A violent north wind lashed me, up there, and dried my perspiration. A vast panorama lay before me: a series of desolate-looking humps covered the ground, some of them bristling with vine poles, supporting the good Champagne grapes. I took my bearings. Just to the south, I made out the blue ridge of the more important hills, a sort of promontory where I thought an army might have got a good hold. I turned towards the west, a lifeless, colourless stretch of country. The railway line with its telegraph posts disappeared between two low hillocks on that side.
But I thought I could make out the haze and dust rising from a big town. Yes—when I looked harder—there was a purple phantom, the silhouette of a building, hardly discernible in the mist, which little by little grew more distinct—those towers superb in their grace and strength. In my wonder, I named it aloud—Rheims Cathedral.
By some strange chance I had forgotten that this Presence was so near at hand, though on getting into the train that day before, I had vaguely hoped that fate might lead us to it.
My veneration for this most sacred of all shrines dated from my earliest childhood when I had admired a picture of it reproduced in my prayer-book. Abbé Ygonel, my first teacher, had sung the praises of its magnificent harmony in striking terms. I had made of this erection the centre round which gravitated the whole of our history, enchanting as a legend.
I had only once been to see it. I had gone to Rheims for a football match, and before and after the game had left my comrades, and had gone all alone to reflect on the faith which reared the poem of this portal and these towers.
I unconsciously picked up the thread of that meditation again now. The coronation cathedral! It was there that all the kings whose names were landmarks in our annals, from Philippe-Auguste to Louis XVI. had come, with bowed heads, to receive at the hands of holy men the crown and the unction which made them more than men.
Detached from the present, I once more began to rejoice at this glorious realisation—when my meditation was disturbed by an almost imperceptible wave of sound—a distant echo. A storm beginning or ending? I considered the sky. It was clear and serene. Again there was a stifled rumble. This time I ceased to entertain any doubts. Guillaumin's ears had not played him false. My heart contracted at the first echoes of firing to awaken Champagne. I listened. I wanted to find out ... the pale horizon guarded its secret. I looked again. The bewildering part of it was that this rumbling seemed to come not from the borders of Argonne, where we had left our trail only yesterday, but from the opposite direction, stretching westwards towards Paris. Was the enemy there? Could it be possible? Already barring this route!
I had mechanically turned my eyes towards the cathedral again. What was I seeking? I believe it was help and comfort, from thee, the representative city,—vision worthy of exalting us.
Why, on the contrary, did this unbounding sadness worm its way into my heart?
What did this proud edifice declare? The power of Royalty, the glory of the Catholicism.... The soul of ancient France, which was incarnate in these living stones, had crumbled more quickly in the blast of modern thought, than they had in the wear and tear of time. What bound us, the sons of the twentieth century, to these traditions for which our ancestors had lived, and piously lavished themselves in such attestations?