It was lucky I did, for I found everything changed at Meaux. In the first place, we could not have an automobile, as General Joffre had issued an order forbidding the circulation inside of the military zone of all automobiles except those connected with the army. We could have a little victoria and a horse, but before taking that, we had to go to the Préfet de Police and exhibit our papers and get a special sauf- conduit,—and we had to be diplomatic to get that.
Once started, instead of sliding out of the town past a guard who merely went through the formality of looking at the driver's papers, we found, on arriving at the entrance into the route de Senlis, that the road was closed with a barricade, and only one carriage could pass at a time. In the opening stood a soldier barring the way with his gun, and an officer came to the carriage and examined all our papers before the sentinel shouldered his musket and let us pass. We were stopped at all the cross-roads, and at that between Barcy and Chambry,—where the pedestal of the monument to mark the limit of the battle in the direction of Paris is already in place,—we found a group of a dozen officers—not noncommissioned officers, if you please, but captains and majors. There our papers, including American passports, were not only examined, but signatures and seals verified.
This did not trouble me a bit. Indeed I felt it well, and high time, and that it should have been done ten months ago.
It was a perfect day, and the battlefield was simply beautiful, with the grain well up, and people moving across it in all directions. These were mostly people walking out from Meaux, and soldiers from the big hospital there making a pilgrimage to the graves of their comrades. What made the scene particularly touching was the number of children, and the nurses pushing babies in their carriages. It seemed to me such a pretty idea to think of little children roaming about this battlefield as if it were a garden. I could not help wishing the nation was rich enough to make this place a public park.
In spite of only having a horse we made the trip easily, and got back here by dinner-time.
Two days later we had an exciting five minutes.
It was breakfast time. The doctor and I were taking our coffee out-of- doors, on the north side of the house, in the, shade of the ivy-clad wall of the old grange. There the solitude is perfect. No one could see us there. We could only see the roofs of the few houses at Joncheroy, and beyond them the wide amphitheatre-like panorama, with the square towers of the cathedral of Meaux at the east and Esbly at the west, and Mareuil-lès-Meaux nestled on the river in the foreground.
You see I am looking at my panorama again. One can get used to anything, I find.
It was about nine o'clock.
Suddenly there was a terrible explosion, which brought both of us to our feet, for it shook the very ground beneath us. We looked in the direction from which it seemed to come—Meaux—and we saw a column of smoke rising in the vicinity of Mareuil—only two miles away. Before we had time to say a word we saw a second puff, and then came a second explosion, then a third and a fourth. I was just rooted to my spot, until Amélie dashed out of the kitchen, and then we all ran to the hedge,—it was only a hundred feet or so nearer the smoke, and we could see women running in the fields,—that was all.