“It has served its purpose, monsieur; we have no right to larger regrets than have others. Come, my children, let us go.”
With a last look round the room that had seen so much of her life within its walls, she passed out, and bidding us gather our lighter valuables and some clothing, withdrew for a few moments to her own room, and then rejoined us in the hallway.
We made a sad little procession as we threaded our way through the ruined streets, between the smoking and crumbling walls of the homes we had looked upon but yesterday, bright with all the assuring signs of comfortable, secure life, past the wrecked Cathedral, and between piles of household goods heaped in ruinous confusion in the Place. This was now crowded with anxious, pale-faced people, hollow-eyed and aged with the terror of actual war, seeking out their little valuables, some with shrill-voiced complaint and contention, others with a hopeless, silent mien that went to our hearts, and yet others with an air of gayety and the tricks and buffooneries of school children.
We were thankful to escape out of the hubbub and distraction of the streets to the quiet within the walls of the Hôtel-Dieu; but, alas! the next night the bombardment recommenced, and it was apparent we could not long hope for safety, as the English fire became more exact and far-reaching.
The white-robed nuns moved about their duties with calm resignation, though often the trembling lips or the involuntary start told of the strain it cost to control the natural alarm which shook the heart when some nearer crash foretold approaching disaster.
Lucy lay calm and unmoved; every day that brought the English nearer, was bringing her nearer to Kit. The thunder of the bombardment was to her like the knocking on the gate which shut her in from her one object in life, and that it was being shattered meant only deliverance. When orders came to remove to the General Hospital, without the walls of the town and beyond all immediate danger, she was more disturbed than at any time during the siege.
The Hospital stood in the valley of the St. Charles, somewhat less than a mile from the town, with the river sweeping in a great bend on the one side, and the steep Heights, at the end of which the town stood, rising on the other. We were cut off from any view of the St. Lawrence, but the sight of the bridge of boats, with its hornwork, across the tongue of land enclosed by the sweep of the river, and the walls of the town crowning the Heights, kept us in touch with the struggle going on between us and the English, who still held the St. Lawrence, with its opposite shore.
The convent itself was a pile of grey stone buildings forming a quadrangle with wings, begun by the Recollect fathers nearly a century before. It was in two of their curious little cells that Mme. de Sarennes, Angélique, and I were lodged. The chapel opened out of the square entry—it scarce could be dignified as a hall—on which the principal doorway gave, and to the right of this was the long, low-ceilinged room, lighted by many-paned windows down one side, which now served as a common meeting-place for the nuns of the three congregations and their numerous guests.
Here all who were willing and able to work placed themselves under the direction of the Superior, for the nuns had more than they could well attend to, with the invalids of the Hôtel-Dieu added to their own, as well as the wounded, who now began to come in.