LUNÉVILLE
Lunéville, a dream of fair women of old and new times, linden scents, and
circling Taubes and little white puffs of shrapnel against blue skies.
HÔTEL DES VOSGES, _June 15th, 8 a.m._
Have just breakfasted to the gentle accompaniment of firing on a Taube.
Dear old village life began at an early hour, but of course the Taube put
the cocks and the carts and the geese and all the other usual auroral
sounds quite in the background.
My breakfast service is decorated with the same double cross of Lorraine
that I saw on various houses in Nancy indicating comfortable cellar
accommodation. The cross with the _chardon lorrain_ (Lorraine thistle) is
everywhere.
Popping and cannonading going on at a lively rate, and whir of aero
wheels; a beautiful day. Some little white puffs of shrapnel visible from
my window; I must get dressed and investigate.
Cannonading just stopped. I don’t know whether he got off or was got.
The hotel is discreet and clean, _avec un petit air_.
It has been a good house of the good epoch, and over each window are
diverse and charming eighteenth-century _motifs_ in gray stone.
_6.30 p.m._
Just home from Vitrimont in a blinding blaze of sun, in a motor driven by
E. M., and bearing in large letters the words “Commission Californienne
pour la Reconstruction des Villages Dévastés,” a sort of “open sesame,”
and everywhere bayonets were lowered to let us pass. Nerves a-quiver with
another day’s impressions. Tried lying down, but it didn’t go, so I am in
an arm-chair looking out of my Lorraine window in full eighteenth century
as regards setting, but with a very definite tide of twentieth-century
warfare sweeping through it all. Meant to go to church, where there
are special prayers to be offered up, at Benediction, for the needs of
Lorraine, but, though the spirit was willing, the rest of me was like
lead after the hot, full day and two hours in one spot too tempting.
This morning, before I was dressed, E. M. and Mrs. C. P., also staying
in the hotel, appeared, so I hastily harnessed up for the day and
sallied forth with them. We went first to the charming old house of
Mlle. Guérin, and, going in through a wide hallway, stepped out into a
large garden, where, under some trees, several ladies were sitting, one
of them Madame Saint-R. T. We embraced cordially, in the very evident
fulfilment of destiny. Madame Saint-R. T. was reading Pierre Boyé’s _Cour
de Lunéville_, which I matched with Gaston Maugras’s, and then I looked
about me.
The house, gray and long and low, was, until a hundred years ago, a
Capuchin monastery, when it came into the hands of Mlle. Guérin’s family.
There are old linden-trees in the garden, and some tall cedars and roses
not doing very well; and masses of canterbury-bells and geraniums. At one
end of the garden, against the wall, is an ancient statue of the Virgin,
dark, moss-grown, against still darker walls; we placed the flowers we
had gathered on her breast and in the hands of the Child. _Avions_ were
humming above in the perfect sky, and against the faultless blue was a
very white crescent moon just discernible.
After accepting an invitation for dinner that night, we walked out
through the town toward the Château, once the haunt of witty rulers,
philosophers, and of the fair and evidently too-amiable ladies beloved by
them. However, when we got into the great square of the palace I forgot
about them, for, looking up at the statue of Lasalle, born in Metz,
1775, and fallen at the battle of Wagram, 1807, were two Senegalese whom
_we_ looked at as the Lunéville populace might once have looked at the
camels the young Duke Léopold brought back with him from his wars with
the Turks. The juxtaposition was as strange. One of the Senegalese had
on a blue cap, the other a red. We gave each one a franc for cigarettes,
received large-mouthed, white-toothed smiles, and proceeded to look at
the remains of a German _avion_ which had fallen beside the statue the
day before, the most complete wreck possible. The aviator had been killed
and his broken wings were being removed to the Museum. It made me quite
still—there was something so complete about it all, the great Château in
the background, the statue of Lasalle, the two Senegalese, the shattered
Taube!
We walked on rather quietly over the bridge of the Vesouze to the Place
des Carmes—the Place Brûlée, as it is now called. The big Carmelite
convent which formed the square had been used as a barracks for a
generation or so, and one side had been burned with incendiary bombs
when the Germans left, while the other side was untouched. In the
middle was the statue of L’Abbé Grégoire (who made the mistake of being
ahead of his time), and on the pedestal are the words, “_J’ai vécu sans
lâcheté, je veux mourir sans remords_.” We stopped only a moment at the
church—eighteenth century, of course; fine old choir, delicate baroque
designs on the great wooden doors, and dominating towers in a lovely
reddish stone, with charming _motifs_ of urn and scroll, and flying
angels against the sky, or rather _in_ it.
We began to have that “gone” feeling about this time, and turned back
through the town to E.M.’s house, where we were to lunch. It was cool
and charming as we stepped in out of the sun-flooded garden, stripped
of the mystery of the night before, but quite lovely. In old Lunéville
china vases were masses of pink and purple canterbury-bells. It had been
hastily but charmingly got ready for occupancy with old furniture that
nice people in the provinces can put at the disposition of their friends,
and I saw again Miss P., the Isolde of the dim, scented garden of the
night before. After lunch we sat in an arbor jutting into a corner of the
ancient park, drinking our coffee, and eating some Mirror candies just
out from New York—all to the continued hum of _avions_ and the rather
soft crack of guns. Then the motor was announced, or, to be faithful to
reality, somebody said, “We’d better be off.” We put on our veils, got
into the motor, which E.M. cranked herself, and started off to Vitrimont
without any male assistance of any kind.