The Street of the Three Pebbles--la rue des Trois Cailloux--which
goes up from the station through the heart of Amiens, was the crowded
highway. Here were the best shops--the hairdresser, at the left-hand
side, where all day long officers down from the line came in to have
elaborate luxury in the way of close crops with friction d'eau de
quinine, shampooing, singeing, oiling, not because of vanity, but
because of the joyous sense of cleanliness and perfume after the filth
and stench of life in the desolate fields; then the booksellers' (Madame
Carpentier et fille) on the right-hand side, which was not only the
rendezvous of the miscellaneous crowd buying stationery and La Vie
Parisienne, but of the intellectuals who spoke good French and bought
good books and liked ten minutes' chat with the mother and daughter.
(Madame was an Alsatian lady with vivid memories of 1870, when, as a
child, she had first learned to hate Germans.) She hated them now with
a fresh, vital hatred, and would have seen her own son dead a hundred
times--he was a soldier in Saloniki--rather than that France should make
a compromise peace with the enemy. She had been in Amiens, as I was, on
a dreadful night of August of 1914, when the French army passed through
in retreat from Bapaume, and she and the people of her city knew for the
first time that the Germans were close upon them. She stood in the crowd
as I did--in the darkness, watching that French column pass with their
transport, and their wounded lying on the baggage wagons, men of many
regiments mixed up, the light of the street lamps shining on the casques
of cuirassiers with their long horsehair tails, leading their stumbling
horses, and foot soldiers, hunched under their packs, marching silently
with dragging steps. Once in a while one of the soldiers left the ranks
and came on to the sidewalk, whispering to a group of dark shadows.
The crowds watched silently, in a curious, dreadful silence, as though
stunned. A woman near me spoke in a low voice, and said, “Nous sommes
perdus!” Those were the only words I heard or remembered.
That night in the station of Amiens the boys of a new class were being
hurried away in truck trains, and while their army was in retreat sang
“La Marseillaise,” as though victory were in their hearts. Next day
the German army under von Kluck entered Amiens, and ten days afterward
passed through it on the way to Paris. Madame Carpentier told me of the
first terror of the people when the field-gray men came down the Street
of the Three Pebbles and entered their shops. A boy selling oranges
fainted when a German stretched out his hand to buy some. Women hid
behind their counters when German boots stamped into their shops.
But Madame Carpentier was not afraid. She knew the Germans and their
language. She spoke frank words to German officers, who saluted her
respectfully enough. “You will never get to Paris... France and England
will be too strong for you... Germany will be destroyed before this war
ends.” They laughed at her and said: “We shall be in Paris in a week
from now. Have you a little diary, Madame?” Madame Carpentier was
haughty with them. Some women of Amiens--poor drabs--did not show any
haughtiness, nor any pride, with the enemy who crowded into the city on
their way toward Paris. A girl told me that she was looking through the
window of a house that faced the Place de la Gare, and saw a number of
German soldiers dancing round a piano-organ which was playing to
them. They were dancing with women of the town, who were laughing
and screeching in the embrace of big, blond Germans. The girl who was
watching was only a schoolgirl then. She knew very little of the evil
of life, but enough to know that there was something in this scene
degrading to womanhood and to France. She turned from the window and
flung herself on her bed and wept bitterly...
I used to call in at the bookshop for a chat now and then with Madame
and Mademoiselle Carpentier, while a crowd of officers came in and out.
Madame was always merry and bright in spite of her denunciations of
the “Sale Boches--les brigands, les bandits!” and Mademoiselle put
my knowledge of French to a severe but pleasant test. She spoke with
alarming rapidity, her words tumbling over one another in a cascade of
volubility delightful to hear but difficult to follow. She had a strong
mind--masterly in her methods of business--so that she could serve
six customers at once and make each one think that her attention was
entirely devoted to his needs--and a very shrewd and critical idea
of military strategy and organization. She had but a poor opinion of
British generals and generalship, although a wholehearted admiration
for the gallantry of British officers and men; and she had an intimate
knowledge of our preparations, plans, failures, and losses. French
liaison-officers confided to her the secrets of the British army; and
English officers trusted her with many revelations of things “in the
wind.” But Mademoiselle Carpentier had discretion and loyalty and did
not repeat these things to people who had no right to know. She would
have been far more efficient as a staff officer than many of the young
gentlemen with red tabs on their tunics who came into the shop, flipping
beautiful top-boots with riding-crops, sitting on the counter, and
turning over the pages of La Vie for the latest convention in ladies'
legs.
Mademoiselle was a serious musician, so her mother told me, but her
musical studies were seriously interrupted by business and air raids,
which one day ceased in Amiens altogether after a night of horror, when
hundreds of houses were smashed to dust and many people killed, and the
Germans brought their guns close to the city--close enough to scatter
high velocities about its streets--and the population came up out of
their cellars, shaken by the terror of the night, and fled. I passed the
bookshop where Mademoiselle was locking up the door of this house which
had escaped by greater luck than its neighbors. She turned as I passed
and raised her hand with a grave gesture of resignation and courage.
“Ils ne passeront pas!” she said. It was the spirit of the courage of
French womanhood which spoke in those words.