I think it had been called
Durocoroturum up to that time--or some equally awful name, which you
remember only because you expect to forget! I hardly dared tell the
Becketts about the celebrated archiepiscopal palace where the kings used
to be entertained by the archbishops (successors of Saint Remi) while
the coronation ceremonies were going on: and the _Salle du Tau_ with its
wonderful hangings, its velvet-cushioned stone seats and carved,
upright furniture, where the royal guests--in robes stiff with jewelled
embroidery--had their banquets from plates of solid silver and gold. It
seemed cruel to speak of splendours vanished forever, vanished like the
holy oil of the sacred phial brought from heaven by a dove for the
baptism of Clovis, and kept for the anointing of all those dead kings!
But it was just the time and place to talk about Attila--Attila the
First, I mean, of whom, as I told you, I firmly believe the present
"incumbent" to be the reincarnation. As Attila I. thought fit to put
Rheims to the sword, Atilla II. is naturally impelled by the "spiral" to
do his best from a distance, by destroying the Cathedral which wasn't
begun in his predecessor's day. But what does he think, I wonder, about
the prophecy? That in Rheims--scene of the first German defeat on the
soil of Gaul--Germany's last defeat will be celebrated, with great
rejoicing in the Cathedral she has tried to ruin?
Those words, "tried to ruin," I uttered rather feebly, holding forth to
the Becketts, because we had passed a long dark line of trees before
which--we'd been told--we ought to see the Cathedral rise triumphant
against an empty background of sky.
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