September 27, 1914.

I have been at work all the morning.

At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he carried the great missal, borrowed from the curÉ of Lenting, in which he likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn. His firmness of conviction, be it noted, was absolute. But—shades of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Sales, where were you?

Guido often discusses his faith with me in the evenings, when, before the roll-call, we stroll together on the deserted glacis, just after the stars have come out. He takes great pains to expound to me the beauties of the Catholic liturgy. It is, in very truth, incomparable. For those who can believe in the miracle of the host, nothing in the world can be so touching or so sublime as the daily drama of the mass. But what a pity that it has to be said in Latin, so that none but those who have had a classical education can appreciate it to the full. This morning, for instance, I doubt if there were three of the comrades able to understand the Epistle and the Gospel of the day. If it is considered essential to retain Latin as a symbol of universalism, why should not the Latin reading be instantly followed by vernacular rendering of these verses of Scripture wherein are contained the essentials of our faith, be it Roman Catholic or Protestant?

Yet how simple and how moving was the ritual, improvised, shortened, of necessity reduced to its elements—altar, candles, incense, vestments. No Saint-Sulpician imagery! Bare walls, rough and white. It was possible to fancy oneself in a catacomb, in the first ages of the church.

Quite recently this armoured keep has been deprived of its four or five ancient guns. There they were at their posts, muzzles in the loopholes, ready at the supreme moment to sweep with their fire the north of the counterscarp beyond the second encircling wall. They had been in this damp crypt for perhaps thirty years, without ever being used. Now they are on their way to the Russian front. The Germans must be hard put to it for guns, to make use of these relics!

The crowd of the faithful, French soldiers and Bavarian Landwehrleute, standing indiscriminately, peacefully pressed shoulder to shoulder, served to warm the casemate a trifle. I shivered, none the less, whilst Boude, with a voice grave and sweet, sang the ample strophes of the Adoro te of St. Thomas. At one moment, impressed by the strong and noble simplicity of this sanctuary of exile, I called up in memory the interior of the church attended by the bathers of Trouville. The contrast was so violent that.…

In the curÉ of Lenting’s missal, I have read several times lately, lying on my heap of straw, the couplets of the Adoro te. What an ardent hymn it is! How sublime is its cry of passion! When it was written, the cult of the eucharist was, so to say, novel, and had numerous opponents within the church. BÉranger, the Angevin, a species of early Calvin, denied the material transformation of the elements. Christianity took sides about the matter.

It is only periods of combat which are fruitful. To-day the altar is too peaceable. Too many questions are considered closed. I doubt if a St. Thomas or a St. Bonaventura would now vie with one another in love and genius to sing, as sincerely as did these saints of old, the flesh and the blood of Christ in the host.

Mass said, we hastened to the ordinary. It consisted of soup and a morsel of pork. The distribution of the meal lasted until two. Then Dutrex, Durupt, the cooks, and I sat round the ministerial table to dine in our turn. It was late, and we were hungry. I furnished some cigars, smuggled goods. Dutrex provided tea, likewise smuggled. As there were eight of us and we had but four half-pint mugs, it was necessary to use four enamelled iron bowls—basins belonging to Fort Orff. The tea was lost in the bottom of these; one might have imagined it had been dispensed with a medicine-dropper. But how good it was! With our half-pint mugs and our bowls we clinked three times, drinking to France, to the destruction of autocracy and militarism in Europe, to those at home. Our meagre love-feast had quite a family air. Cooks and “ministers” alike, we all felt that we were truly brothers.

After dinner, Dutrex, Durupt, and I went for a walk. There was a high wind as we strolled along the parapets. In shady corners, I was able to pluck some dwarf gentians, mosses, and lichens. I even discovered a tuft of dwarf heather from which the flowers had almost all fallen. I have arranged this posy in my campaigner’s mug. There it is, beside your portrait. If only we could hope to get away from here before it fades!

Durupt left us to attend vespers, whilst I went on walking with Dutrex. At ordinary times he is a man of extreme reserve, fencing off his intimate soul, and all the more unapproachable in proportion as he becomes gayer; but to-day, as if in spite of himself, he was a little expansive.

There had been a silence, and then he said:

“Just at this hour, coming from his office, my father has doubtless been greeted by the words, ‘Still no news of the little one?’ I’m afraid I shall find them greatly aged.”

“But, my dear fellow, they’ll get young again fast enough when they see you!”

“I have a presentiment,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look out at the view before us, this dead countryside. No smoke rises from Ingolstadt. There is not a soul in the fields. Does not this suggest defeat? Last Sunday there were still some men among the idlers at the gate who came to stare at the French. To-day there were only women and children. All their men are at the front. And this wind from France! I am sure that it is sweeping back their armies. I am confident that just now, when we were drinking our toasts, we were unwittingly celebrating a French victory.”

He went on to speak of his family and of his studies. The cold breeze stung our faces. A chill vapour was floating across the melancholy plain, so that it seemed as if all that we looked down upon was covered with mysterious veils of crÊpe. How sweet it was to me to listen, in exile, to the delicately simple confidences of this son of France.

When I re-entered the “salon,” Durupt, back from vespers, was reading the German translation of a novel by Sienkiewicz, Mit Feuer und Schwert. He turned towards me with a dazed and yet decisive air: “Old Riou, I have a presentiment of victory!”