VII
MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)
I
I had gone to Lyons to see the war relief work of that flourishing city and Madame Goujon went South at the same time to visit her husband's people. We agreed to meet in the little town of Bourg la Bresse, known to the casual tourist for its church erected in the sixteenth century by Margaret of Austria and famous for the carvings on its tombs.
Otherwise it is a picturesque enlarged village with a meandering stream that serves as an excuse for fine bridges; high-walled gardens, ancient trees, and many quaint old buildings.
Not that I saw anything in detail. The Mayor, M. Loiseau, and Madame Goujon met me at the station, and my ride to the various hospitals must have resembled the triumphal progress of chariots in ancient Rome. The population leaped right and left, the children even scrambling up the walls as we flew through the narrow winding streets. It was apparent that the limited population of Bourg did not in the least mind being scattered by their Mayor, for the children shrieked with delight, and although you see few smiles in the provinces of France these days, and far more mourning than in Paris, at least we encountered no frowns.
The heroine of Bourg is Madame Dugas. Once more to repeat history: Before the war Madame Dugas, being a woman of fashion and large wealth, lived the usual life of her class. She had a château near Bourg for the autumn months: hunting and shooting before 1914 were as much the fashion on the large estates of France as in England. She had a villa on the Rivera, a hôtel in Paris, and a cottage at Dinard. But as soon as war broke out all these establishments were either closed or placed at the disposal of the Government. She cleaned out a large hotel in Bourg and installed as many beds as it was possible to buy at the moment. Then she sent word that she was ready to accommodate a certain number of wounded and asked for nurses and surgeons.
The Government promptly took advantage of her generous offer, and her hospital was so quickly filled with wounded men that she was obliged to take over and furnish another large building. This soon overflowing as well as the military hospitals of the district, she looked about in vain for another house large enough to make extensive installations worth while.
During all those terrible months of the war, when the wounded arrived in Bourg by every train, and household after household put on its crêpe, there was one great establishment behind its lofty walls that took no more note of the war than if the newspapers that never passed its iron gates were giving daily extracts from ancient history. This was the Convent de la Visitation. Its pious nuns had taken the vow never to look upon the face of man. If, as they paced under the great oaks of their close, or the stately length of their cloisters telling their beads, or meditating on the negation of earthly existence and the perfect joys of the future, they heard an echo of the conflict that was shaking Europe, it was only to utter a prayer that the souls of those who had obeyed the call of their country and fallen gloriously as Frenchmen should rest in peace. Not for a moment did the idea cross their gentle minds that any mortal force short of invasion by the enemy could bring them into contact with it.
But that force was already in possession of Bourg. Madame Dugas was a woman of endless resource. Like many another woman in this war the moment her executive faculties, long dormant, were stirred, that moment they began to develop like the police microbes in fevered veins.