I climbed out into the sunshine.
I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was
profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked
trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I
understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the
broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained
of nine-tenths of Gerbeviller.
I wandered along to where the street turned abruptly. There the ground
pitched more sharply to the little river. There stood an entire half of
a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that
often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact.
Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there
stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin
stretching below her.
"You are lucky," I said. "You still have your home."
She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I
judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn't her home, she explained.
Her home was "la-bas"--pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived
there fifty years--now it was burned. Her son's house for which he had
saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but
then her son was dead, so what did it matter? Yes, he was shot on the
day the Germans came.
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