"These are more durable," and he showed another relic made of a bayonet sheath, crossed on the blade itself!
"And you—Monsieur le Cure—bow is it you are here?"
"Alas—would to God they had taken me in the place of our boys! Seven of them, Madame, carried off as hostages. I was too old to be of use!"
"And the women?"
The poor little man hung his bead.
"Twere better they had died!"
I understood and shuddered.
"God speed you, my daughter, and never cease to thank Him for preserving you!"
Again we went our way.
Lizy-sur-Ourq, which we reached in the late forenoon, presented a more animated, though hardly more pleasing spectacle. On the tracks in front of the station dozens of flat cars and freight trains had been purposely run together. Some had telescoped, others mounted high in piles, one upon the other, their locomotives as well as their contents being smashed and damaged—the whole scene presenting the aspect of a gigantic railway wreck.