There was a son,
too--but naturally, he was away fighting.
This young girl, Liane de St. Pol, was one of many in Rheims who
volunteered to help nurse the wounded. All girls brought up in convents
have some skill in nursing, you know!
While she and the Cure were at work in the Cathedral, among the wounded
men who came in were her own brother, a lieutenant, and his best friend,
a captain of his regiment. Both were badly hurt--the St. Pol boy worse
than his friend. Yet even for him there was hope--if he could have had
the best of care--if he could have been taken home and lovingly nursed
there. That was not possible. The surgeons had no time for
house-to-house visits. He was operated on in the Cathedral, and as he
lay between life and death, news came that the Germans were close to
Rheims.
In haste the wounded were sent to Epernay--to save them from being made
prisoners. But some could not go: Louis de St. Pol and his friend
Captain Jean de Visgnes. De Visgnes might have been hidden in the St.
Pol house but he would not leave the boy, who could not be moved so far.
The Cure vowed to hide both, and he did hide them in a chapel of the
Cathedral itself. On September 3, at evening, the first Germans rode
into the town and took up their quarters in the Municipal Palace, where
they forced the Mayor, a very old man, to live with them. It was a
changed Rheims since the day before. The troops of the garrison had gone
in the direction of Epernay, since there was no hope of defence.
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