We have been having some beautiful weather.
Yesterday Amélie and I took advantage of it to make a pilgrimage
across the Marne, to decorate the graves on the battlefield at
Chambry. Crowds went out on All Soul's Day, but I never like doing
anything, even making a pilgrimage, in a crowd.
You can realize how near it is, and what an easy trip it will be in
normal times, when I tell you that we left Esbly for Meaux at half past
one--only ten minutes by train--and were back in the station at Meaux
at quarter to four, and had visited Monthyon, Villeroy, Neufmontier,
Penchard, Chauconin, Barcy, Chambry, and Vareddes.
The authorities are not very anxious to have people go out there. Yet
nothing to prevent is really done. It only takes a little diplomacy. If I
had gone to ask for a passport, nine chances out of ten it would have
been refused me. I happened to know that the wife of the big livery-
stable man at Meaux, an energetic--and, incidentally, a handsome--
woman, who took over the business when her husband joined his
regiment, had a couple of automobiles, and would furnish me with all
the necessary papers. They are not taxi-cabs, but handsome touring-
cars. Her chauffeur carries the proper papers. It seemed to me a very
loose arrangement, from a military point of view, even although I was
assured that she did not send out anyone she did not know.
However, I decided to take advantage of it.
While we were waiting at the garage for the car to be got out, and the
chauffeur to change his coat, I had a chance to talk with a man who
had not left Meaux during the battle, and I learned that there were
several important families who had remained with the Archbishop and
aided him to organize matters for saving the city, if possible, and
protect the property of those who had fled, and that the measures
which those sixty citizens, with Archbishop Marbeau at their head,
took for the safety of the poor, the care for the wounded and dead, is
already one of the proudest documents in the annals of the historic
town.
But never mind all these things, which the guides will recite for you, I
imagine, when you come over to make the grand tour of Fighting
France, for on these plains about Meaux you will have to start your
pilgrimage.
I confess that my heart beat a little too rapidly when, as we ran out of
Meaux, and took the route départmentale of Senlis, a soldier stepped
to the middle of the road and held up his gun--baionette au canon.
We stopped.
Were we after all going to be turned back? I had the guilty knowledge
that there was no reason why we should not be. I tried to look
magnificently unconcerned as I leaned forward to smile at the soldier.
I might have spared myself the effort. He never even glanced inside
the car. The examination of the papers was the most cursory thing
imaginable--a mere formality. The chauffeur simply held his stamped
paper towards the guard. The guard merely glanced at it, lifted his
gun, motioned us to proceed--and we proceeded.
It may amuse you to know that we never even showed the paper
again. We did meet two gendarmes on bicycles, but they nodded and
passed us without stopping.
The air was soft, like an early autumn day, rather than December as
you know it. There was a haze in the air, but behind it the sun shone.
You know what that French haze is, and what it does to the world,
and how, through it, one gets the sort of landscape painters love.
With how many of our pilgrimages together it is associated! We have
looked through it at the walls of Provins, when the lindens were rosy
with the first rising of the sap; we have looked through it at the circular
panorama from the top of the ruined tower of Montlhéry; we have
looked through it across Jean Jacques Rousseau's country, from the
lofty terrace of Montmorency, and from the platform in front of the
prison of Philippe Auguste's unhappy Danish wife, at Etampes,
across the valley of the Juine; and from how many other beautiful
spots, not to forget the view up the Seine from the terrace of the
Tuileries.
Sometime, I hope, we shall see these plains of the Marne together.
When we do, I trust it will be on just such another atmospheric day as
yesterday.
As our road wound up the hill over the big paving-stones
characteristic of the environs of all the old towns of France,
everything looked so peaceful, so pretty, so normal, that it was hard
to realize that we were moving towards the front, and were only about
three miles from the point where the German invasion was turned
back almost three months ago to a day, and it was the more difficult
to realize as we have not heard the cannon for days.
A little way out of Meaux, we took a road to the west for Chauconin,
the nearest place to us which was bombarded, and from a point in
the road I looked back across the valley of the Marne, and I saw a
very pretty white town, with red roofs, lying on the hillside. I asked the
chauffeur:
"What village is that over there?"