"Oh!" went up from three voices in the motor-car. I think even our one-legged soldier-chauffeur emitted a grunt of joy; and Mother Beckett clasped her hands on her little thin breast, as if she were praying, such a wonderful sight it was, with the golden coronation of the noon-day sun on the towers. Our officer-guide, in his car ahead, looked back as if to say, "I told you so! They can't kill France, and Rheims is the very spirit and youth of France."
Not one of us spoke another word until we drove into the town, and began exclaiming with horror and rage at what Attila II has done to the streets.
The mist had fallen again, not white in the town, but a pale, sad gray, like a mantle of half-mourning. It hung over the spacious avenues and the once fine, now desolate, streets, which had been the pride of Rheims; it slipped serpent-like through what remained of old arcades: it draped the ancient Gate of Mars in the Place de la République as if to hide the cruel scars of the bombardment; it lay like soiled snow on the mountain of tumbled stone which had been the Rue St. Jacques; it curtained the "show street" of Rheims, the Rue de la Grue, almost as old as the Cathedral itself, which a Sieur de Coucy began in 1212; trickling gray as glacier waters over the fallen walls which artists had loved. It marbled with pale streaks the burned, black corpse of the once famous Maison des Laines; it clouded the marvellous old church of St. Remi, and when we came to the Cathedral—kept for the climax—it floated past the wounded statues on the great western façade like an army of spirits—spirits of all those watching saints whom the statues honoured.
The crowns of the broken towers we could not see, but at that height the mist was gilded by the sun which sifted through so that each tower seemed to have its own faint golden halo.
"This effect comes often on these foggy autumn days, when the sun is high, about noontime," said our guide. "It's rather wonderful, isn't it? We have a priest-soldier invalided here now, who used to be of the service in the Cathedral, before he volunteered to fight. He has written some verses, which it seems came to him in a dream one night. Whether the world would think them fine I do not know, but at Rheims we like them. The idea is that Jeanne d'Arc has mobilized the souls of the saints who protect Rheims, to bless and console the Cathedral, which they were not permitted to save from outward ruin. It is she who gilds the mist on the towers with a prophecy of hope. As for the mist itself, according to the poet, it is no common fog. It is but the cloak worn by this army of saints to visit their cathedral, and bathe its wounds with their cool white hands, so that at last, when peace dawns, there shall be a spiritual beauty found in the old marred stones—a beauty they never had in their prime."
"I should like to see that soldier-priest!" said Father Beckett, when I had translated for him the officer's description of the poem. "Couldn't we meet him? What's his name?"
I passed on the questions to our captain of the scarred face. "The man's name is St. Pol," he told us. "You can see from that he comes of an old family. If it had been this day last week you could have met him. He would have been pleased. But—since then—alas! Mademoiselle, it is impossible that he should be seen. It would be too sad for you and your friends."
"He has been wounded in some bombardment?" I exclaimed.
"Not wounded—no. We don't think much of wounds. What has happened is sadder than wounds. Some day the man may recover. We hope so. But at present he—is out of everything, dead in life."
"What happened?" I gasped.