At odd times they turn an honest penny by doing a little sewing for the villagers. But life is very difficult these days: the prices of everything have gone so high. Why, wooden shoes that cost five francs before the war now fetch fifteen!
Tonight I noticed an item in a Parisian Journal lying by my plate. It was to the effect that at the Madeleine that day Mlle. X had married Lieut. Z., a veteran of the war who had lost both arms and both legs. I showed it to the little ladies.
“Ah oui!” sighed Mademoiselle with a shiver. “Elle a beaucoup de courage, celle-là!”
And Madame shook her white head and echoed. “Oui, elle a beaucoup de courage!”
Upstairs an American officer is billeted. I fancy his presence supplies a certain dash of romance to the little old ladies’ lives. The Americans are nice, they say, and make little noise in the village; when the Russians were here it was different.
“It will be lonely when the Americans are gone,” sighs Mademoiselle. “The houses will seem empty.”
Bourmont, December 18.
Yesterday I explored the top of Bourmont Hill. It is here that the Quality Folk live, and here are some stately old houses with beautiful carved doorways and even an occasional gargoyle. Here too the general commanding the Division lives, and I have often observed with glee corpulent colonels and rotund majors puffing and blowing and growing red in the face as they climbed the hill to Headquarters. At the top of the hill there are two churches. Some two weeks ago, it is whispered, a spy was caught signaling from the tower of Notre Dame. His signals, it is said, were flashed to another spy stationed on the hills to the east, who in turn sent the messages on to the lines. The Curé of Notre Dame is being held under suspicion of complicity.
From Notre Dame an avenue bordered by magnificent old trees sweeps around to the Calvary, a tall wooden cross surmounting a curious structure of rough stone, ringed about with shallow steps—the Mecca of many pilgrimages. Beyond the Calvary one comes to the Mystery of Bourmont. A faded sign declares Défense d’éntrée, but one looks the other way and slips by. For once past the gate you are in an atmosphere of enchantment. No one seems to know just what it is, nor how it came about; I can get no intelligent explanation from Madame or Monsieur. To me it seems like the forgotten playground of an old mad king in some fantastic legend. For here among the trees are stone stairs, walls and terraces, and, cut in the curiously cleft rocks, are niches and tunnelled passage-ways, all mantled over now with green moss and ivy, the whole making one think of a dream garden out of Mæterlinck.
Coming down Bourmont Hill afterwards I was startled by the beating of a drum; looking back I saw a woman, bare-headed, her blue apron fluttering in the wind, descending the street after me; from her shoulders was slung the drum which she was beating with a martial vim. It was the town-crier, le tambour as the French put it. Arrived at an appropriate spot, she stopped, pulled out a paper, cried “Avis!” and began to read in a rapid high official monotone. The wash-house was to be closed between two and four o’clock the following afternoon on account of the new water system the Americans were installing. Certain requisitions of grain were to be levied.... The villagers were notified to call at the Mayory for their bread cards, without which, after such a date, no bread could be obtained.... One or two women came to the doors of the houses and listened. She took no notice of them. The reading over, she rolled the paper up with a quick decisive gesture, and resumed her march, the sharp rub-a-dub-dub of her drum pursuing me all the way to Saint Thiebault.