letter to him. +On arriving at the house, through quiet gray streets, +there was no answer to my numerous ringings of the +bell, so I came back, drawn irresistibly to the Place +Stanislas. By this time it was aglow in the afternoon +light; great masses of clouds even at 3.30 were tinted +with yellow and orange, and every inch of gilding caught +the light. I hailed an antique cab and drove out where +I could look over rolling stretches of country, along the +road to Toul. The brown and yellow fields were aglow, +the bronzing forests, too; above were piled the high and +splendid clouds of autumnal Lorraine, and I saw where +Claude le Lorrain had got <i>his</i> masses. The <i>cocher</i> then +proceeded to bring me back to town by a perfectly hideous +road, called Quai Claude le Lorrain—on one side +the blackened railway, on the other modern claptrappy +houses with their windows shattered and their roofs +damaged.</p> + +<p>I then told him to take me to the church of the Cordeliers, +where I stepped suddenly, not only into its late +afternoon dimness, but into the dimness of past ages. +A shaft of light from a high window showed me a dull, +rich bit of color on an ancient pillar, in a sort of chapel; +and then my eye fell on what I had come to see, the +tomb of the Duchesse Philippe de Gueldre, widow of +René II, bearing the incomparable stamp of the genius +of Ligier Richier.</p> + +<p>I tiptoed toward the stone slab where that great lady +of another age is lying asleep, clad in the dark robe of +the Poor Clares. Her hands, folded downward, are +clasped at her waist. Under the cowl the pale head is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> +turned gently, as if in sleep.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> She is an enduring image +of resignation, not alone for herself, but for all of us +who live and die, we don’t quite know how or why, and +who must “endure our going hence even as our coming +hither.”</p> + +<p>The church was constructed by her husband, René +II, Duke of Lorraine, to commemorate the deliverance +of Nancy and the defeat of Charles the Bold, Duke of +Burgundy, in 1477. Duke René himself had a glorious +reign; for him the arts and letters were the ornament of +victory. I discovered a commemorative monument of +my friend Duke Léopold, flanked rather flamboyantly +by unquiet, yet charming, statues of Faith and Hope! +Also an elaborate statue of Katerina Opalinska, the +consort of Stanislas, who, though he had been somewhat +forgetful of her in life, had done really all that a wife +could wish in the matter of the tomb. But some virtue +more mystic than the decorative Faith and Hope of the +eighteenth century exhaled from the quiet figure of +Philippe de Gueldre.</p> + +<p>Near the high altar is the Chapelle Ronde begun +by Charles III, the grandson of René, in 1607, intended +as a sepulcher for the princes of Lorraine, and in a +beautiful <i>grille</i> are entwined the arms of Lorraine and +Austria. Then the sacristan came in to light the candles +of the high altar, the church got suddenly quite dark,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> +from the organ came the strains of “<i>O quam suavis est, +Domine</i>,” and people began to come in to Benediction. +The blue and vermilion and gold of the mausoleum of +René II faded and one saw only vague outlines of saints +and angels, and a figure of the Eternal Father. It cried +out of that other deliverance of Nancy; but when the +world war is over will his widow, Philippe de Gueldre, +<i>conjunx Piissimi</i>, still be sleeping quietly, her brown cowl +over her head and her crown at her feet? Her soul +“conducted to Paradise by angels, where martyrs received +her and led her into the Holy City Jerusalem.” +The church got quite full, the organist continued to +play early Italian music, and the “Pietà, Signor” of +Pergolese rose as I knelt by Philippe de Gueldre. The +great cope of the priest shone, the smell of incense pervaded +the dim spaces, the “<i>Tantum Ergo</i>” sounded, +and I bowed my head....</p> + +<p>Then out into a world of fading light, found the +<i>cocher</i> in the exact attitude I had left him, and begged +him to drive quickly (which was impossible) to the +Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, bethinking me of the +5.30 train to Lunéville. As we went through the dim, +charming streets I remembered an old verse I had +found in one of M. Guérin’s books, by an unreservedly +admiring individual, who said that if he had one foot +in Paradise and the other in Nancy, he would withdraw +the one in Paradise, that both might be in Nancy!</p> + +<p>I found waiting at the door of the hotel E. M., the +<i>distingué</i> young aviator, and Don Kelley, <i>en permission</i> +for twenty-four hours from Gondrecourt, strong and +eager, since a week at Gondrecourt, since a month in +France for the first time in his life.</p> + +<p>The young men took us to the station and deposited +us in the train and made their adieux. For very special +reasons at that moment I said to E. M.:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span></p> + +<p>“If you are going back to Lunéville on <i>my</i> account, +don’t!”</p> + +<p>The guard had closed the door of the compartment, +had sounded his whistle, but I caught the look in her +eye and out we jumped, returning to the hotel, where we +gave what we hoped was a pleasant surprise party. +<i>Dîner à quatre</i> at seven o’clock. About a dozen Americans +<i>en permission</i> were dining among many Frenchmen, +and we amused ourselves investigating the multicolored +intricacies of the various uniforms, aviators, +cavalry, infantry, artillery, and the many “grades.” +Then again a dash for the station—Count de L. had to +get to Paris, and Don Kelley to Gondrecourt. The +latter said, as we stood in the dark, battered station:</p> + +<p>“I am where I would most want to be in the world, +and, though I am an only son, I am where my parents +would most wish me to be. When I get back to Gondrecourt +and get into that long, dark shed and see the men +rolled up, and if it is raining, the water dripping in, I +shall know it is the real thing, and those of my generation +who have known it and those who have not will +be forever divided.”</p> + +<p>Permissions not being among things safely trifled with, +we then saw them into their train, which was leaving +first, and crossed the rails to where ours, dark, filled +with returning officers, was waiting; and so out into +the night with all curtains carefully drawn, the stars +shining. It was a <i>nuit à boches</i>, one of the officers said, +continuing, “It’s often an obsession with them—for a +long time they won’t come near Nancy or Lunéville, +and then every night when it is at all clear they appear.” +The inhabitants can choose (in their minds) between +good weather and <i>avions</i> or bad weather and safety.</p> + +<p>Trains from Nancy to Lunéville seem to have a way +of hunting up stations, threading them up, and what<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> +one does easily in three-quarters of an hour in a motor +takes an hour and a half to three, according to the +stops. At Blainville we descended to show our <i>sauf-conduits</i>, +the guard standing just behind a convenient +puddle that every one splashed into and then stepped +out of. Finally, Lunéville, night-enveloped, lighted +only with flashes from electric pocket-lamps, like great +fireflies. And coming through the night from Nancy, +I kept thinking how France had done enough, more than +enough, the impossible, and what a cold and dreadful +grind the war had become, and of untried young Americans +sleeping in dim villages so near. And many other +things that it is bootless to record. <i>Nous sommes dedans.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br> +<span class="smaller">VITRIMONT IN AUTUMN</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p>Out of Lunéville over the muddy Vesouze, through +the Place Brûlée, and onto a pasty road, E. M. +driving, and, on the back seat, newly wedded love. As +we left the town a dwarf made a face at us and then +turned his back on us with a not over-elegant gesture, +for all the world like the tales of the famous dwarf +Bébé, during years the delight of the Court of Stanislas.</p> + +<p>Mustard and osier plantings became the intensest +yellow or red, as the sun fell on them through rifts in +dark clouds, and many women, old men, and children +were working in wet beet-root fields, among little groupings +of black crosses....</p> + +<p>We got into Vitrimont through streets deep in mud. +Such a change! Before reaching it, instead of the skeleton +outline of homes one now sees orderly rows of red +roofs. The work that had seemed almost stationary, +pursued with so much difficulty by Comtesse de B. +(Miss Polk), had got suddenly to a point where it began +to show, though the finished houses will be too damp +for habitation this winter, and, like a lot of other things, +must await the spring.</p> + +<p>Everywhere in the streets the busy work of reconstruction +is proceeding. Soldiers billeted in Vitrimont +are coming and going, helping with masonry, bringing +in great wagons of beet-root, as if they had always lived<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> +there; not <i>en passant par la Lorraine</i>. It’s a very human +document, this billeting of soldiers; though, as +far as they are concerned, when they leave a village +they only change their residence. For the women the +thing is much more serious. <i>They</i> get a change of regiment. +However, I have no time to muse on this detail +of the war. Things in Vitrimont were simply taking +their inevitable course. Nothing is held back for long, +with the generations pressing thick and fast. Black-aproned +children with books on their backs, to whom +E. M. gave little slabs of chocolate, were coming +from the new school-house. Old men were hobbling +about, and women bending over embroidery frames, +in houses often half destroyed and hastily roofed over. +In the old days Lorraine furnished beautiful damasks +and gold galloons and laces to Paris and Versailles.