SUNDAY
September 27, 1914.
I have been at work all the morning.
At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he carried the great missal, borrowed from the curé of Lenting, in which he likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn. His firmness of conviction, be it noted, was absolute. But—shades of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Sales, where were you?
Guido often discusses his faith with me in the evenings, when, before the roll-call, we stroll together on the deserted glacis, just after the stars have come out. He takes great pains to expound to me the beauties of the Catholic liturgy. It is, in very truth, incomparable. For those who can believe in the miracle of the host, nothing in the world can be so touching or so sublime as the daily drama of the mass. But what a pity that it has to be said in Latin, so that none but those who have had a classical education can appreciate it to the full. This morning, for instance, I doubt if there were three of the comrades able to understand the Epistle and the Gospel of the day. If it is considered essential to retain Latin as a symbol of universalism, why should not the Latin reading be instantly followed by vernacular rendering of these verses of Scripture wherein are contained the essentials of our faith, be it Roman Catholic or Protestant?
Yet how simple and how moving was the ritual, improvised, shortened, of necessity reduced to its elements—altar, candles, incense, vestments. No Saint-Sulpician imagery! Bare walls, rough and white. It was possible to fancy oneself in a catacomb, in the first ages of the church.
Quite recently this armoured keep has been deprived of its four or five ancient guns. There they were at their posts, muzzles in the loopholes, ready at the supreme moment to sweep with their fire the north of the counterscarp beyond the second encircling wall. They had been in this damp crypt for perhaps thirty years, without ever being used. Now they are on their way to the Russian front. The Germans must be hard put to it for guns, to make use of these relics!
The crowd of the faithful, French soldiers and Bavarian Landwehrleute, standing indiscriminately, peacefully pressed shoulder to shoulder, served to warm the casemate a trifle. I shivered, none the less, whilst Boude, with a voice grave and sweet, sang the ample strophes of the Adoro te of St. Thomas. At one moment, impressed by the strong and noble simplicity of this sanctuary of exile, I called up in memory the interior of the church attended by the bathers of Trouville. The contrast was so violent that.…