Something was said about English ladies, and the Curé courteously turned back. "Will the ladies come into the Presbytère?" We followed him across the small cathedral square to the old house in which he lived, and were shown into a bare dining-room, with a table, some chairs, and a few old religious engravings on the walls. He offered us chairs and sat down himself.
"You would like to hear the story of the German occupation?" He thought a little before beginning, and I was struck with his strong, tired face, the powerful mouth and jaw, and above them, eyes which seemed to have lost the power of smiling, though I guessed them to be naturally full of a pleasant shrewdness, of what the French call malice, which is not the English "malice." He was rather difficult to follow here and there, but from his spoken words and from a written account he placed in my hands, I put together the following story:
"It was August 30th, 1914, when the British General Staff arrived in Senlis. That same evening, they left it for Dammartin. All day, and the next two days, French and English troops passed through the town. What was happening? Would there be no fighting in defence of Paris—only thirty miles away? Wednesday, September 2nd—that was the day the guns began, our guns and theirs, to the north of Senlis. But, in the course of that day, we knew finally there would be no battle between us and Paris. The French troops were going—the English were going. They left us—marching eastward. Our hearts were very sore as we saw them go.
"Two o'clock on Wednesday—the first shell struck the cathedral. I had just been to the top of the belfry to see, if I could, from what direction the enemy was coming. The bombardment lasted an hour and a half. At four o'clock they entered. If you had seen them!"
The old Curé raised himself on his seat, trying to imitate the insolent bearing of the German cavalry as they led the way through the old town which they imagined would be the last stage on their way to Paris.
"They came in, shouting 'Paris—Nach Paris!' maddened with excitement. They were all singing—they were like men beside themselves."
"What did they sing, Monsieur le Curé?—Deutschland über alles'?"
"Oh, no, madame, not at all. They sang hymns. It was an extraordinary sight. They seemed possessed. They were certain that in a few hours they would be in Paris. They passed through the town, and then, just south of the town, they stopped. Our people show the place. It was the nearest they ever got to Paris.
"Presently, an officer, with an escort, a general apparently, rode through the town, pulled up at the Hôtel de Ville, and asked for the Maire—angrily, like a man in a passion. But the Maire—M. Odent—was there, waiting, on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville.
"Monsieur Odent was my friend—he gave me his confidence. He had resisted his nomination as Mayor as long as he could, and accepted it only as an imperative duty. He was an employer, whom his workmen loved. One of them used to say—'When one gets into M. Odent's employ, one lives and dies there.' Just before the invasion, he took his family away. Then he came back, with the presentiment of disaster. He said to me—'I persuaded my wife to go. It was hard. We are much attached to each other—but now I am free, ready for all that may come.'