</p> + +<p>We stopped by a window where a thin-faced woman +was just taking from its frame a beautiful beaded bag +such as one would buy very, very dear in the Rue de la +Paix. Near her sat an old woman, her mother, the +light falling on her pale, withered face, wearing a great +black-bowed head-dress, a yellow cat in her lap. It was +an <i>intérieur</i> that would have done honor to any great +museum.</p> + +<p>We visited Mlle. Antoine, living in a reconstructed +street named after a Polish prince. She escaped to +Lunéville with her servant on the day of the entry of +the Germans into the village, August 23, 1914, fleeing +through the ancient forest, but returned to her Lares +and Penates a few days afterward with German passes. +She represents culture in the village, and is clear-eyed, +sweet-voiced, but with two red spots on her cheeks—she +is fighting off consumption by living out of doors +with her chickens and live stock, in sabots and apron +and shawl. A beautiful old desk was in her living-room,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> +and there was a discussion as to whether it was Louis +XVI or Directoire, but under any name one would have +loved to possess it. The windows looked out onto the +inevitable dung-heap, but beyond were bronzing forests, +and, in between, fields the color of semi-precious stones.</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus13" style="max-width: 31.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/illus13.jpg" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"><p>MISS POLK’S WEDDING</p> + <p>The Comtesse de Buyer (Miss Polk) on the arm of Monsieur Mirman, + Prefect of the Meurthe et Moselle, after her wedding at Vitrimont, + September, 1917.</p></figcaption> +</figure> + +<p>Hearing the sound of music as we passed the church, +we went in and found some young girls were practising +a “<i>Credo</i>,” clustered about the little organ, and wearing +brooches with a device of thistle and double Lorraine +cross that Madame de Buyer had given them on her +wedding-day. I looked again upon the lovely old fifteenth-century +vaulting, fully restored, shifting my eye +hurriedly from the hideous but seemingly imperishable +dado with its design of painted folds of cloth. At the +door the little holy water fonts, formed of shells held +upon two heads of seraphim, gave me a thrill of joy—and +sadness, too, that beauty is so perishable.</p> + +<p>Then I turned to the cemetery. The little pathways +were muddy beneath the leafless trees. Bead crosses +and wreaths and a few stunted chrysanthemums decorated +the wet graves. All seasons are the same to the +dead. I stood by a breach in the wall near the grave +of “<i>Charles Carron, musicien, souvenir d’un camarade, +31 août, 1914</i>,” looking out toward the forest of Vitrimont. +Its autumn garb was soft, discreet, and lovely; +more jasper and amethyst and Chrysoprase and cornelian +fields rolled gently in between it and me. There was +the band of yellow like a Greek border to a garment in +the western sky—only that and nothing more, yet some +beauty and sadness chained me to the spot. Quail and +woodcock, gray pheasant and larks, were flying about, +and some strongly marked black-and-white magpies were +pecking at something in the nearest field. I asked +myself again, “What is it that stamps Lorraine with +such beauty?” General de Buyer told me that when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> +Pierre Loti came to Vitrimont he said, “<i>C’est trop vert</i>,” +and perhaps, after Stamboul and Egypt and the Grecian +Isles, it would seem too green. But I saw, returning +there in autumn, that the soul of Lorraine, <i>l’élégante et +douleureuse</i>, is like unto tarnished silver, with its grays, +yellows, browns, and purples; that soul that has suffered, +hoped through the generations, whose abiding-places +have been devastated and rebuilt through the centuries. +And I knew that one must see it in autumn, beneath the +wasteful splendors of gray clouds, with their hints of +color, red, brown, yellow, and purple, or with sky and +rain melting into one, curtaining the brown, mysterious +earth—and, in between, the beat of the human heart.</p> + +<p>It all seemed to show itself through some dissolving +light of ages. Those secular beeches, that I had first +seen in their tenderest green, had become a brilliant +yellow, and were turned to the south. The great bronze +oaks looked to the north, obeying laws as inviolable as +those of the human beings passing beneath them. In +all these forests round about Vitrimont, Parroy, and +Mondon the legendary lords of the country hunted; the +roads of Gaul disappeared under the great Roman highways +which traversed Lorraine from Langres to Trèves, +from Toul to Metz, and again from Langres to Strasburg. +The name Lunéville emerges out of the night +of the tenth century in the person of Étienne, Bishop +of Toul, successor of St.-Gérard, and Folmar I, Count +of Lunéville, was married to Sparhilde, descended from +Charlemagne. (To this day I notice that almost any +one who respects himself in these parts talks quite +casually of being descended from Charlemagne, or +Charles the Bald, or René the Victorious, as a Boston +man might of the Pilgrim Fathers.) Folmar’s hunting-lodge +was by the muddy Vesouze, over which one passes +to get from Lunéville to Vitrimont. In time it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span> +transformed into a château, and around it grew a village, +which in turn became a fortified town, then the +capital of Léopold and Stanislas.</p> + +<p>I stood for a long time by that 1914 breach in the +wall, and the grave of <i>Charles Carron, musicien</i>, looking +out over the rolling fields in the late October afternoon, +migrating birds passing against the amber sky, red +vines floating from the yellowing branches of oaks and +beeches; near me was a tangle of wild-plum bushes, +stiffened blackberry-vines, and dried ramie. All except +the deeds of men seemed sweet. Everything was in +sinuous lines, inclosing the jasper, amethyst, chrysoprase, +russet, jewels of the fields, through which flow the slow +rivers, slipping between bushes of osier and plum, and +somewhere there is a slower, nigrescent canal scarcely +a-move between willows and poplars. And those men +who are out there where that dull thunder is!...</p> + +<p>I thought how often in her history the men that +hunted in her forests or tilled her fields had reddened +them with their blood, or, buried in them, had increased +the harvests, fighting now against one invader, now +another, being continually thrown back from power to +power like a ball, with nothing changeless save the +changelessness of their changing destiny—and its +unescapableness.</p> + +<p>And how, under Godefroy de Bouillon, a Lorraine +prince, the Crusades began, and under a duke of Lorraine, +Charles V, they ended. And of the holy glory +of Jeanne d’Arc. And now, after the lapse of centuries, +of the covenant of our own men.</p> + +<p>I realized that the beauty of Lorraine is not entirely +of the natural world.</p> + +<p>As we drove back there was a sudden flaming up of +that band of lemon. The western sky became a vast +ocean of pink with great white clouds afloat in it. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> +red roofs of Lunéville were transfigured, a crimson glow +was flung about the Pompadour towers of the church, +outlined against a blue-white eastern sky. But only +for a few minutes. The streets of Lunéville were already +dim as we passed in through the battered suburbs.</p> + +<p>We stopped for tea at the house of Madame —— on +the outskirts of the town. It had been occupied by the +Germans that first August, and in one of the <i>salons</i> +was a large hole in the wall, stopped up, but not replastered +or papered. “They” had rolled up her rugs +and given them to her, and she and her four young +daughters had lived in the upper stories during the occupation, +and seen war very close from their windows. +The only really valuable picture, a Claude Lorrain, I +think, was missing. In the cellars and in the garden, +whose walls are still breached and broken, dead and +wounded, living and fighting, Germans and French, had +lain.</p> + +<p>The usual conjunction of elderly officers and young +aviators were there for tea. Then E. M. and I, closely +linked, threaded the black streets to the Hôtel des Vosges. +And there is great sadness in Lorraine in autumn.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br> +<span class="smaller">AT THE GUÉRINS’</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><i>October 16th.</i></p> + +<p>In the park of the château, sitting on an old stone +bench under yellowing chest nut-trees.</p> + +<p>Soldiers are coming and going. The château has been +for many years a barracks. One guardian of the park, +of the now so-despised race of gendarmes, has walked +by three times, for I have my little note-book in my lap +and my pencil in my hand and I am plainly not of +Lunéville. He is just passing me again, and I say</p> + +<p>“<i>C’est beau, le parc.</i>”</p> + +<p>He answers, “Perhaps in summer,” evidently not +stirred by autumnal Lorraine, and then, “<i>Madame est +en visite?</i>”</p> + +<p>I answer, “Yes, with Miss Crocker.”</p> + +<p>That name being magic in these parts, he salutes and +passes on.