A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

Long before that they were building beautiful things. Down in the southernmost part of our territory in France stand the ruins of a magnificent castle, the one where Edward the Black Prince took refuge when he was being pursued by that French king with whom he was contesting the crown of France in thirteen hundred and something. With two young naval officers I explored the place one warm spring day, and we were actually awed by the achievement of those builders of olden days.

The castle was not only strong, it was noble and fine in all its masses. “It makes you proud of your Norman ancestors,” said one of the American officers, a Virginian.

You can not go into one of the old Gothic churches or cathedrals on Sunday or week-days without meeting American soldiers, caps in hand, gazing silently at twelfth century Madonnas and saints, or tombs of medieval bishops. The miracle and charm of Gothic architecture is not all that draws our boys to the old churches. The sense of time and antiquity possesses them. It is something entirely new and wonderful to them to realize that the world went on, that people lived and loved and thought about themselves as modern and up-to-date centuries before Columbus discovered America.

In a certain French city, where I made friends with many American soldiers, a group of university professors are making it their business to escort our soldiers over the place, giving them historical talks. This is a very old city, one in which the Romans had a considerable occupation. The ruins of an immense circus built by them still stands in the midst of modern houses and shops. Its masonry is so solid that a ton of dynamite would be required to dislodge it.

At the time of the French revolution it was practically intact, but its use as a fortress and the pounding of cannon against it turned it into the picturesque ruin it is to-day. Our soldiers are exploring that old circus and realizing the grandeur that was Rome more keenly than if they were cramming Latin back home.

“You positively mustn’t miss the mummies,” I was told by my soldier friends in this same city. So one day I went with two boys to see the mummies. There is an ancient church built, centuries ago, outside the city walls, when the town was just beginning to outgrow its walls. The excuse for the walls had not disappeared, however, and local wars and forays among the feudal gentry beat hard on that church. Several times during the years the church was burned to the ground, but it was always rebuilt according to its original plans.

The last time it was rebuilt was about a hundred and fifty years ago, and it was when the excavations were being made that the famous mummies were discovered. They were dug up out of one of the oldest corners of the churchyard and must have passed from life in the fourteenth or the fifteenth century. Something in the chalky nature of the soil preserved them from disintegration, and they remain still rather disagreeable and grewsome likenesses of their original selves.

To see them we descended a flight of worn stone steps into the inky darkness of a crypt. An old, old crone of a woman, herself half a mummy, led the way, a sort of a dark lantern in her hand. She has told the story of the mummies several times a day for so many years that she could probably recite it without troubling herself to wake out of a nap. She can even recite it in a jargon which remotely resembles English.

The mummies, about twenty of them, are hung up like so many old clothes, around the walls of the crypt. Some are mere parchment shells of bodies, others retain rags of clothing, and even rings. The old, old crone turned her lantern on the mummies, one by one. Here was a priest, she said, you could tell by his soutaine. Here was a woman who had died in childbirth, her tiny baby buried with her. Here was a whole family, mother and four children, who had died of poison, perhaps mushrooms. This man was hanged. You could tell—“Ugh! Let’s look at the next one, ma mère,” we implored. The next one was worse, a cataleptic, buried alive.

“What in the world makes you want to look at such things?” I asked when we emerged, in time to meet another group of soldiers bent on the same errand.