The vitrier did not reply. His eyes wavered from the magnificence above him to the spiritualized countenance at his side. It surprised him that the archbishop, renowned alike for his piety and good works, should speak so slightingly of his life.
The ecclesiastic had turned and was gazing at the representation of the Almighty on the great rose window of the south transept. Something of the sublimity of the conception and execution of the masterpiece was reflected on his face, over which still hovered an expression of humility. His eyes left the window and swept up the vast stretches of the cathedral, over mighty pillars, great misty aisles, glorious choir, its beauty half shrouded in the encroaching shadows, until they reached the very penetralia of the Lady Chapel.
“Ah, Jean,” he went on in a deep, vibrant voice, “great is God’s goodness that He has seen fit to confide this marvelous structure to our keeping. May we so live that, when we are called to give an accounting of our stewardship, we may hear the wondrous words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’”
The lips of the aged vitrier moved in a murmured “Amen,” and they watched in silence the sun, as it threw its dying rays through the window to their feet. They fell in a great splash of red, like blood, on the pavement, and a shudder shook the archbishop’s frame. He passed his hand over his forehead, and the shadow that had clouded his face in the morning settled once more on it. Bidding the old glass-painter good night, he moved up the dusky nave.
Days and weeks slipped by, and the gray waves of the invaders rolled nearer to Rheims. Notwithstanding the heroic, almost superhuman, efforts of her sons, the vandals swept across her borders into France, ravishing, desecrating, destroying in a frenzy of frightfulness so terrible that the world, shocked beyond belief, stood aghast and incredulous at the reports that reached it.
The archbishop of Rheims, with others who believed that there was good in the worst of men, at first resolutely declined to credit the rumors that reached him. But when, at last, driven before the attacking force, the refugees, with terror-stricken faces, came breathlessly into the city, the mothers clutching their babies to their breasts, with little tots scarce able to toddle clinging to their skirts and, throwing themselves on his mercy, recounted with white lips, in a dull monotone, the horrors that had befallen them and theirs, the hopeful trust in the old priest’s face turned into a crushed look of sadness as the knowledge came home to him that his faith in man was an illusion of which, at the end of his life, he was to be bereaved.
He lent such aid as lay in his power to the stricken peasants, and when the wounded, friend and foe, were brought in and, overflowing hospital and private dwelling, still clamored for succor, he threw open the great sanctuary to the Germans with the thought that here they would at least be safe from the shells that were beginning to fall on the outlying districts of the city.
Then one night, when the foreboding chill of autumn had replaced summer’s golden warmth, the archbishop was awakened by a noise, apparently in his bedroom, which shook the house to its foundations. He rose hurriedly and, going to the window, saw that the east was ablaze with light. Although the dawn was approaching, he realized that the refulgence that flared across the horizon was man-made, for the rumble of mighty guns which, when he had retired the night before, had been louder and more resonant than before, had risen to a threatening roar that forced a sickening sense of impotence upon him.
Startled by the sudden proximity of the enemy, the archbishop dressed hurriedly and made his way to the Square, already half filled with people. An old woman approached him and, with blanched face, asked whether he thought the city would be shelled and destroyed, as were the Belgian towns. He shook his head despairingly, and his lips framed the words:
“God forbid!”