</p> + +<p>Of the lovely old bosquets where Stanislas combined +his <i>jets d’eau</i>, his <i>grottes</i>, his Chinese pavilions, and his +<i>parterres</i>, the long avenue and the great flat basin of the +fountain, in which black swans are floating, are all that +remain. From the end of this avenue can be seen +the aviation field with its great hangars. The low terraces +have borders of autumn flowers, dahlias, chrysanthemums, +red vines, dead leaves, and moss-grown +and charming statues of ancient love-making gods,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span> +who came into their own again in those amorous days. +There is a statue to M. Guérin’s poet son born and dead +between two invasions, but a lovely eighteenth-century +statue of a veiled woman renders <i>mou</i> and without accent +the flat, white-marble shaft that commemorates +his earthly span (1874-1908). The statue of Erckmann +is also in the nineteenth-century manner. Is the human +race as uncharming as modern sculptors would make +it? One feels apologetic toward the ages to come, and +one wants to cry out that we weren’t so bad, after +all, and that seemingly soulless individual in a frock-coat +and baggy trousers and top-hat, looking so unattractive +in white marble, was really a delightful person, +an imaginative lover, a perceptive intellectual, and +witty to boot. He would have been the first to protest +against his memorial; and how he would have hated +the geraniums and begonias planted at his base, and the +wire fencing!</p> + +<p>Beyond the park, where the trees have been cleared +away, is the brown, reedy Vesouze, a little border of old +houses on its banks. Beyond is the rolling stretch of +forest-covered hills and russet and jasper and topaz +fields, and above it all the sunless and gray, but strangely +luminous, noonday heaven of autumnal Lorraine.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>Wandered about the town. Everywhere charming +bits of <i>autrefois</i> arrest the eye. Over one doorway, between +two angels’ heads of pure Louis XV, was written, +“<i>Fais bien, laisses dire</i>.” A little farther along, under +a figureless niche, “<i>Si le cœur t’en dit un ave pour son +âme</i>.” In the window of a pharmacy near by, occupying +a good old house with flat, gray façade, is a big +Lunéville porcelain jar bearing the words “<i>Theriaca +celestis</i>,” interwoven among flowered scrolls, and I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> +thought of eighteenth-century servants going in for +herbs and various cures for masters and mistresses +having “vapors.”</p> + +<p>The portal of the church reminds me, with its rich, +wine-colored tones, of the <i>tezontle</i> of the Mexican houses +of the viceregal period. The words over the door are +“<i>Au Dieu de Paix</i>,” the God that this torn borderland +seldom receives, and still rarely keeps, and above is a +figure of Chronos, or the Almighty, I don’t know +which.</p> + +<p>A large black marble slab without name or date is +near the door as one passes in; underneath lie the remains +of Voltaire’s <i>divine Emilie</i>.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Having loved much, +let us hope much was forgiven her. The choir, pulpit, +and confessionals are very pure Louis XV. Over the +organ-loft are the words “<i>Laudate Deum in chordis et +organo</i>,” painted in among Pompadour knots which have +been democratically colored red, white, and blue, near +blue and gold fleurs-de-lys of another epoch.</p> + +<p>Against the wall of the façade is a marble urn that +once contained the heart of Stanislas, who was very +devout, and left no stone unturned, though he continued +to love not alone the arts, to placate the final +judge. He was very fond of music while dining, but +on Friday never permitted any except that of the harp, +considered less earthly than violin and clavecin. He +never missed Mass; he was merciful to the poor and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> +appreciative of the things of the mind. Not a bad showing; +one hopes he’s happy somewhere.</p> + +<p>In one of the side altars is a Pietà and three long lists +of those just dead for France, whose</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent6">graves are all too young as yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Its charge to each;</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">and then, as I sat quietly thinking upon the passing of +heroes, Shelley’s immortal words kept sounding in my +ears:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">And if the seal is set,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Break it not thou!...</div> + <div class="verse indent4">From the world’s bitter wind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What Adonaïs is, why fear we to become?</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Lunched at the Guérins’. <i>La Ford</i> being the only +means of locomotion in Lunéville, not even an old horse +remaining to pull a cab, we had to give up the trip to +Baccarat, and indeed any trip anywhere. Delighted to +be able to <i>flâner</i> in the old streets without my umbrella +being turned wrong side out.</p> + +<p>Overhead the <i>avions</i> were thick; we counted twelve +at one time, some of them flying so low that we could +hear words. Observation airplanes, bombarding airplanes, +the swift <i>avions de chasse</i>, going in the direction +of the forest of Parroy, where the Germans are intrenched +since the retreat from Lunéville, September, 1914. +Parroy and all that part of the country was completely +laid waste in 1636 by Richelieu, who sent the cheerful +report to Louis XIV that “Lorraine was reduced to +nothing, and the inhabitants dead for the most part.”</p> + +<p>That conquest of the unsubstantial air seems the +greatest of all man’s achievements. And as I walked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span> +along there was an almost perceptible flinging of my +soul into the heavenly spaces and I thought not on +battles and wrecks nor even of hungry children, but +rather of the discoverers of nature’s secrets, the disciples +of philosophers, the undiscourageable lovers of the arts, +who everywhere are in the minority, and everywhere +reach the heights, and everywhere in the end control +the hosts, even of battle. And at the sudden dropping +of the sun over the lovely Lorraine fields, become blue +with scarcely a hint of the green and brown and amethyst +of a moment ago, the band of yellow fringing the +horizon—though with me walked the ghosts of men who +at the word of command invaded or defended—I was +not sad. A lean, brown, unexpectant urchin entered +the town with me. I gave him a two-franc piece and +a blessing, <i>Pax tibi</i>, which last, from the look in his +eyes, some part of him understood. Then I turned +into the beautiful old house of the mayor where <i>goûter</i> +and bridge had been arranged for us. I rapped with +a large and very bright wrought-iron knocker bearing the +date 1781, and, entering, found myself in a great hallway; +to the left is the <i>escalier d’honneur</i>, with its beautiful +wrought-iron balustrade. I mounted it, and +passed through many rooms of noble yet thoroughly +livable dimensions. They were filled with officers, +some women came from their hospital service in nursing +garb, groups of bright-eyed “<i>filles à marier</i>,” and a few +young aviators. The large <i>salon</i> has beautiful panelings, +with heavy gilt <i>motifs</i> of tambour, torch, helmet +and shield in the corners. In it was signed the celebrated +Traité de Lunéville, 1801, and it is all very +seigneurial.</p> + +<p>I found myself seated at a table with the mayor, +General —— and Mme. de C., in nursing garb. I investigated, +during a couple of hours, the surprises of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> +the erratic yet brilliant bridge of the <i>maire de +Lunéville</i>, whose delight was to mystify his partner +as well as the adversary, and who, without in the least +deserving it, won every rubber. I had a few bad “distractions,” +but who would not, under that roof so rich +in memories?</p> + +<p>During the occupation in 1914 the German generals +and high officers entering the town were lodged on the +second floor of the old house. The same thing had +happened in 1870.</p> + +<p>We came away in pitch darkness at 7.30, but I +can now skip and bound about the dark streets, with +the best of them, no more feeling around for curbs, +which seem again to be placed where they are to be +expected.</p> + +<p>Afterward, dinner at M. Guérin’s. General and Mme. +de Buyer, General ——, M. Guérin’s two sons, one a +mitrailleuse officer for the moment near by at Blainville +la Grande, the other the student and lover of the +arts of whom I spoke, and whose every instinct is remote +from killing. I sometimes wonder at the stillness of +men like that—except that there is nothing to be done +about it. General de Buyer told us of <i>lances-flamme</i>, of +<i>flamme-snappes</i>, of the <i>obus asphyxiants</i>, which burst +without odor or smoke, but are deadly, all the same. +Then the conversation turned on <i>le conflit historique +entre la race germanique et la nation gauloise</i> which had +begun before the Roman conquest. M. Guérin told us +of places where still may be seen colossal walls and +thick, crumbling towers, mysterious witness of those +legendary conflicts, just as the Place des Carmes, or +Place Brûlée, is witness of those of 1917.</p> + +<p>The younger Guérin son was preparing to go into +diplomacy when the war broke out. I said, “Perhaps +we will sometime be <i>en poste</i> together,” and a strange<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> +look that the pleasant dinner scene did not allow me +to interpret immediately came over his face.