Her street (but for her it would not exist) has perhaps a dozen houses
intact, looking strangely _bourgeois_, almost out of place, so smugly
whole where all else has perished. Yet it was a comfort to see them, and
wonderful to see Soeur Julie.
We knocked at the door of the hospice, the cottage hospital which is
famous because of her, its head and heart; and she herself let us in,
for at that instant she had been in the act of starting out. I
recognized her at once from the photographs which were in every
illustrated paper at the time when, for her magnificent bravery and
presence of mind, she was named Chevaliere of the Legion of Honour.
But with her first smile I saw that the pictures had done her crude
injustice. They made of Soeur Julie an elderly woman in the dress of a
nun; somewhat stout, rather large of feature. But the figure which met
us in the narrow corridor had dignity and a noble strength. The smile of
greeting lit deep eyes whose colour was that of brown topaz, and showed
the kindly, humorous curves of a generous mouth. The flaring white
headdress of the Order of Saint-Charles of Nancy framed a face so strong
that I ceased to wonder how this woman had cowed a German horde; and it
thrilled me to think that in this very doorway she had stood at bay,
offering her black-robed body as a shield for the wounded soldiers and
poor people she meant to save.
Even if we had not come from the Prefet, and with some of his family who
were her admiring friends, I'm sure Soeur Julie would have welcomed
the strangers.
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