And still there was nothing!
Of course, I told myself, it must be the mist. But could mist be thick
enough entirely to hide a great mountain of a cathedral from eyes
drawing nearer every minute? Then, suddenly, my question was answered by
the mist itself. I must have hypnotized it! A light wind, which we had
thought was made by the motor, cut like the shears of Lachesis through
the woolly white web. A gash of blue appeared and in the midst,
floating as if it had died and gone to heaven, the Cathedral.
Yes, "died and gone to heaven!" That is just what has happened to
Notre-Dame of Rheims. The body has been martyred, but the soul is left
alive--beautiful, brave soul of the old stones of France!
"Oh!" went up from three voices in the motor-car. I think even our
one-legged soldier-chauffeur emitted a grunt of joy; and Mother Beckett
clasped her hands on her little thin breast, as if she were praying,
such a wonderful sight it was, with the golden coronation of the
noon-day sun on the towers. Our officer-guide, in his car ahead, looked
back as if to say, "I told you so! They can't kill France, and Rheims is
the very spirit and youth of France."
Not one of us spoke another word until we drove into the town, and began
exclaiming with horror and rage at what Attila II has done to the
streets.
The mist had fallen again, not white in the town, but a pale, sad gray,
like a mantle of half-mourning. It hung over the spacious avenues and
the once fine, now desolate, streets, which had been the pride of
Rheims; it slipped serpent-like through what remained of old arcades: it
draped the ancient Gate of Mars in the Place de la Republique as if to
hide the cruel scars of the bombardment; it lay like soiled snow on the
mountain of tumbled stone which had been the Rue St.
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