Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Of faith so nobly realised as this.”

It was with a feeling of amazement as well as of horror that one September day the world learnt of the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.

The interior of the great church had been filled with wounded, most of them, be it noted, German, and a large Red Cross had been hung out from one of the towers. When the bombardment began, an effort was made to move these poor soldiers out, but they were lying on straw, the straw caught fire, and several of the people in the cathedral were killed by the German shells, including four Sisters of Mercy. Much of the floor became thickly littered with the stained glass, which fell in showers out of the great windows, six hundred years old, which were, perhaps, the chief glory of the Cathedral. To add to the horror of the scene the wounded, terrified by the sight of flames and smoke, began trying painfully to drag themselves out of danger.

As the unhappy German wounded appeared at the great doors, which someone had already flung open, there rose from the townspeople assembled outside a hoarse, insistent cry of “Kill them! Kill them!” For some of those in the crowd unjustly suspected these men of having set the cathedral on fire.

For a while it looked as if the German prisoners would be massacred, but at the critical moment the Abbé Andrieux, a gentle, quiet little priest, sprang forward, placing himself with outstretched arms before the great doors. Behind him pressed forward the terrified wounded, standing, crouching, and crawling—their one thought to escape the fire, smoke, and falling glass and masonry inside.

“Stand back! Don’t fire!” shouted the Abbé “If you kill them you will be far more guilty than they!”

Ashamed, the crowd shrank back. But they went on hissing and hooting while their enemies were carried to shelter close by.

The present writer is almost as grieved at the injury which was also done to the ancient Church of Saint Rémy, at Rheims, which is a hundred years older than the cathedral. It had already been built some time when Joan of Arc was born at Domrémy, the little village on the Upper Meuse, which was, in a sense, the creation of the Abbé and monks of St. Rémy of Rheims. The Abbé had a very kindly feeling for Domrémy, and he generously gave Joan’s father, Jacques d’Arc, a patent exempting the village from all taxes and tribute. This exemption was maintained until the French Revolution. In the registers kept by the tax-gatherers the blank space opposite the name of this parish was quaintly inscribed year after year, and century after century, “On Account of The Maid.”

During the bombardment, the people of Rheims kept up their courage, and that even when they had to live for many days in their cellars. An Englishman had a talk with one old French gentleman in a cellar dwelling.

“The one thing that keeps us going,” he said, “is my wag of a son, my seventh, for every time a shell falls, or bursts over the house-tops, he makes some fresh joke, the young beggar.”