But somehow the German master of Senlis's heart weakened when the crucial moment came. He was at the Hôtel du Grand Cerf, where a dinner was being prepared by scared servants for thirty German officers. The order was about to be signed when suddenly a curé, small and pale, but lion-brave, entered the room. How he got in no one knew! Surprise held the general tongue-tied for three seconds; and a French curé is capable of much eloquence in three seconds.
He gambled—if a curé may gamble!—on the chance of his man being Catholic—and he won. That is why (so they told us in the same room three years later) Senlis was struck with many sore wounds, but not exterminated; that is why only the Maire and a few citizens were murdered instead of all; that is why in some quarters of Senlis the people who have come back can still dream that nothing happened to their dear haunt of peace on September 2, 1914.
Even if Senlis had fallen utterly, before the Germans turned in their tracks, Paris would not have been "cowed." As it was, Paris and all France were roused to a redoubled fury of resistance by the fate of the Senlis "hostages." So these men did not die in vain.
The scars of Senlis are still unhealed. Whole streets are blackened heaps of ruin, and there are things that "make you see red," as Father Beckett growled. But the thing which left the clearest picture in my brain was a sight sweet as well as sad: a charming little château, ruined by fire, yet pathetically lovely in martyrdom; the green trellis still ornamenting its stained façade, a few autumn roses peeping with childlike curiosity into gaping window-eyes; a silent old gardener raking the one patch of lawn buried under blackened tiles and tumbled bricks. The man's figure was bent, yet I felt that there was hope as well as loyalty in his work. "They will come back home some day," was the expression of that faithful back.
In the exquisite beauty of the forest beyond Senlis there was still—for me—this note of hope. "Where beauty is, sadness cannot dwell for ever!" As we rushed along in the big car, the delicate gray trunks of clustering trees seemed to whirl round and round before our eyes, as in a votive dance of young priestesses. We saw bands of German prisoners toiling gnome-like in dim glades, but they didn't make us sad again. Au contraire! We found poetical justice in the thought that they, the cruel destroyers of trees, must chop wood and pile faggots from dawn to dusk.
So we came to Compiègne, where the French army has its headquarters in one of the most famous châteaux in the world.
CHAPTER XX
It took a mere glance (even if we hadn't known beforehand) to see that noble Compiègne craved no Beckett charity, no American adoption.
True, German officers lived for twelve riotous days in the palace, in 1914, selecting for home use many of its treasures, and German "non-coms." filled vans with rare antiques from the richest mansions; still, they had no time, or else no inclination, to disfigure the town. The most sensational souvenir of those days before the Marne battle is a couple of broken bridges across the Oise and Aisne, blown up by the French in the hour of their retreat. But that strange sight didn't break on our eyes as we entered Compiègne. We seemed to have been transported by white magic from mystic forest depths to be plumped down suddenly in a city square, in front of a large, classical palace. It's only the genie of motoring who can arrange these startling contrasts!