</p> + +<p>“<i>Peut-être</i>,” he answered, slowly.</p> + +<p>I knew a moment afterward that that young man +who loves his life was thinking, “if I am alive.” He +has seen so many fall. And suddenly came into my +mind the lines of his poet brother, born and dead between +two invasions:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nous sommes, ô mon Dieu, plusieurs dans la cité,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>A porter haut le lys de la mysticité, ...</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">And for an infinitesimal moment, in spite of the pleasant +evening meal, my thoughts, too, turned to invisibilities—his +and my last end, and our veiled destinies.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br> +<span class="smaller">ACROSS LORRAINE</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Lunéville</span>, <i>Tuesday, October 16th</i>.</p> + +<p>One last look at the church, whose warm and lovely +towers with their <i>motifs</i> of urn and scroll and +angel were shining pinkly in the morning light. Then +through the door of the Hôtel de Ville, built on the site +of the ancient abbey of St.-Rémy, founded in the last +years of the tenth century by Folmar de Lunéville for +the repose of his soul and of his wife’s, and completely +done over in the eighteenth century. As I turned in at +the passageway leading through to the other street, old +houses on one side, and on the other plantings of holly +against the church walls, I thought of the saying of the +Middle Ages, “<i>Il fait bon vivre sous la crosse</i>” (“It is +good to live under the bishops”), and how the peasants +would come in from their hamlets, through the fields +and forests, with their tithes. The monks generally +springing from the people showed themselves more +understanding of their wants and their miseries, and +were less apt to overtax them, having fewer needs, than +the lords with their wars, their ambitions, and their +grandeurs.</p> + +<p>Then one finds oneself in the garden of the Hôtel +de Ville, where one doesn’t think of the Middle Ages, +for in it is a figure of a weeping woman, and on the +statue’s base are inscribed the names of young men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> +fallen in 1870. Life becomes suddenly without +reason.</p> + +<p>At the station. <i>L’abri de bombardement pour permissionnaires</i> +is in an old convent having a deep cellar, across +the railway. We carry our own luggage, resembling +almost any <i>poilu</i>, and with grateful hearts think of +what we left behind.</p> + +<p>Mont-sur-Meurthe. Flooding sun, many soldiers, no +room in the train. The famous and now classic refrain, +“<i>Faut pas s’en paire</i>,”<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> floats about and makes one think +how those who wait also serve, and in waiting learn +patience, this new virtue of the Gaul. In regard to +virtues, the French seem to have all those we thought +they had, in addition to others we never suspected them +of having.</p> + +<p>A man completely bent with grief follows two men +carrying a coffin. He himself carries a huge bead +wreath, and his head is bared. Whatever his sorrow, +it is gone out into the eternal, the immeasurable Wisdom, +which I thought, in sudden fear, completely conceals +that which it receives.</p> + +<p>Dombasle, with its busy station and its great munitions-factories. +Columns of smoke, from purest white to +darkest brown, were rising to the shining heavens, and +women in trousers, mothers and mothers-to-be, were +going to work in the factories.</p> + +<p>At Rosières immense camouflage works, and then the +railway skirts the great canal. A thin, heavy-haired, +very young girl is drawing a huge canal-boat. Her +arms are crossed over her breast; above them is the +broad band by which she tows that behemoth, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span> +thousand times her size. In accord with some law of +matter it is just possible. One thinks of the building +of the Pyramids, and of the unborn.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Nancy</span>, <i>1.15</i>.</p> + +<p>Lunching at the Café Stanislas and eating my fifth +macaroon, “for remembrance.” The gold guipure of +the wrought-iron work makes the square seem to me +like some lovely handkerchief thrown down as a challenge +to memory. And I will <i>not</i> forget.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Later.</i></p> + +<p>At the station, waiting for the train to pull out. An +old man attended to our luggage; he liked his tip and +became talkative as he straightened our impedimenta in +the racks. Three sons killed in the war. Two at Verdun, +the last and youngest at the Chemin des Dames +this summer. His toothless old mouth trembled, and I +thought to myself in sudden horror, “God, is <i>this</i> +France?”</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Liverdun</span>, <i>3 o’clock</i>.</p> + +<p>A vision of transfigured beauty in the afternoon light. +Its high promontory aglow, every window a-dazzle. Its +ancient walls, its old château, its church, all seemingly +made of something pink, unsubstantial, shining. At the +foot of the town flows the Moselle and there is a second +shining moiré ribbon—the great canal leading from the +Marne to the Rhine.</p> + +<p>Toul. The gorgeous towers of the cathedral are +a-shine, too, above the outline of the great barrack +buildings. The vast station is a sea of blue-clad washing +in and out of trains.</p> + +<p>At Pagny we pick up the Meuse, <i>la Meuse aux lignes +nonchalantes</i>.</p> + +<p>At Sorcy, wide, shallow expanses of inundation, and +reeds and trees grow out of shining spaces, and meadow-bounded +flat horizons stretch away, and suddenly it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span> +seems Oriental, Japanese, in the pink light—what +you will—anything but a historic river of the European +war, flowing through the elegant and sorrowful Lorraine.</p> + +<p>And then we find ourselves at Gondrecourt in the +tip of the acute angle, for still, to go the straight road +between Nancy and Châlons, we would have to pass +Commercy, daily bombarded by big German guns.</p> + +<p>At Gondrecourt, about a dozen American soldiers +standing on the platform, several seeming to have just +left their mothers’ knees. We wanted to speak to the +nearest one, but feared we might represent <i>l’autre danger</i>. +Great packing-boxes piled everywhere with “U.S. +Army” stamped on them—and how fateful a destination +is this little Lorraine town!</p> + +<p>At Demanges-aux-Eaux more Americans. An old +church, quite mauve, rises up seemingly from bronze +waters, the houses of the surrounding village, blue and +gray. Americans are billeted in these wide-doored +Lorraine peasant houses, or in big stables whose entrances +are high enough for great hay-wagons to pass +through.</p> + +<p>A talkative military person in the compartment with +us. I thought at first he was a secret agent, he seemed +to know so little about the country; then I realized that +he was only rather stupid. And he had an uncontrollable +provincial curiosity about small things, and was quite +<i>intrigué</i> about his traveling companions, who seemed +to know all the things he didn’t know. He was <i>en +permission</i>, coming from the forest of Parroy, the other +side of Lunéville, where the French and Germans sit +within a few yards of each other. He was quite uninteresting +about it all, but it wasn’t his fault, merely +the way he was made. He showed me his map and +the zigzagging German and French lines in the forest, +and then I got suddenly bored and stood in the corridor,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> +and watched the Meuse get pink and then purple +and then a strange glinting black. Down the streets of +little villages would come blue-clad men, smoking and +talking, or getting water and stores for evening meals. +And then the sun disappeared behind the yellow poplars, +and a cold, clear night began to fall. Bridges were +guarded by sentries with bayoneted rifles, and old men +and women and children came in from dim beet-root +fields, and more khaki-clad Americans were standing +about village streets, or cycling in the dusk, behind +reeds in water, and there were deepening forests, and +black ridges against the last pale lemon glow, and +then another little town, Laneuville, and two American +patrols marching up and down with rifle on shoulder.</p> + +<p>And the talkative officer, who had bought newspapers +at Gondrecourt, tells of the pretty spy dancer, +Mata Hari, shot that morning in the prison of Vincennes +with warning pomp and circumstance, and of Bolo Pasha +and <i>l’affaire Turmel</i>, but as soon as he touches a subject +it loses all vestige of human interest.</p> + +<p>“<i>Ce que nous avons vu d’Anglais parterre à Combes</i>,” +or, “<i>Qu’il faisait froid la nuit où nous cédions la ligne +aux Anglais</i>,” or, “<i>Je suis toujours là où on cède la ligne</i>, +they say now the Americans will take the line at Parroy.”</p> + +<p>He has been through the whole war without a scratch—Verdun, +the Somme, the Aisne—and now he spends +cold, dark nights listening for Germans in the forest of +Parroy, and it hasn’t helped a bit; and he is one that +will get through, when so much of wise and fair will +have been gathered to the Lord. In an unwonted +pause I asked him what he was in civil life, and he +answered, “<i>Fabricant de brosses à dent</i>.” I know it’s all +right, and there must be tooth-brushes, but we had just +come from gallooned generals, prefects, mayors, smart +young aviators, and men living in the world of books.