But nothing is dropping on us. And reassured, we turn to examine the great shell hole in the pavement not five yards distant. The Archbishop’s Palace, immediately adjoining the church, is flat on the ground in ruins. The cathedral itself is slowly being wrecked. But in the public square directly before it, look here! See Joan of Arc on her horse triumphantly facing the future! In her hand she is waving the bright flag of France. Amid the débris of the great war piling up about her, the famous statue stands absolutely untouched. Here at the very storm centre of the attack on civilisation, with the hell-fire of the enemy falling in a rain of thousands of shells about her, she seems as secure, as safe under God’s heaven as when the people passed daily before her to prayer. Shall we not call it a miracle?
“See,” says the captain, his head reverently uncovered, his eyes shining, “our Maid of Orleans. No German shall ever harm her!” And since the war began, it is true, no German ever has. Not a statue of the famous girl-warrior anywhere in France has been so much as scratched by the enemy. Her name was the password on the day of the Battle of the Marne and there are those who think it was the shadowy figure of a girl on a horse that led the troops to that victory. Oh, though cathedrals may crumble and cities be laid waste and fields be devastated, some time again it shall be well with the world. For the faith of the people of France in Joan of Arc shall never pass away.
That we realize, as we look on the rapt face of the captain who leads us now within the great church itself, where for three years all prayers have ceased. The marvellous stained glass from the thirteenth century, which made the religious light of the beautiful windows, now hangs literally in tatters like torn bed-quilts blowing in the wind. That great jagged hole in the roof was torn by a shell at the last bombardment. There are fissures in the side walls. The rain comes in, and the birds. Doves light there on the transept rail. Amid the rubbish of broken saints with which the floor is littered, there yet stands here and there a sorrowful statue hung with the garland of faded flowers reminiscent of some far-off fête day. And Requiescat in pace, you may read the legend cut in the stone of the eastern wall above the tomb of some Christian Father.
In the nearby Rue du Cardinal de Lorraine, in a garden saying his rosary, walks an old man in a red cap, one of the few remaining residents who will not leave the city. He is the venerable Mgr. Lucon, Cardinal of Rheims. Always he is praying, praying to God to spare the cathedral. And God does not. “I do not understand. I suppose that He in His wisdom must have some purpose in permitting the church to be destroyed,” says the Cardinal of Rheims. “I do not understand,” he always adds humbly.
“One may not understand,” repeats the captain. And he takes us to luncheon at the Lion d’Or, the little inn where the wife of the proprietor still stays to serve any “mission of the French gouvernement.” Then he shows us the famous champagne cellars of the Etablissement Pommery. Here one hundred feet below the ground, in the chalk caves built a thousand years ago by the Romans, are twelve miles of subterranean passageways with thirteen million bottles of the most celebrated champagne in the making.
The superintendent pours out his choicest brand: “Vive la France and the Allies,” he says, lifting his glass. He talks more English than the captain can. He is telling us of when the Germans entered Rheims. “Four officers,” he says, “came riding ahead of the army. And I met them by chance just as they arrived in the market place of Rheims.”
“What did you do?” asks the New York correspondent of the London Daily Mail. “I wept,” says the Frenchman, simply and impressively. “Gentlemen,” he adds solemnly and sadly, “I hope you may never meet some day four conquering Chinamen riding up Broadway.”
I find myself catching my breath suddenly at that. And I am glad when the captain hums a gay little French tune and holds out his glass a second time: “Give us again ‘Vive la France.’”
The sun is dipping red in the west when we turn to leave Rheims and Joan of Arc bravely flying the French flag before its crumbling cathedral. There is the rumble of guns once more at the front. Then the winter dusk rapidly envelops the road along which we are speeding. It is the same road to Epernay. But now it is alive with traffic. Under the protecting cover of the soft darkness, all sorts of vehicles are passing. The headlights of our car flash on a continuous procession of motor lorries, munition-wagons, army supply-wagons, tractors, and peasants’ carts carrying produce to market. So we arrive at Epernay for a lunch of red wine and war bread at the little station. By ten o’clock we are safely within the walls of Paris. We have escaped bombardment!
It is two days later before the French official communiqué in the daily papers begins again recording: “At Rheims toward six o’clock last night, after a violent attack with trench mortars, the Germans twice stormed our advance posts. But these two attempts completely failed under our machine-gun fire and grenade bombing.”