GERBÉVILLER AND LA SŒUR JULIE
We started out for Gerbéviller in a blinding sun, over a road leading
through pleasant green meadows. That is one of the strange things of
Lorraine—everywhere destroyed villages and everywhere well-planted
fields, almost as if planted by the ghostly throngs of heroes who lie
within. For in nearly every field there are the little clusters of black
crosses, hung with flowers or the tricolor badge, or quite bare—with the
number of men who lie within, or a date, scarcely ever a name.
We went into the village, very ancient, that owes its name, Ville des
Gerbes, to a miracle performed there by St.-Mansuy, past the completely
destroyed château of the Lambertye family, and, going up a winding
street, reached the house of Sister Julie, the heroine of August, 1914.
On every side were gutted houses and piles of mortar and stones; one
enterprising individual of the fair sex had installed against a resisting
wall Le Café des Ruines, and some soldiers and civilians were sitting on
bits of stone and masonry, drinking their _bocks_ and reading newspapers.
The convent-building is in the principal street, and it was unharmed
save for a little peppering of rifle-fire and a bit of cornice knocked
off—_par la grâce de Dieu_, as Sister Julie afterward told us. Up three
steps, and one finds oneself in a narrow, ancient stone hallway. Turning
to the right, one enters a cool, peaceful room of the convent-parlor
type—a large crucifix, lithographs of the last three popes, horsehair
furniture, white crocheted doilies, everything spotless. In a moment
Sister Julie came in. Her flashing eyes, her determined jaw, show her
always to have been a woman of parts, and yet her whole life is really
crowded into those few eventful days of the latter part of August,
when “they” entered the town. For the rest, the quiet, useful routine
of the nursing and teaching order of St. Charles de Nancy, which had
been _chassé_ at the time of the French Revolution; a few nuns managed
to remain hidden, and the order has been preserved. She is evidently a
responsive soul, for she immediately began to enact the story of the
arrival of the Germans, with a certain art in the presentment of the
tragedy of the little town, gained, no doubt, by many recitals.
The Germans came into the town on the 27th of August, after the heroic
defense of the bridge over the Mortagne by a detachment of fifty-four men
of the 2d Chasseurs from sunrise to sunset, who held up during hours the
brigade of the Bavarian General Clauss. Finally, at five o’clock the gray
hosts got through and passed in with a great sound of tramping feet and
ringing hoof, and, after the manner of invaders, _mettant le feu et le
sang dans le village_. Sister Julie thought her hour also had come. In
the room where we were sitting she had placed her thirteen wounded men,
brought in at intervals during the day. “_Mes petits_,” she called them,
and her eyes shone softly at the memory. She sent the other sisters up to
the attic, and remained alone to face the enemy and to beg that the house
be spared. She went out on the little step, not knowing what fate awaited
her, and found four immense officers on horseback, with their horses’
heads facing her.
“They thought they were Charlemagnes, immense men, with light hair and
light-blue eyes and arched noses and gallooned uniforms. I was like a
dwarf in comparison, and I am not small.” To tell the truth, she is
indeed a “muscular Christian.”
Then began the interrogatory, the ranking officer demanding of her:
“_Sie sprechen Deutsch?_”
She said to us, with a smile:
“I did speak it in my youth, but it wasn’t the moment to recall my
studies, and I didn’t answer, and we remained for a few seconds looking
at each other _comme des chiens de faïence_.[3] I so little on the
house-step, and they so tall on their big horses, and with poignards
drawn from their breast pockets, _pas le beau geste de tirer l’épée du
côté_,” she finished, disdainfully.
Finally, the silence was broken by the ranking officer, whose next words
were in French: “_Nous ne sommes pas des barbares_; you have soldiers and
weapons concealed in your house. Lead the way.”
Then the four officers dismounted and, with pistols in one hand and
poignards in the other, followed Sister Julie into the little room where
the thirteen wounded men were lying. Their helmets touched the ceiling as
they looked about them. Standing by the first bed nearest the door, an
officer pulled down the covers.
“You have arms concealed.”
“We have nothing. You will find only men lying in their blood.”
By this time Sister Julie was not only talking, but acting the scene,
indicating where the beds were, where she had stood, where the four
_chefs_ had entered, and how the eyes of the wounded men followed her.
The officers made the rounds of the beds, pulling down each stained
cover, Sister Julie following to re-cover the men, who were expecting, as
was she, the order to burn the house.
She continued: “They were Bavarians, and when I said: ‘You see, we
have nothing. Leave me my wounded, in the name of Mary most Holy,’ the
commanding officer began to look at the point of his shoe as men do when
they are embarrassed. I have seen surgeons do just that when they are in
doubt about an operation,” she added. “Then he suddenly turned without a
word and went out, followed by the other three, pistols and poignards in
hand. They passed up the street with their detachment, ‘_mettant le feu
et le sang au village; et moi, restée avec mes petits, à remercier le bon
Dieu—et de leur donner à boire_.’”
We gave our little offerings into her generous hands, and sniffed
the scent of freshly baked bread that permeated the corridor. E. M.
photographed her standing on her historic steps, and we went out into the
hot, cobble-stoned street, to the completely ruined Lambertye château,
standing in the midst of a park whose gardens were designed by Louis de
Nesle. Two large and very beautiful porphyry basins near the house were
untouched—not a nick or a scratch. On the great marble fireplace of what
had been the big central hall, now uncovered to the day, we could still
read the words:
Charles de Montmorency
Duc de . . . . mbourg,
Maréchal de France.
Afterward E. M. took some more photographs, and we sped homeward to pack
our belongings and dash into Nancy to get the eight-o’clock train from
there for Bar-le-Duc, to be ready for the high adventure of Verdun early
the next morning.