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span></p> + +<p>Blue mists came up from the meadows and slipped +between the hills, and everywhere black trees grew out +of gold water.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ligny-en-Barrois.</span></p> + +<p>The end of our line at the north, and there is a Gothic +church of the thirteenth century called Notre Dame des +Vertus, and in it is the tomb of the Maréchale de Luxembourg, +dead in 1695.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Nançois-Tronville.</span></p> + +<p>More blue meadow mists along gold waters, and soft +dark fringes of willows.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Longeville.</span></p> + +<p>The evening star and spirals of smoke from little +houses, and blue-clad men melting into the twilight, +and the canal a golden band, with stampings of deepest +purple where tree shadows cut across it. Two American +soldiers standing at a road-crossing looking up at the +sign-post. Everywhere the Lorraine twilight is shot +with khaki-colored threads from over the seas—and the +three gray sisters spin the inexorable web.</p> + +<p>Bar-le-Duc, looking sick and sorry for itself. Station +full of broken glass, dirt, and piles of demolished masonry. +The evening star hangs above the older town on the hill. +No time to get out to see how the canteen work is going +on; but two obliging station employees gave me news. +A whole quarter of the town by the river, near the Hôtel +du Commerce et de Metz, of unsanctified memory, was +destroyed ten days ago, by an air raid.</p> + +<p>I asked if anything had happened to the church of +St.-Peter, for I thought of the <i>chef-d’œuvre</i> of Ligier Richier, +René de Châlons,<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> standing in its dim space, holding +his heart aloft in his left hand, eternal offering to his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> +first wife, Louise of Lorraine. How his widow, Philippe +de Gueldre, felt about this before she was laid out in +the garb of the Poor Clares I don’t know.</p> + +<p>No longer any night work in the canteen, no lights +being permitted. Our train unlighted, too. New and +larger signs indicating cellars and shelters everywhere. +Black moving shapes of <i>camions</i> along the road, and the +evening star following us along the top of the hill of +Bar. A squad of Annamites quitting their work on the +road.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>En ces armées singulières</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Où l’Annam casse des pierres</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sur la route de Verdun.</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Revigny.</span></p> + +<p>Portentous dark shapes of roofless houses and detachments +of blue-clad men going down a winding road, +one with the blue twilight. The station dim, the town +completely dark, and the vine-planted hills only soft +masses; the evening star still following us, though she +is so close to the ridge that in a few minutes she will +drop behind it. Oh, this passing of the evening star in +a war—autumn behind French hills!</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Vitry-le-François</span>, <i>5.45</i>.</p> + +<p>Founded by François Premier near the old town which +was burned with its church full of worshipers, in a fit of +anger by Louis VII during his war with the Count of +Champagne. To expiate this crime he undertook the +Second Crusade. Much black ribbon of canal knotted +about, one end of which leads from the heart of France +to the Rhine. An endless train of troops going to the +front, men pressed together, sardine- and herring-like, +in each compartment—it made my soul sick—just human +masses weighed down by accoutrement and literally +wedged in. A lively dispute between a thick-set <i>poilu</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span> +and one of the station employees on behalf of a slight, +blond, very young soldier.</p> + +<p>“<i>Quoi, vous osez engueuler un poilu de quinze ans?</i>”</p> + +<p>And the following crescendo mounts to the broken +panes of the station roof, “<i>Embusqué, cochon, salaud, +vache!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p> + +<p>There was no answer of protest from the official. +And Vitry-le-François is where Napoleon almost took +prisoner the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, +and the Austrian General Schwarzenberg in 1814, and +in 1914 it was bombarded by the Germans, and now +American troops pour through it.</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span></p> + +<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_III_CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br> +<span class="smaller">THE CHÂLONS CANTEEN</span></h3> + +</div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Hôtel de la Haute Mère Dieu, Châlons</span>, <i>October 17th, 1.30 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Lodged at last with the “High Mother of God.” +On arriving, dined in a low-ceilinged, dingy, dowdy +room, but the acetylene lights, the uniforms and decorations +of the officers, made something brilliant, which half +veiled the knowledge of the dark night outside, the approaching +winter, the continuing war.</p> + +<p>Afterward, I slipped out with my little electric lamp, +through the Place de la République, almost empty; low +and splendid stars hung over the town. In the rue +des Lombards, St.-Alpin was a dark mass, and from +its tower the hour was striking a quarter to nine +o’clock.</p> + +<p>I turned into the long, perfectly black rue de Marne. +Not a single light, nor any passer-by. I flashed my little +lamp to find the curb. There came a click of wooden-soled +shoes from a side street, and a thick voice said, +“<i>Ah, la dame, pourquoi si vite?</i>” I passed on like the +wind, trembling, down the deserted street, but when I +flashed the lamp to find another curb, something heavy +and stumbling got nearer. And then I didn’t dare to +turn the light on, and I took the wrong turning, and +found myself in what seemed a wilderness of mud and +trees, with the click of those following wooden-soled +feet behind, and any woman who has been terrified,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span> +she scarcely knows why, will understand. Finally I +stopped behind a dark mass of trees, with something +sucking about in the mud, and mumbling half-suspected +words, and finally retreating.</p> + +<p>At that moment a soldier appeared, a gigantic shadow +of himself as he struck a match to light his cigarette, +and I asked:</p> + +<p>“Is this the rue du Port de Marne?”</p> + +<p>He answers, “You have missed your way; you are +by the canal,” and he puts me onto the road again, +and then I turn and grope my way to the little house +by the Marne.</p> + +<p>Neither Miss Nott nor Miss Mitchell is there, so I depart +again, going over the great Marne bridge to the +station. Though I can see nothing, I hear the regular +practised tread of a marching squad, and when I +flash my lamp to find the curb, a little detachment looms +up unmeasurably big and distorted, and the horizon +blue becomes that ghostly gray.</p> + +<p>In the canteen a thousand men at least. Am quite +dazzled by the splendor of the installation. Warm welcome +from Miss Nott and Miss Mitchell, with the light +of a very understandable pride in their eyes. Go behind +the long counter, then through the kitchen to the +little dressing-room; take off my hat, put on a long +apron, twist my pale-blue chiffon scarf about my head +and am ready. As I look out over the big room I +feel that in the whole world it is the only place to be. +Around me surged those blue waves; the light caught +helmets and drinking-cups; there was the mist of +breath and smoke; the familiar sound of laughing, disputing, +humming. That strange atmosphere of fatality +hung over each and every one, yet with a merciless confusing +of destinies in the extreme anonymity of it all.</p> + +<p>Came away at 11.30 enveloped in a strange sidereal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span> +light, the stars still more splendid as the night deepened. +Even the memory of tropical constellations +vaulting high altitudes was dimmed. The Great Bear +lay over the left of the Marne bridge, and on the other +horizon, over the Promenade du Jard, where I suddenly +remembered that St.-Bernard had preached the crusade +in presence of Pope Eugene and Charles VII, was Orion, +so bright that he alone could have lighted the town of +the Catalaunian fields, and Jupiter seemed like a distant +sun, under the soft blur of the Pleiades. The river +was mysterious, yet personal with its new mantle of +history wrapping it sadly, yet tenderly, and with much +glory.</p> + +<p>Then I was again in the still, dark, long street; no +passers-by, no lights from any window, the clock of +St.-Alpin striking midnight, and Orion concealed to +his belt by the houses of the Place de la République. +There was some deep stirring of my heart as I turned in +at the door of La Haute Mère Dieu, leaving the gorgeous +heavens to stretch over the wide plain of Châlons, +where the hosts of Attila were defeated, where the great, +misty, tragic, glorious history of Champagne and Lorraine +rolls itself out. Now above it all is the whir of +<i>aeros de chasse</i>, and a faint, very faint booming of cannon. +The Châlons plain continues to give me the +“creeps.” It is haunting and suggestive in the same +way that the Roman Campagna is haunting and suggestive, +though the great bare stretch, with its bald, +chalky scarrings, its dull spots of pine woods, its dust +or mud, has none of the material beauty of the Campagna. +Doubtless I’m within the folds of the mantle +of the concentrated, continuous human passions that +cover it.