"Madame," he said very gravely, "we act under the orders of people greater than ourselves, and we are bound to obey, because otherwise we should be shot. But we hate the cruelty of war, and we hate those who have made it. One day we will make them pay for the vile things we have had to do."
What strange little dramas, what tragic stories I have heard in these recent days! I have told the tale of one old priest. Here is the tale of another, as he told it to me in the midst of ruin.
He is the Abbé Barbe, of Muille, near Ham. In the neighbourhood was an enemy, too, a Frenchman, who was once a Christian brother, and now, unfrocked, a drunkard and a debauchee. He accused the abbé of having a telephone in his cellar from which he sent messages to Paris about German military secrets. One night there came a bang at the door of the abbé's study. Five soldiers entered with fixed bayonets and arrested the old priest. He was taken to the fortress of Ham and put into a dark cell with one small iron grating and a plank bed. Here he was interrogated by a German officer, who told him of the grave accusation against him.
"Search my cellars," said the abbé. "If there is a telephone there, shoot me as a spy. If not, set me free, after your court martial."
There was no court martial. After four days in the darkness the abbé was taken away by German soldiers and set down, not at Muille, but at Voyennes, ten kilometres or so away, and forbidden to go back to his village or his church. He went back a few days ago, when the Germans left. When he went into his house he found that it had been sacked. All the rare old books in his library had been burnt. There was nothing left to him.
"Sir," said a sister of charity, "these people whom you see here were brave but tortured in spirit and in body. Beyond the German lines they have lived in continual fear and servitude. The tales which they have told us must make the good God weep at the wickedness of his creatures. There will be a special place in hell, perhaps, for the Emperor William and his gang of bandits."
She spoke the words as a pious aspiration, this little pale woman with meek and kindly eyes, in her nun's dress.