If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little. The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century, and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window—though it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent adventures when he feels the first chill of age—is stamped with the characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a maire, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See. Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little house—surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and his biretta.
We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, and thus also had the aged waiter at the Métropole disposed of a flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could hear the thunder of their guns.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de Nangis. See M. Lacabane in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes (1e série), t. iii.
XIV
THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS
We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we entered the Forest of Compiègne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, as we drove into Compiègne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as our own, in their mouse-coloured couvre-casques and cavalry cloaks, though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood about the square in front of the exquisite Hôtel de Ville, with its high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many pinnacles. North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us between Compiègne and Paris.
The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms—just such an avenue as that along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbé Lantaigne—yet not a soul was to be seen upon the trottoir. A brooding silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out.