THE INVASION
The deluge came. The spreading front of the magnificent wave of destroying Germans swept into France from Belgium, engulfing towns, foundering villages, flooding the wide country with its encompassing waters. Bah—the symbol is hopeless. Not water, the life-giving and fructifying essence of the skies, which fills the earth with gladness, not the moisture of the meandering rivulets that enamel the ground with flowers and grass, not the blessed warm rains that search the little brown rootlets of the glorious trees, and feed them nutriment and gather to them the atoms of mineral from the ground, that through the great trunks and all of the enlacing branches, build aloft to the bending skies the temple for the birds, and the home of protecting shadows, the wide canopy of beauty that holds the mists of the morning, and holds back the fury of the storms. None of these things that start in our minds familiar images of flowers and fruitage, when the pleasant word waters fills our ears—none of these came with the Germans.
It was a wave, but a wave of FIRE, consuming, scorifying, killing, fire; it was a flood, but a flood of ravenous flames, ravishing, withering, scorching, cremating flames—and there were indeed waters. What?—the endlessly running fountain of tears. Tears of fathers, and mothers, wives and children, tears over vanished homes, vanished faces, vanished tongues; tears before the black unpitying future of penury and want, of loneliness and beggary; tears over maimed lives, lost bodies, voiceless orphans, crushed shrines, deluded hopes—Nay differently, tears that were never shed, dried up in the fierce heat of bitterness and hate and terror, of shuddering despair, of dumb abnegation; fountains of grief indeed that were sucked dry by the tempest of impiety, that gathered them up into a storm-cloud before the Throne of the Most High and from whose depths rolled the awful summons—"Why, Why, Why, is This?"
I had given my lecture in St. Choiseul, and the little church house was finely packed. The people came from the villages about, trudging over the roads, riding horses and mules, driving in wagons and chariots, with country gentlemen amongst them, and lovely ladies, and bunches of the older children. The choir of the seminary at Bienne helped us, and sang touching songs, and gay ones too, and songs of courage and songs of prayer. It was inspiring. I looked at the patch-work assemblage, the earnest young and the pale and trembling old—many helped by their children to walk into the big room—the maidens wearing the tricolor in profusion, the boys waving flags, and Monsieur Raoul la Fayette de Birot, the owner of the superb chateau over towards La Ferté where each year were held the grand chasse-cours, seated in the front row with madame, splendidly arrayed, while at his side sat the humble chasse-mulet from Briois shrinking at first and fumbling his way to some less conspicuous place, and held back by M. de Birot who spoke up quite loudly:
"Restez. Je vous prie. À present nous sommes tous français, tous amis, Comment! fait-il une difference, quand la patrie est en peril?"
There were shouts of encouragement and approval, and then the crowded hall rose en masse, and sang the Marseillaise. It shook the rafters and went far away through the open windows, and woke the sleeping birds.
Père Antoine introduced me very prettily, very sweetly, and when he took my hand and led me forward to the edge of the stage the cheering was tremendous. I saw Gabrielle, and father and mother, the Capitaine, Privat Deschat, and Père Grandin, all together near the front, and dear sister held her face in her kerchief, because she could not hold back the tears.
I was a little frightened at the beginning, but I found my tongue, and described the scenes in Paris, and what the government was doing and how the troops were being mobilized, and the news of the successful landing of the English reinforcements, and the confidence everywhere, and then I read a part of M. Viviani's speech at the Chamber of Deputies, and closed with a recitation from Bambetta's great oration.
Ah! that was magnificent; I had skill in such things—as what Frenchman has not—and thrilled with emotion, my heart afire with pride and hope and love, I declaimed the blazing lines as though my lips were touched by the same divine flame that had lit those of the great tribune.