During a lull in the bombardment, he returned, and until two o’clock in the morning dug frantically for his buried treasure. The soldier who guarded the house told me the difference in the way the soldiers dig a trench and the way our absent host dug for his lost money was greatly marked. I found the leaden box cast aside in the dog-kennel. It was the exact size of a suitcase. As none of us knows when he may not have to bury a quarter of a million dollars hurriedly, it is a fact worth remembering. Any ordinary suitcase will do. The soldier and I examined the leaden box carefully. But the owner had not overlooked anything.
When we reached the ruins of the cathedral, we did not need darkness and falling rain to depress us further, or to make the scene more desolate. One lacking in all reverence would have been shocked. The wanton waste, the senseless brutality in such destruction would have moved a statue. Walls as thick as the ramparts of a fort had been blown into powdered chalk. There were great breaches in them through which you could drive an omnibus. In one place the stone roof and supporting arches had fallen, and upon the floor, where for two hundred years the people of Arras had knelt in prayer, was a mighty barricade of stone blocks, twisted candelabra, broken praying-chairs, torn vestments, shattered glass. Exposed to the elements, the chapels were open to the sky. The rain fell on sacred emblems of the Holy Family, the saints, and apostles. Upon the altars the dust of the crushed walls lay inches deep.
The destruction is too great for present repair. They can fill the excavations in the streets and board up the shattered show-windows, but the cathedral is too vast, the destruction of it too nearly complete. The sacrilege must stand. Until the war is over, until Arras is free from shells, the ruins must remain uncared for and uncovered. And the cathedral, by those who once came to it for help and guidance, will be deserted.
But not entirely deserted. The pigeons that built their nests under the eaves have descended to the empty chapels, and in swift, graceful circles sweep under the ruined arches. Above the dripping of the rain, and the surly booming of the cannon, their contented cooing was the only sound of comfort. It seemed to hold out a promise for the better days of peace.
CHAPTER III
THE ZIGZAG FRONT OF CHAMPAGNE
Paris, October, 1915.
In Artois we were “personally conducted.” In a way, we were the guests of the war department; in any case, we tried to behave as such. It was no more proper for us to see what we were not invited to see than to bring our own wine to another man’s dinner.