</p> + +<p>I trod as lightly as I could through a resounding +corridor, having a profound regard for all sleeping things,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> +past many leather leggings and spurred boots outside of +silent doors.</p> + +<p>When I left the canteen, the guard, in answer to my +cry, “Sentinelle!” said, as he opened the gate, “<i>Ce n’est +pas comme à Verdun, où l’on ne passe pas</i>”; and then, +“<i>Bonsoir, Mees.</i>” It was so easily and gracefully said +in the inimitable French way.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>October 17th, 7.30 a.m.</i></p> + +<p>Tea, a lukewarm pale-gray beverage, with some still +crisp leaves afloat on the top. I would have been ungrateful +if I had not thought of the Hôtel des Vosges. +Mrs. Church, fresh and strong as the morning, though +just back from night shift, boiled some water for me +and I blessed her. The bleakness of this room is indescribable. +Two lithographs of the “<i>Angelus</i>” and +“<i>Les Glaneurs</i>” but add to the desolation. A red-and-yellow +striped paper on the walls; on the floor a worn +square of Brussels carpet; brown woolen curtains; +shutters with slats askew; a large mahogany chest of +drawers; a grayish dimity cover to the feather bed, +with machine-stitched <i>motifs</i> showing its ugly yellow +case underneath; linen sheets, large, thick, and clean—and +you have almost any room of La Haute Mère Dieu. +Except Mrs. C.’s with its extraordinary bed, painted +cream-color, having large “Empirish” corners formed +by pale green and gilt Egyptian unduly voluptuous +Sphinx-like figures, and a brownish-red plush baldaquin +from which depend some yellowish-brown curtains; the +brown carpet with purplish flowers is a protest between +the two, and the rest of the room a riot of gilt mirrors. +It’s a room one couldn’t forget, and why provincial +hotels cling so to brown upholstery I don’t know. They +give the effect of being old and dirty even when they +are—<i>perhaps</i>—new.</p> + +<p>The corridor has been a sounding-board since dawn,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span> +and all during the night <i>camions</i> were being driven over +the cobblestones, and motor horns rent the darkness. +My room looks out over an old garden. A tall, dead +tree-trunk has immemorial ivy clinging to it, and there +is an old round well, half covered, and beyond the gate, +with ivy and moss-grown urns, is a street that would +have been quiet except for the <i>camions</i>; and I can see +a row of distinguished-looking, plain-façaded gray houses +of another century, opposite.</p> + +<p>The German General Staff was lodged here before the +battle of the Marne, the chambermaid told me, with a +reminiscential gleam in her eyes.</p> + +<p>But you see how any one’s personal history, his little +wants, his little habits, are ground out into something +quite different by the war-machine. The only thing +any one asks is strength to get through what he has to +do. He doesn’t demand to get through in any special +way—just get through—where so many don’t. Not to +be so cold that you can’t use your hands or your mind, +not to be so tired that you can’t stand, not to be so +hungry that you are faint and useless, not to go without +sleep till you don’t care what happens to anybody, +especially yourself. Life is fairly simple, and somehow +very satisfactory, on such a basis.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>11.30 p.m.</i></p> + +<p>A long day, with the exception of luncheon at the +house on the Marne and a talk in the garden, where +Mrs. Corbin and I sat for a while under the yellow +chestnut-tree, looking out on the brimming, jade-colored, +slow-flowing Marne, talking of destinies, and the illusion +of free will, by which, however, all these high deeds +which we witness are done. And it seems to me the +thing called Destiny resides somewhere. It isn’t a purely +subjective affair, created out of the combination of +qualities and opportunities of each, rather something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> +definite and operative and immutable; but that may +only be the way I feel about it now. I am overcome +all the time by the relativity of everything, even of +truth.</p> + +<p>The little white birch-tree has no leaves, the butterflies +are gone, and winter is close upon the war-world. +The gardener has been returned to his home. What +of his sons, I wonder? He has a tender heart.</p> + +<p>Miss Stanton lives in the little yellow room with the +niche and the emanations. Now she looks out on yellowing +trees; yellow pumpkins lie in the little wet +garden; there is a border of yellow and red nasturtiums +and dahlias. It’s all like some stage-setting. When I +said to her, “I hear you have the little room with the +emanations,” she answered, “There must be something +about it; for in spite of the fact that I am not comfortable, +I don’t dislike it.”</p> + +<p>I wondered again what soul had inhabited within +those four walls and if the niche had been an altar, +and to what god, as I walked along in a sudden cold +mist that began to envelope Châlons.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Since 10 o’clock.</i></p> + +<p>I have been swept about by varying tides of blue-clad +men. Some thought the <i>cantine épatante</i>, others +thought sadly and remarked loudly that so much money +being spent on an installation meant that the war was +going to last indefinitely. “<i>C’est trop long</i>” one thin, +blond man, with deep-set eyes and bright spots on his +cheeks, kept repeating, till one of his friends in unrepeatable +<i>poilu</i> terms told him to “leave the camp.”</p> + +<p>Concert in the afternoon, the usual number of extremely +good <i>diseurs</i>. In the Salle de Récréation, where +it was held, are reclining-chairs and writing-tables. +When I told one not very young <i>poilu</i> that there <i>was</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> +such a heaven, he, too, answered, “<i>Alors la guerre va +durer longtemps, si l’on fait tout cela pour ceux qui +restent</i>.”</p> + +<p>Lieutenant Tonzin has converted those old railway +sheds into something most artistic. The walls are +painted cream with strips of pale blue; conventionalized +fruit-filled baskets and designs of flowery wreaths decorate +them at intervals. The great roof has drapings +of white muslin, and square, engarlanded shades make +the light shine softly on the blue-clad men coming and +going, coming and going.</p> + +<p>On the counter are small green bushes. One homesick-eyed +gardener <i>poilu</i> from Marseilles, having felt +them, wondered what they would do if watered. “<i>Les +pauvres! Chez nous sont grands comme ça</i>,” and he +raised his hand toward the roof.</p> + +<p>“<i>Toi, grand serin</i>,” remarked his comrade; “<i>tu vois +tout toujours dix fois grandeur naturelle</i>.”</p> + +<p>Whereupon they began the inevitable dispute. I +heard the words “<i>gueuleton</i>,” “<i>qu’est-ce que t’as au bec</i>,” +and the Marseillais finally calling out, as they retreated, +that he thanked God <i>he</i> hadn’t been born at +Caen.</p> + +<p>All is so orderly and the jokes mostly relatable. Only +when they are somewhat <i>allumés</i> do they get on the +subject of the eternal feminine, and then the dots are +put on the i’s, regarding her rôle on the natural plane. +But even then there is generally some <i>copain</i> to say, +“<i>Ferme ta gueule</i>,” or “<i>Que veux-tu que les mees sachent +de tout cela?</i>” The legend being that the canteens are +served almost exclusively by vestals.</p> + +<p>When holding out their “quarts,” they often ask, +longingly, “<i>Pas de cogneau; pas de gniole?</i>”<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> When I +answered once, “<i>Pas de pinard<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> ici</i>,” the <i>poilu</i> cried<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span> +back, “<i>Mais le ‘whisk’! Vous en avez toujours chez +vous!</i>” Another delicate Anglo-Saxon reference.</p> + +<p>Late, in between one of the train rushes, two men +came in, violently disputing as they stood at the +counter:</p> + +<p>“<i>C’est une guerre diplomatique, je te dis, cochon, va.</i>”</p> + +<p>“<i>Qu’est-ce que tu dis là, moi, je te dis, sale type, que c’est +une guerre qui ne mène à rien!</i>”</p> + +<p>“<i>C’est la même chose, nom de—— —nom de—— —t’es +bête, espèce d’acrobate</i>,” etc., etc.</p> + +<p>Another comes in saying, loudly:</p> + +<p>“<i>Cette sacrée guerre, cette sacrée guerre! Qu’est-ce que +cela me fait que je sois boche ou Français? Suis de Roubaix, +moi, il me faut manger du pain sec le reste de mes jours—moi +et ma femme et mes cinq enfants.</i>”</p> + +<p>When I gave him his cup of steaming <i>jus</i> (coffee), he +poured into it, from his <i>bidon</i>, a few drops of <i>gniole</i>, and +by the time he got to the door he was singing the well-known +refrain:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Je fus vacciné,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent2"><i>Inoculé,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Quatr’ fois piqué ...</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Then a train arrived, the great room was flooded +again, and no time for anything except to ask, “<i>Avez-vous +votre quart?