It was so good to know that Mother Beckett was out of danger,
and that it was I who had helped to drag her out! Besides, after all the
stricken towns that have saddened our eyes, it was enlivening to be in
one (as Mother Beckett said at Compiegne) with "whole houses." In
contrast, good St. Firmin's ancient city looks almost as gay as Paris.
Our hotel with its pleasant garden and the fine shops--(where it seems
you can still buy every fascinating thing from newest jewellery and
oldest curiosities, to Amiens' special "_roc_" chocolates)--the long,
arboured boulevards, the cobbled streets, the quaint blue and pink
houses of the suburbs, and the poplar-lined walk by the Somme, all, all
have the friendliest air! Despite the crowds of soldiers in khaki and
horizon blue who fill the streets and cafes, the place seems outside
war. Even the stacked sandbags walling the west front and the side
portals of the grandest cathedral in France suggest comfortable security
rather than fear. The jackdaws and pigeons that used to be at home in
the carvings, camp contentedly among the bags, or walk in the neglected
grass where sleep the dead of long ago. I didn't want to remember just
then, or let any one else remember, that twenty miles away were the
trenches and thousands of the dead of to-day!
Never can Amiens have been such a kaleidoscope of colourful animation
since Henri II of France and Edward VI of England signed the treaty of
peace here, with trains of diplomatists and soldiers of church and state
and dignified rejoicings!
It wasn't until we were inside the cathedral that I forgot my
manoeuverings.
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