On Sunday morning, the German artillerists redoubled their fire on the Cathedral—to France her most sacred building, where all her kings had been crowned and to which Joan of Arc led the Dauphin, and to the art-lovers of the world, a work of transcendent beauty.
The cathedral was not being used as an observation station, as the Germans alleged. It was being used as a hospital for the German wounded and two large Red Cross flags were flying from it. A shell struck the scaffolding which had been erected for restoring the left tower. The scaffolding flamed, and the fire spread to the old arched roof of oak below the roof of stone. The molten lead from the gutters fell on the straw within, where the wounded Germans were lying. The interior became a mass of flames, threatening to burn the wounded men alive.
Swift to the rescue sprang the gray-haired Archbishop Landreux. The aged prelate, together with a young priest, rushed into the flaming fane. Within, the straw was ablaze, overhead the timbers were crackling, glistening drops of molten metal menaced them every few yards and shells were dropping steadily. The frail archbishop lent his feeble strength to those who were able to stagger, and Abbé Chinot bodily picked up the wounded and carried them out.
A revulsion of mob fury seized the people. They saw their Cathedral in flames, they saw the shells deliberately aimed for it, they saw their inoffensive dead in the bombarded streets and they saw a just vengeance in allowing the German wounded to burn alive in the pyre of their own making. The mob, hoarse with rage and growing wilder every minute, raised its rifles to fire at the wounded men who had been carried out.
The gray-haired archbishop, a Prince of Men as well as a Prince of the Church, stepped quietly between them.
"Very well, my children," he said, "but you will fire on me first."
The demon-shriek of the shells continued, the drumming of gunfire continued, but in the crowd there was silence. Then, with that sudden response to greatness which lies hid in the hearts of all men, the crowd leaped forward as one man to save the wounded men for whom, a moment before, they had been clamoring to see burned alive.
And, through the whole scene, the statue of Joan of Arc looked on at the brave act of a prelate she would have delighted to honor and the recognition of courage by the people she herself gave her own life to save.