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For this summer end of 1910, the valley of the Meuse was to us all
sufficient. Here, while dozing among these small towns and villages,
bordering on the vine clad river's splash and sparkle, resting by night
in quaint clean and generally well kept inns, the world beyond became
a figment. Curious fortresses still were to be found among these old
rocks; and on the plateau the antiquarian, the geologist, the botanist
may find much food for wonder and study, if they searched. But if they
did, at least I never met them there. Should tourist by chance pass that
way, it was by train, or swiftly speeding automobile all begoggled of
eyes, and mummied by greatcoat, mindful only of the smoothness of the
winding road, or the consumption of gasoline. But from all such doth
Dame Nature hide her soul.
Then, tiring of this aloofness, one could always return to the bustle
of Verdun, and find entertainment in the tortuous streets between the
amorphous houses, with their aged carven doors surmounted by strange old
trade-emblems, their overhanging gables; across the rough cobbled market
place with the old town hall of pepperbox turret, its arcade, and its
dusty hall where the "Échevins" held their courts of justice, and where
the peasants chaffered their wares on market days, through the ancient
gateways, and over the old bridges reflected in the eddying river.
I like to think of Verdun, as we saw it "en fête" that late summer
morning. The town was gay with wreaths and flags and streamers, the
windows aflame with flowers. In the Cathedral since five o'clock there
had been scarce space to kneel for the toll of masses unbroken at the
altar. White clad priests came and went through the aisles. The air
was tense and restless with murmured prayer and the incessancy of
"sacring-bells." When the last "housel" had been taken, the last "Ite"
said, thousands of people filled the streets, lining the narrow ways in
thick serried ranks, crowding the doors and windows, and stretching in a
double row across the bridge.
Over all is a sense of waiting, as for a solemn thing about to happen,
and this thrills the multitude. At the bridge end I could see the figure
of a priest gesticulating, raised somewhat above the crowd, clad in a
cope of gold and white, but I was too far away to hear his voice. Soon
came a procession headed by a banner bearer, and I caught a glimpse
of the scarlet of my lord the Archbishop, amid a cloud of filmy laced
priestly cottas, and the violet surplices of chanting men, set in a
great splash of white robes. Here and there a banner shone all red and
gold, and at the end of the bridge was a great golden Crucifix.
Here a short sermon was preached, and this being over there came a stir
and a heave in the crowd, which fell back along the ways. Forward moved
the cross, twelve banners escorting it; tapers of wax tall and thick
blazed, and from upcast censers sprang misty spirals of fragrance, blue
as the hills beyond the town.
From a murmur which sweeps through the throng of people, a chant grows
in volume until it is like the sound of a vast organ. All at once the
gay burners, the smoking censers, and the gorgeously clad priests vanish
around a turning in the street; the spell is broken; the crowd, before
so orderly, swarms like bees in the hive, and here and there are couples
dancing and jostling all unmindful of each other's proximity, but
performing with stolid good humor. The spirit of the dance takes hold of
the crowd, it spreads across the bridge, and sets of four, six and eight
form in rows, holding one another at handkerchief length, eyes dancing
with eyes to limbs' measure.
There was little of passion but much of poetry in this dance, a sort
of polka with three steps forward and two back, a serpentine swinging
unison. Words are poor painters of the scene: like unto a moving
wheatfield swept by two winds, or the sea surge whose oscillant ebb
and flow is so fascinating. And so throughout the day, and far into the
night the celebration continued, with meetings--rejoicings--and mild
potations sacramental of reunited friendships; but not until long after
the celebration ended and common events regained dominion over the
streets and square, did one cease to see mentally the swinging sway
of that dance, or hear the pounding, insistent, snarling drone on the
barrel organs of that reiterated tune.... And this is how one likes to
recall old, old Verdun, now so pathetically battered and shell torn, its
cathedral towers ragged against the sky, and its Citadel dismantled.