Chapter XXX
RHEIMS
We had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction of Melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves with the thought that Barbizon is not Barbizon any more, and would probably be a disappointment, anyway. We kept on from Melun, also, after buying some luncheon things, and all day traversed that beautiful rolling district which lies east of Paris and below Rheims, arriving toward evening at Épernay, the Sparnacum of antiquity and the champagne center of to-day. Épernay was ancient once, but it is all new now, with wide streets and every indication of business progress. We had no need to linger there. We were anxious to get to Rheims.
There had been heavy rains in the champagne district, and next morning the gray sky and close air gave promise of more. The roads were not the best, being rather slippery and uneven from the heavy traffic of the wine carts. But the vine-covered hills between Épernay and Rheims, with their dark-green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly productive as anything in France.
We were still in the hills when we looked down on the valley of the Vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center the architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the cathedral of Rheims. Large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when at the head of her victorious army she conducted the king to Rheims for his coronation. She was nearing the fulfillment of her assignment, the completion of the great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints. Mark Twain tells of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the tide of cheers that swept her ranks at the vision of the distant towers:
And as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse, gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she was not flesh, she was spiritual! Her sublime mission was closing—closing in flawless triumph. To-morrow she could say, "It is finished—let me go free."
It was the 16th of July that Joan looked down upon Rheims, and now, four hundred and eighty-five years later, it was again July, with the same summer glory on the woods, the same green and scarlet in the poppied fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to the sky. But no one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the Domremy shepherd girl.
Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made our way to the cathedral square. Then presently we were at the doorway where Joan and her king had entered—the portal which has been called the most beautiful this side of Paradise.
How little we dreamed that we were among the last to look upon it in its glory—that disfigurement and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead!