M. l’Aumônier said more, but I could not hear it. I was aware that he himself set the children an example by praying for us, heretics though we were. It was only when we came out into the open sunlight, and walked up the street to Mme. Lefèvre’s to strip the tree, that laughter became possible, and that one could see the accustomed smile in his eyes. Yet even at the fête, we could not escape from thanks. The presents, selected to be sure with care, but so inadequate compared with the needs, were hardly distributed when a hush fell on the packed room. A boy stepped forward, and began to read from a piece of paper in his hand. A girl followed. Their elders listened with the greatest satisfaction, nodding their heads and smiling at our amazement. And this is what they said,—a measure not of what we did, but of the spirit of stricken Canizy:
Le cœur des dames Américaines s’est emu, à la pensée des misères qu’avait entraînées derrière soi, la terrible guerre, et vous êtes venues parmi nous les mains pleines de bienfaits et vos cœurs débordant de dévouement.
Il nous est bien doux de vous dire merci, en cette circonstance créée encore par votre charité. Notre merci passera, permettez nous Mesdames et chères Bienfaitrices, par la crèche du petit enfant Jésus!
Puisse-t-il vous rendre en consolation, ce que vous lui donnez en bienfaits! Au début de l’année nouvelle, nos vœux sont pour vous et pour ceux qui vous sont chers! Que Dieu comble de gloire, et de prospérité votre noble Amérique! Qu’il féconde sa générosité inlassable, que Dieu vous accorde une bonne santé, nos chères Bienfaitrices, et qu’il vous dise toute l’affection de cette commune, profondément reconnaissante.
CHAPTER XIV
FIDELISSIMA, PICARDIE
Since the commencement of this short volume, the German flood has rolled again across the Somme. Péronne, Nesle, Ham, Noyon, those towns mentioned so often and so gloriously in the annals of France, have fallen once more into the hands of the enemy. With them go the villages where my Unit laboured. Canizy, it is no more. The green-bladed wheatfields have become fields of unspeakable carnage; the poor ruins again smoke to heaven, and down the shattered highways course endlessly the grey columns of that Emperor whose empire is pillage and death.
What, then, remains to us of our labours? At least a memory in the lives of the peasants, and a present help in this their time of stress. Our villagers were rescued, and taken by special trains to safety. The Unit accomplished this work of succour. Their trucks were driven under shell fire through the villages to collect the inhabitants; sometimes they were the last over the bridges; they left our headquarters only when the Uhlans were within charging distance; they have fed and clothed thousands of refugees and soldiers. Mentioned with them in the newspaper accounts of their service is our Red Cross truck driver, Dave. The fate that has overtaken our peasants, what is it but a repetition of the immemorial blows that have welded and tempered their ancestral spirit? As one of their historians has limned them: “Les Picards sont francs et unis.... Ils vivent de peu.... Il arrive rarement que l’activité et le désir de s’avancer les déterminent à sortir de leur pays.... Ils sont sincères, fidèles, libres, brusques, attachés à leurs opinions, fermes dans leurs résolutions.”[6] It was to this spirit that an ancient king of France paid honour, when he granted his kinsman, who held this province, a coat of arms bearing the royal lilies, and the motto: Fidelissima, Picardie.
A thousand such Picards we have known, women for the most part; enduring a bitter winter, a daily hazard, that they might live on their own land and till their own fields once more. There was Mme. Pottier, sitting in her wrecked bakery, where the empty bread baskets were arranged like plaques against the walls. Her husband and her three daughters were prisoners. Her youngest son had died a soldier. She showed me with trembling hands the letter she had received from his Colonel, commending his clean life and his brave death. Her only remaining child was a religieuse,—a Red Cross nurse. I found Mme. Pottier one day reading the “Lives of the Saints.” “I like to read,” she said, “all books that are good. I love well the good God.” But she worked also, and knitted many a pair of stockings for us. First, however, the wool must be weighed. “It is just,” she reiterated after each protest on my part. “My conscience will be easy so.” And up a ladder she mounted to the loft, where stood scales designed to weigh sacks of flour. No weights being small enough, she took a few coppers from her pocket. “Voilà!” she said, throwing them into the balance. “Remember, the skeins weigh six sous; when the stockings are done, you shall see, they will be the same.”