He shrugged. What can be expected from the followers of such a leader? Their exploits put mediæval mercenaries to shame.
Stenay must find another historian; but even while I refuse to become the chronicler of atrocities, every line I write rises up to confute me. For was not the very invasion of France an "atrocity"? Is the word so circumscribed in its meaning that it contains only arson, murder and rape? Does not the refinement of suffering inflicted upon every refugee, upon every homeless sinistré, upon the basket-makers of Vaux-les-Palamies as upon Madame Lassanne, and poor old creatures like the Leblans fall within it too, and would not the Germans stand convicted before the Tribunal of such narratives even if the gross sins of the uncivilised beast had never been laid at their door?
Madame Pierrot told me nothing about Stenay—perhaps she saw nothing but the inside of her prison walls—but she told me a great deal about the kindness of the Swiss when she crossed the frontier one happy day, and the joy-bells were ringing in her heart. They gave her food and drink, they overwhelmed her with sympathy, they offered her clothes. But Madame said no. She was a propriétaire, she had good land in Villers.
"Keep the clothes for others, they will need them more than I. In my house at Villers-aux-Vents there are armoires full of linen and underclothing, everything that I need. I can wait."
I often wonder whether realisation came to her at Révigny, or whether, all ignorant of the tragedy, she walked blithely up the hill, the joy-bells ringing their Te Deum in her heart, her thoughts flitting happily from room to room, from armoire to armoire, conning over again the treasures she had been parted from so long. Did she know only as she turned the last sharp bend in the road and saw the village dead at her feet? Ah, whether she knew as she trudged over the much-loved road, or whether knowledge came only with sight, what a home-coming was that! She found the answer to the eternal question, "What shall we find when we return?" ... How many equally poignant answers still lie hidden in the womb of time to be brought forth in anguish when at last the day of restoration comes?
III
Even the longest story must come to an end some time, and so did Madame Pierrot's. Conscience, tugging wildly at the strings of memory, spoke to me of my lost comrade; the instinct of hospitality asserted itself in Madame's soul. We were strangers, we must see the sights. Would I go with her to her "house," and to the dug-out of the Crown Prince? Yes? Bon. Allons. And away we trotted to gather up the lost one among the ruins, to inspect the dug-out, to eat delicious little plums which Madame gathered for us in the orchard, and finally to be seized by the pangs of a righteous hunger which simply shrieked for food. Where should we eat? Madame mourned over her brick and rubble. If we had come before the war she would have given us a déjeuner fit for a king. A good soup, an omelette, des confitures, a cheese of the country, coffee, but now? "Regardez, Mademoiselle. Ah que c'est triste. Il n'y a rien du tout, du tout, du tout." And indeed there was nothing but a mound of material that might have been mistaken for road rubbish.
Eventually she found a stone bench in the yard, and there we munched our sandwiches while she flitted away, to come back presently with bunches of green grapes, sweet enough but very small. The vine had not been tended for a year, it was running wild. They were not what ces dames should be given, but if we would accept them? We would have taken prussic acid from her just then, I believe, but fortunately it did not occur to her to offer it. She cut us dahlias from her ragged garden (once loved and carefully tended), and hearing that one of us was a connoisseur in shell-cases, bits of old iron and other gruesome relics, rooted about until she found another shell-case, with which upon our backs we staggered over to Laimont.
And now let me hereby solemnly declare that if any one ever dares to tell me that the French are inhospitable I will smite him with a great and deadly smiting. I am not trying to suggest that they clasped us in their arms and showered riches upon us within an hour of our meeting. They showed a measure of sanity and caution in all their ways. They waited to see what manner of men we were before they flung wide their doors, but once the doors were wide the measure of their generosity was only limited by the extent of our need.
Was it advice, an introduction to an influential person, a string pulled here, a barrier broken down there, Madame B. and Madame D. were always at our service. Gifts of fruit and flowers came constantly to our door, our bidons were miraculously filled with paraffin in a famine which we, being foolish virgins, had not foreseen, or, foreseeing, had not guarded against, and once in the heavy frost, when wood was unobtainable in the town and the supply ordered from Sermaize was over-long in coming, our lives were saved by a bag of oak blocks which scented the house, and boulets that made the stove glow with magnificent ardour. In every difficulty we turned to Madame B. She helped us out of many an impasse, and whether we asked her to buy dolls in Paris or, by persuading a General and his Staff that without our timely aid France could never win the war, to reconcile an Army Corps to our erratic activities in its midst, she never failed us. When two of our party planned a week-end shopping expedition to Nancy, it was Madame B. who discovered that the inhabitants of that much-harassed town were leading frozen lives in their cellars, and if she was sometimes electrifyingly candid in her criticism, she was equally unstinted in her praise. Madame D., with her old-world courtesy, was no less hospitable, and many a frantic S.O.S. brought her at top speed to our door.