</i>” (the tin cup) our bowls having given out +during the rush; or, “<i>Prenez votre billet à la caisse</i>,” or, in +order to relieve the congestion at <i>la caisse</i>, one takes +their ten centimes and pours and pours and pours, or +indicates the end of the counter, where the <i>repas complet</i>, +consisting of soup, meat, vegetable, and salad, is served. +<i>Boudin</i> with potatoes (a hundred yards of this dark +“blood-sausage,” curled up in boxes before being cooked, +is an awful sight), or hash with potatoes, they love, but +one and all hate macaroni with a deep hatred. Sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span> +it is served when the potatoes give out, and they +don’t conceal their distaste. They get too much cold +macaroni in the trenches.</p> + +<p>It’s always the ones who speak English who have the +worst manners. One rather nice-looking individual +came up to the <i>repas complet</i> counter, saying: “I’m in +a ’urry. Got no waiters? Step live.’” No <i>un</i>corrupted +Frenchman, even half-seas over, would dream of such +a form of address!</p> + +<p>Lots of tiny, yellow Annamites in to-day, sounding just +the way they look and looking just the way they sound. +One brought back his salad-plate (accidents will happen +in the best canteens) with a little worm a-move upon its +edge, and he made some unintelligible sounds. When +I thoughtlessly asked a <i>poilu</i> what he was saying, the +<i>poilu</i>, quite unembarrassed, proceeded to tell me, but +<i>I</i> can’t tell <i>you</i>! It must go no further.</p> + +<p>Lunched at the house by the Marne, where we talk +American politics for a change, then back. One goes, +one returns, and still they flood the vast room, and one +continues the book of the <i>cantine</i>, bound in its horizon +blue, with its blood-stained, tear-sealed pages.</p> + +<p>A quite peculiar warming of the heart when one’s own +khaki-clad men come in. Early in the afternoon an +American appeared at the counter, accompanied by a +French corporal. He had completely forgotten the +name of his town, was driving a <i>camion</i>, and said, with +a distressed air, “If I could only find a certain spot in +town, I <i>could</i> get back”; and then added, with a grin, +“I suppose you think I’m like the doctor that could +cure fits; but I’ve got to get the fits before I can do +anything else, and I’m late already,” he finished, anxiously. +After giving various descriptions of various +localities I hit on the Place de la République, “with a +fountain with three women?” and as I explained to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span> +under-officer, he said, “You’ve saved little Willie’s +life,” and hurried out.</p> + +<p>The names seem the difficult part. One of them, +when I asked where he was billeted, said:</p> + +<p>“That’s one on me; it’s got three names; but”—and +he beckoned to a <i>poilu</i> standing near—“this is a pal of +mine. When I give him three knocks on the shoulder +he gives the name.”</p> + +<p>The <i>poilu</i> didn’t wait for even the first knock before +he said, “Demanges-aux-Eaux,” and then the American +treated him to chocolate and offered him a “Lucky +Strike” cigarette and began some exotic pronunciation +of Demanges-aux-Eaux.</p> + +<p>There’s always one special thing in every situation in +life that comes hard. Now I must confess that whenever +I have to take a damp, dark-brown cloth in my hand +and mop up puddles of spilled chocolate and coffee from +the tiled counter, I feel an invincible repugnance. To-day +four Americans came in together. A nice, tall, +evidently perceptive one said, unexpectedly:</p> + +<p>“Just give me that rag.”</p> + +<p>As I gratefully surrendered the clammy thing he +continued:</p> + +<p>“I will be here all the afternoon and you’ll find me +mopping any time you like.” He subsequently ordered +four fried eggs apiece for himself and a <i>poilu</i>, and then +took a whole box of the little sweet round biscuits that +we were selling rather gingerly by twos and threes, came +back from time to time for bowls of chocolate, when he +would cheerfully mop the counter for me. Finally I said:</p> + +<p>“What is your name?”</p> + +<p>And he answered: “Smith. There’re a few of us,” +he added, and then with a twinkle, “but I’m John. +Now what do you say to a swap?”</p> + +<p>“I’m Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span></p> + +<p>“I bet I spot you. I was in Mexico last summer. +Say, wasn’t your husband mixed up with old Huerta?”</p> + +<p>I had to answer “yes” to this version of history.</p> + +<p>“I wasn’t much on dust when I was down there, but +there’s too much water here. However,” he continued, +cheerfully, “we’ve got to tin the Teut or he’ll tin us.” +Then he added, in a confidential voice: “What do you +think of the war? I get mixed sometimes.”</p> + +<p>I had noticed a small amethyst ring in the shape of +a pansy on one of his large fingers as he was mopping, +so, after disposing of his question in the briefest and +most effective way by remarking that it was “up to +us all” to do every bit we could to win the war, to +which he agreed, I asked:</p> + +<p>“Are you engaged?”</p> + +<p>“To one beaut,” he answered, without an instant’s +hesitation. “Met her in San Antonio last summer, +but I guess she’s the kind that waits. Gee! they were +around her like flies, but I shoo’d ’em all off.”</p> + +<p>And he pulled out the picture of a girl with large dark +eyes half hidden in love-locks, and showing a lot of +white teeth between pleasure-ready lips. What appeared +of her person was clad in the most “peek-a-boo” +of blouses, and there was a twist of white tulle +about it all. I wondered if she was the “kind that +waits.” I had a sudden affection for John Smith, thinking, +however, as he passed out of the door, that his +identification disk would be more definite than his +name, and then, for an instant, I pondered on the +supremely elemental thing he’s come for.</p> + +<p>Damp, cold night had fallen on Châlons, but the +canteen was warm and cheery, and the men who knew +little of warmth and cheer were sitting about in a moment’s +comfort, and there came to mind a canteen I +know (oh, far away!) which is presided over by a lady<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span> +with a mustache like a majordomo, and there are no +night hours in her canteen. She rings an inexorable +bell at the chaste hour of 9.30, and, rainy or dry, warm +or cold, out they go, the <i>poilus</i>. Some one with a compassionate +heart remarked to one of the men on a pouring +night, as the bell was ringing, “I am sorry you must +go.” He answered, with a glance at the ringer and a +twist of <i>his</i> mustache: “It’s well to choose them that +way. It quiets us.” And he went off singing, “<i>Depuis +le jour où je me suis donnée</i>.” It was too funny....</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Friday, October 19th.</i></p> + +<p>A tightening of the heart at leaving that flooding +hall—going out again to pick up the personal life, inconsequential +as it now seems. One is hypnotized by +the stream of humanity, drawn into its vortex, finally +rushing along with it, who knows whence or whither. +I jerked myself back by saying, “This is not my bit,” +and, “Each one to his own.” There are many ways of +helping win the war.</p> + +<p>I saw for a moment General Goïgoux, just back from +his <i>permission</i>, so solicitous for the welfare of his men, +so pleased with the results of the canteen, smiling as he +said to me:</p> + +<p>“<i>Eh bien, Madame, cela a fait des progrès depuis votre +dernière visite.</i>”</p> + +<p>There is a quite wonderful entente, and appreciation, +on both sides in Châlons.</p> + +<p>I went back into the canteen, and found some <i>poilus</i> +in fits of laughter over a black cat. Now what a black +cat evokes in the mind of the <i>poilu</i> I can only suspect; +I don’t quite know. Anyway, it’s something that +“makes to laugh”; and our black cat, strayed in weeks +ago from who knows where, and perched near a devoted +lady of unmistakable respectability, lately arrived<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span> +to help “save France,” furthermore enveloped in a +gray sweater (it’s cold and draughty where she sits behind +the small aperture selling tickets for coffee, chocolate, +and <i>repas complets</i>), and not in her nature playful, +seems somehow suggestive to the <i>poilu</i>. Even when it +perches on the counter by the coffee-jugs it’s the same. +We don’t like to get rid of it; it’s supposed to bring +good luck. However, enough, or perhaps too little, +about the black cat.</p> + +<p>There is a <i>surveillant</i> supposed to keep order. He is +rarely needed, and if he does say anything, he gets an +“<i>Embusqué!</i>” thrown at him, between the eyes. It’s +not the day of the civilian employee. This one spends +a good deal of time eating and not paying, and nobody +loves him. There is a favorite story of the <i>poilu</i> saluting +a common or garden variety of policeman, thinking +he was a corporal; and when telling of his mistake afterward +he called it “<i>le plus malheureux jour de mavie</i>.”</p> + +<p>A hitch in the serving of the <i>complete repasts</i>. I +looked into the kitchen to see if things couldn’t be hurried +up. The group that met my eyes, of the cook +and her assistant wrestling with yards of blood-sausage, +could have been the female pendant to the Laocoön. +It was awful. As I turned back to the counter I heard +this bit of conversation between two <i>poilus</i> waiting for +their meal:</p> + +<p>“<i>Tu sais</i>, when a Canadian sees wood he goes wild. +He’ll chop up anything from a roadside cross to a baby-carriage. +They say it is because of his forests. At +—— last spring they took the balusters out of the house +where they were quartered, and that pretty Jeanne +you’ve heard about—<i>un amour, je te dis</i>—fell down in +the dark and was killed.”</p> + +<p>“Each one has his <i>manie</i>,” answered his friend, in +perfect tolerance. “<i>Mais moi, je ne toucherais pas à<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span> +une croix.