We had still another new French officer to take us to Rheims. (I am getting their faces a little mixed, like a composite picture, but I keep sacredly all their dear visiting-cards!) He was a captain, with a scarred but handsome face, and he complimented Mother Beckett and me on our "courage." This made Father Beckett visibly regret that he had brought us, though he had been assured that it was a "safe time." However, his was not the kind of regret which tempts a man to turn back: it only makes his upper lip look long.
I never saw Rheims in palmy days of peace. Now I wish I had seen it! But there was that lithograph of the cathedral by Gustave Simonau, the great Belgian artist, hanging above your desk, in the den, Padre. I used to study it when I should have been studying my lessons, fascinated by the splendid façade, the twin towers, the three "portals of the Trinity," the rose-window, the gallery of kings, the angels, the saints, the gargoyles and all the carved stone lace-work which the picture so wonderfully shows.
On the opposite side of the room was Simonau's Cathedral of Chartres, in a dark frame to match, and I remember your saying that Chartres was considered by some critics even finer than Rheims. The Cathedral of Chartres seemed a romantic monument of history to me, because it was built as a shrine for the "tunic of the Virgin"; but the Gothic Notre-Dame of Rheims appealed to my—perhaps prophetic—soul. Maybe I had a latent presentiment of how I should see the real cathedral, as la grande blessée of the greatest war of the world.
Anyhow, I always took a deep interest in Rheims from the day I first gaped, an open-mouthed child, at that beautiful drawing, and I was glad I'd forgotten none of its details, as we motored toward the martyr town. Usually there's Brian, who can tell the dear Becketts all they don't know and want to know, but this time they'd only me to depend upon. And when I think what a cruel fraud I am at heart, there's some consolation in serving them, even in small ways.
There's a wide plain that knows desolately what German bombardment means: there are gentle hills rising out of it, south and west (will grapes ever be sweet on those sad hillsides again?) and there's the little river Vesle that runs into the Aisne. There's the Canal of the Aisne and the Marne, too—oh, many wide waters and little streams, to breathe out mist, for Rheims is on the pleasant Île-de-France. There was so much mist this autumn day that it hid from our eyes for a long time the tall form of the Cathedral which should dominate the plain for many miles; a thick, white mist like the sheet with which a sculptor veils his masterpiece until it's ready to face the world. As we drove on, and still saw no looming bulk, frozen fear pinched my heart, like horrid, ice-cold fingers. What if there'd been some new bombardment we hadn't had time to hear of, and the Cathedral were gone?
But I didn't speak my fear. I tried to cover it up by chattering about Rheims. Goodness knows there's a lot to chatter about! All that wonderful history, since Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi; and Charlemagne crowned, and Charles the VII, with Jeanne d'Arc looking on in bright armour, and various Capets, and enough other kings to name Notre-Dame of Rheims the "Cathedral of Coronations." I remembered something about the Gate of Mars, too—the oldest thing of all—which the Remi people put up in praise of Augustus Cæsar when Agrippa brought his great new roads close to their capital. I think it had been called Durocoroturum up to that time—or some equally awful name, which you remember only because you expect to forget! I hardly dared tell the Becketts about the celebrated archiepiscopal palace where the kings used to be entertained by the archbishops (successors of Saint Remi) while the coronation ceremonies were going on: and the Salle du Tau with its wonderful hangings, its velvet-cushioned stone seats and carved, upright furniture, where the royal guests—in robes stiff with jewelled embroidery—had their banquets from plates of solid silver and gold. It seemed cruel to speak of splendours vanished forever, vanished like the holy oil of the sacred phial brought from heaven by a dove for the baptism of Clovis, and kept for the anointing of all those dead kings!
But it was just the time and place to talk about Attila—Attila the First, I mean, of whom, as I told you, I firmly believe the present "incumbent" to be the reincarnation. As Attila I. thought fit to put Rheims to the sword, Atilla II. is naturally impelled by the "spiral" to do his best from a distance, by destroying the Cathedral which wasn't begun in his predecessor's day. But what does he think, I wonder, about the prophecy? That in Rheims—scene of the first German defeat on the soil of Gaul—Germany's last defeat will be celebrated, with great rejoicing in the Cathedral she has tried to ruin?
Those words, "tried to ruin," I uttered rather feebly, holding forth to the Becketts, because we had passed a long dark line of trees before which—we'd been told—we ought to see the Cathedral rise triumphant against an empty background of sky. And still there was nothing!
Of course, I told myself, it must be the mist. But could mist be thick enough entirely to hide a great mountain of a cathedral from eyes drawing nearer every minute? Then, suddenly, my question was answered by the mist itself. I must have hypnotized it! A light wind, which we had thought was made by the motor, cut like the shears of Lachesis through the woolly white web. A gash of blue appeared and in the midst, floating as if it had died and gone to heaven, the Cathedral.
Yes, "died and gone to heaven!" That is just what has happened to Notre-Dame of Rheims. The body has been martyred, but the soul is left alive—beautiful, brave soul of the old stones of France!