We lunched at an hotel, in a restaurant crowded with French officers; and not a civilian there except ourselves. I was hoping that Paul Herter might come in, for the tragic Rue Princesse Marie is not far away—and even a Wandering Jew must eat! He did not come; but I almost forgot my new disappointment in hearing the French officers talk about Lorraine.
They were in the midst of a discussion when we came in, and when they had all bowed politely to us, they took up its thread where it had broken off. A colonel—a Lorrainer—was saying that out of the wealth of Lorraine (stolen wealth, he called it!) Germany had built up her fortune as a united nation, in a few years far exceeding the indemnity received in 1871. Germany had known that there were vast stores of iron; but the amazing riches in phosphorus ores had come to her as a surprise. If she had guessed, never would she have agreed to leave more than half the deposit on the French side of the frontier! Well enough for Prussian boasters to say that Germany's success was due to her own industry and supervirtue, or that her tariff schemes had worked wonders. But take away the provinces she tore from France, and she will be a Samson shorn! Take away Lorraine and the world will be rid once and for all of the German menace!
When we left Lunéville there was still hope from Gerbéviller. Herter is often there, it seems. Besides, Gerbéviller was the principal end and aim of our day's excursion. Once no more than a pleasant town of quiet beauty on a pretty river, now it is a monument historique, the Pompeii of Lorraine.
As we arrived the sun clouded over suddenly, and the effect was almost theatrical. From gold the light had dimmed to silver. In the midst of the afternoon, we saw Gerbéviller as if by moonlight in the still silence of night. On the outskirts we forsook our three cars, and walked slowly through the dead town, awestruck and deeply thoughtful as if in a church where the body of some great man lay in state.
There was not a sound except, as at Léomont, the unseen choir of bird-voices; but their song emphasized the silence. In the pale light the shells of wrecked houses glimmered white, like things seen deep down under clear water. They were mysterious as daytime ghosts; and already a heartbreaking picturesqueness had taken possession of the streets, as an artist-decorator comes into an ugly room and mellows all its crudeness with his loving touch.
Gerbéviller's tragic little river Mortagne gleamed silver-bright beneath a torn lace of delicate white flowers that was like a veil flung off by a fugitive bride. It ran sparkling under the motionless wheel of a burned mill, and twinkled on—the one living thing the Germans left—to flow through the park of a ruined château.
When it was alive, that small château must have been gay and delightful as a castle in a fairy tale, pink and friendly among its pleasant trees; but even in its prime, rich with tapestries and splendid old paintings, which were its treasures, never could the place have been so beautiful as in death!
At a first glance—seen straight in front—the face of the house seems to live still, rosy with colour, gazing with immense blue eyes through a light green veil. But a second glance brings a shock to the heart. The face is a mask held up to hide a skull; the blue of the eyes is the open sky framed by glassless windows; the rosy colour is stained with dark streaks of smoke and flame; the château among its trees, and the chapel with its stopped clock and broken saints are skeletons.
Not even O'Farrell could talk. We were a silent procession in the midst of silence until we came at last to the one quarter of the town whose few houses had been spared to the courage of Gerbéviller's heroine, Sœur Julie.
Her street (but for her it would not exist) has perhaps a dozen houses intact, looking strangely bourgeois, almost out of place, so smugly whole where all else has perished. Yet it was a comfort to see them, and wonderful to see Sœur Julie.