"Now!" said the general, pointing towards the crest.
I stared intently, and a second later, after a solitary thunderstroke from a heavy gun, I saw a shell burst and leave a soft white cloud at the very spot indicated by the old man at my side. I wondered if a few Germans had been killed to prove the point for my satisfaction. What did it matter—a few more deaths to indicate a mark on the map? It was just like sweeping a few crumbs off the table in an argument on strategy.
In another hole to which the general took me was the officers' mess— about as large as a suburban bathroom. At the end of the dining-table the captain was shaving himself, and laughed with embarrassment at our entry. But he gave me two fingers of a soapy hand and said "Enchanté" with fine courtesy.
Outside, at the top of the tunnel, was another group of officers, who seemed to me cheery men in spite of all the hardships of their winter in a subterranean world. The spring had warmed their spirits, and they laughed under the blue sky. But one of them, who stood chatting with me, had a sudden thrill in his voice as he said, "How is Paris?" He spoke the word again and said, "Paris!" as though it held all his soul.
22
There was the real spirit of old-world chivalry in a château of France which I visited two days ago. This old building, with its high gables and pointed roofs, holds the memory of many great chapters in French history. Attila the Hun came this way with his hordes, checked and broken at last, as centuries later, not far away, 100,000 Germans were checked and broken by Dumouriez and the French army of 1792 on the plain of Valmy.
A French officer pointed to a tablet on the wall of the château commemorating that victory, and said: "Perhaps history will be repeated here by the general whom you will see later on." He stooped down and rubbed some dust off a stone, revealing a tracing of the footprint of Henri IV, who once crossed this threshold, and on the way upstairs pointed to other memorial tablets of kings and princes, statesmen and soldiers, who had received the hospitality of this old house.
There are many châteaux of this kind in Champagne, and in one of them we entered a long, bare room, where a French general stood with some of his officers, and I knew that the old spirit of France and its traditions of chivalry have not died. This general, with a silver star on his breast, seemed to me like one of those nobles who fought in the wars of the sixteenth century under the Duc de Guise.
He is a man of less than fifty years of age, with a black beard and steel-blue eyes, extraordinarily keen and piercing, and a fine poise of the head, which gives him an air of dignity and pride, in spite of the simplicity and charm of his manners. I sat opposite to him at table, and in this old room, with stone walls, he seemed to me like the central figure of some mediaeval painting. Yet there was nothing mediaeval except the touch of chivalry and the faith of France in the character of this general and his officers. Men of modern science and trained in a modern school of thought, their conversation ranged over many subjects both grave and gay, and, listening to them, I saw the secret of Germany's failure to strike France to her knees.
With such men as these in command, with that steel-eyed general on the watch—energy and intellectual force personified in his keen, vivacious face—the old faults of 1870 could not happen so easily again, and Germany counted without this renaissance of France. These men do not minimize the strength of the German defensive, but there is no fear in their hearts about the final issue of the war, and they are sure of their own position along this front in Champagne.