</i>” And he proceeded to cross himself at the +bare thought.</p> + +<p>A colonel whose name I don’t remember took me into +the garden to see the kiosks that I had so often indicated +when the men asked for <i>pinard</i> or <i>tabac</i>. The <i>guignol</i> +that I had seen at the camouflage grounds in July was +in place; beyond was the huge bomb-proof shelter built +by German prisoners to contain 2,000 men in case of +<i>avion</i> attack. We took a few steps into its black, moist +intricacies. As I came up I found myself close to a +group of some thirty German prisoners being marched +past to work on a cement emplacement for a gun, the +large P.G.<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> stamped on their backs, and wearing their +small round caps with the red stripe, and any kind of +clothes. I felt for a moment like an illustration for +Cæsar’s <i>Commentaries</i>, or some sort of a Roman watching +northern prisoners being marched by.</p> + +<p>The officer who showed me about was one of the +twenty-seven men who escaped from the Fort de Vaux, +and had lost his only child on Hill 304.</p> + +<p>“I was wounded, and I’m not yet worth much, which +is why I am here. My boy was only twenty-one—<i>mais +c’était une personne faite</i>—a leader of men. All, +with those qualities, go; I am not alone, alas! in my +<i>douleur</i>.”</p> + +<p>And that is one of the beautiful things of this sorrowful +epoch. Each thinks upon the others’ grief.... +And then I left it all.</p> + +<p>The jade-colored Marne is flat, eddyless, brimming +over with its autumn rains, the reeds have disappeared, +the trunks of the willows are hidden. Over the gray +bridge flows, unabated, that other stream of war and +life. <i>Camions</i>, ambulances, smart red-and-white-marked +staff automobiles, soldiers in every conceivable state<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span> +of soul and body, “enduring their going hence even as +their coming hither.” English, Americans, Senegalese, +Annamites—a dozen races swell this Gallic flood, and +the Gray Sisters never so busy since the world began.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>January 7th, 1918</i>.</p> + +<p>I am waiting to know from one of the most charming +of the sons of Gaul, who has promised to be my intercessor +before the powers that be, whether I am to go to +my front—our front—now or not. If, as Amiel says, “<i>Être +prêt, c’est partir</i>,” then I am already off.</p> + +<p class="titlepage">FINIS</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Killed 10th November, 1915, at Zagora, at the head of his battalion.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Planted so that any vista represents the Roman numeral V.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Like porcelain dogs.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Verdun, the Virdunum of the Romans. In the third century a bishopric +was founded there with Saint Saintin as first bishop; 843, the treaty +of Verdun; after the battle of Fontanet the three sons of Louis the +Debonair, Lothair, Louis of Bavaria, and Charles the Bald, divided the +empire of Charlemagne, with the result that not only was France +separated from Germania, but her natural boundaries, the Alps and the +Rhine, were lost; 1792, the Prussians besieged it in force and it was +obliged to capitulate after two days; 1870, a heroic defense lasting +nearly three months ending in capitulation; 1916, <i>Ils n’ont pas passé, ils +ne passeront pas</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> <i>Neuvième série.</i></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Alan Seeger, <i>Letters and Diary</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> Regimental decoration in the form of a cord worn over the left +shoulder, passing under the arm.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> The <i>sauf-conduits</i> for the army zones are in the form of little, red, +paper-bound books.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> “<i>La Pioggia nel Pineto.</i>”—<span class="smcap">D’Annunzio.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> In <i>L’Horizon</i> I found these lines from Verlaine, with a few added, +concerning <i>le Cafard</i>, by “Bi Bi Bi”:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Quelle est cette douleur</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Qui pénètre mon cœur?</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>C’est bien la pire peine</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>De ne savoir pourquoi</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sans amour et sans haine</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mon cœur a tant de peine.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>En effet, cher Verlaine,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>C’est bien la pire peine</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Que ta fameuse peine</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et les poilus sans art</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>La nomment le Cafard.</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But <i>le Cafard</i> differs from Verlaine’s <i>peine</i> in that it is a very special +kind of world-pain, and very complete; for those in its grip know <i>why</i>, +as well as <i>not</i> why, they suffer. The memory of loved and early things, +very probably not to be known again, is part of it. The consciously unreasonable +hope that all will be well in an extremely uncertain future +is another part of it—and underlying it is crushing physical fatigue, +sleeplessness, hunger, cold, heat, the whole smeared in the blood of +brothers and foes, the dull reaction after killing, or escape from being +killed—one can’t feel that there is anything vague about <i>le Cafard</i>.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> Cook.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Gondrecourt, the first American encampment in Lorraine.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> During the closing days of February, 1918, the air raids on Nancy +were so continuous and so disastrous that Molitor had to be evacuated +and the inmates, the aged and the children, were redistributed in other +parts of France. These words are quite simple to write and to read. +Their significance is beyond expression.</p> + +<p class="right">March, 1918, E. O’S.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> She received ten refusals for the dinner she was giving the next night; +among them one from Talleyrand, which caused a permanent rupture in +their relations.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> Governor-General of Morocco.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> The American Red Cross Asylum at Luxembourg (Toul), now under +the very able management of Dr. Maynard Ladd, has accommodations +for nearly a thousand children, well and ill, and a maternity hospital.</p> + +<p>The American forces hold the line to the northwest of Toul.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> Her epitaph, written by herself, is to the effect that underneath lies a +rotting worm, giving to death the tribute of nature, the earth her only +covering, and begging her sisters, the Poor Clares, to say for her a <i>Requiescat +in pace</i>.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ci-gist un ver tout en pourriture,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Donnant à mort le tribut de la nature.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sœur Philippe de Gueldre fust Royne du passé,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Terre soulat pour toute couverture.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sœurs, dites-lui une requiescat in pace.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse right"><i>MDXLVII.</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Madame du Châtelet, around whose death-bed three men met in fraternal +tolerance, Voltaire, St.-Lambert, and her husband, was buried here +September 11, 1749. In 1793 the tomb was profaned, the lead coffin +stolen, the bones scattered. In 1858 they were gathered up and put in a +modern coffin in which they now repose. She said of herself: “<i>J’ai reçu +de Dieu une de ces âmes tendres et immuables qui ne savent ni déguiser ni modérer +leurs passions; qui ne connaissent ni l’affaiblissement ni le dégoût, et dont +la ténacité sait résister à tout, même à la certitude de n’être pas aimée.... +Mais un cœur aussi tendre, peut-il être rempli par un sentiment aussi paisible +et aussi faible que l’amitié?</i>”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> “<i>Faut pas s’en faire</i>” is one of the most famous phrases of the +French army, and has been described as a combination of two slang expressions, +“To keep your hair on, <i>de ne pas se faire des cheveux</i>,” and +“not to hurt your digestion by undue worry, <i>de ne pas se faire de la bile</i>.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> René de Châlons, Prince of Orange, killed in 1544, at the siege of St.-Dizier. +The genius of Ligier Richier has represented him according to +his wish, as his body might have appeared three years <i>after</i> death.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Slacker, pig, dirty-one, cow!</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> Cognac.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> wine.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> <i>Prisonnier de Guerre.</i></p> + +</div> + +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75744 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + |