THE LITTLE CURÉ OF FOSSE-DIX
Every evening at 4:30 the curé of Fosse-dix gave Benediction in his
little church for the school children and any of the village people
who could attend. After Benediction he usually said the beads, the
Litany and a few other prayers, and before he finished my boys used
to arrive for confession. As the confessional was in the rear of the
church, facing the altar, I often saw the children coming down the
aisle. First, an old Sister of Charity, her wide white coronet flapping
on either side like two white wings, backed slowly down the aisle, the
children coming two by two, facing her. Generally as they came they
sang a beautiful hymn to the Sacred Heart, but I can only recall the
last two lines, which they always repeated. Translated, they would
read: “Heart of Jesus, heart of clemency, save, save France in the name
of the Sacred Heart!” The children would walk in perfect order till
they reached the door where the old fat Sister stood watching them.
Although I could not see them then, I always knew when each couple had
passed the good Sister; a scampering of feet and sometimes a little
shouting were the signals.
One evening while the children were going out in the customary way,
singing their beautiful hymn, I noticed five or six soldiers in the
French uniform of grey-blue. They remained quiet while the children
were singing the first stanza, but when they came to the lines I have
quoted above, a great chorus sounded as soldiers joined with the
children in imploring the Sacred Heart to save France.
Every evening, after coming from our mess, I stepped into the curé’s
room to have a chat with him. Sometimes I had a box of good things that
had come from relatives back in Canada, for our Christmas boxes were
only now beginning to arrive. I remember one evening opening a parcel
while the little priest voiced his simple wonder at the strange things
from across the seas. He had never seen chewing gum before, so I gave
him a few sticks of Spearmint. In a little while I looked at him, but
his jaws were motionless and the gum was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is your gum, Father?” I asked.
He looked at me keenly, not understanding my question, so I repeated
it. Again he looked at me, but this time he answered me.
“Why,” he said, “I swallowed it!”
Then, because I laughed heartily, I had to explain to him how the
people of the New World use gum.
One day while I was absent, working among the soldiers, a shell came
whistling over the village, bursting in the road near his garden
tearing several holes in the brick wall of his house. When I returned
he took me out to see the havoc that had been wrought, pointing out
with minute care every place where a splinter of shell had struck. He
seemed to be taking the whole thing so solemnly that I could not but
become solemn, too; so I said to him, as I pointed to quite a large
hole that had been torn through the frame of a ladder resting against
the house, supposing he had been walking there, and that the shell had
burst in the road about that time, and his head had been bent a little
as the piece of shell went through the ladder--I looked at him, shaking
my head ominously at the thought of what might have happened.
He looked at me quickly. “Oh, if!--if!--if!” he said. “One could take
Paris and put it in a bottle--if--it would go in!”
He had a pass from a British general which permitted him to stop any
military lorry going in his direction and take passage on it. It was
always a mystery to the military chaplains how he had obtained it.
During the day he was off searching for chaplains whose men were in
the line and who could attend one or more of his shepherdless flocks
the following Sunday. At different times throughout the early spring
campaign I was able to help him with his work, and I always felt glad
of the opportunity; for he was truly a man of God.