Linen is mixed with mud; the white veil some girl wore at her
first communion is defiled with excrement.... An old man is wandering
among the ruins. He has just come back to the devastated village. He
says to me simply:
"I saw them in 1870. They came here, but they didn't do this. They are
savages."
A woman was there, too. She had come an hour or so ago with the old
man, and she stood on the step of her defiled, despoiled home where
the curtains hung in tatters at the windows. She saw me pass by. She
wanted to speak to me, but her voice stuck in her throat. There she
stood, her arms extended like a great cross. She could only sob:
"Look! Look!"
And she was like a symbol of the whole wretched business.
The men who do such deeds are the men France is fighting.
* * * * *
Vincy-Manoeuvre was another one of the villages. It is situated near
the border of the Department of the Oise. It was still in flames when
I entered it. On the outskirts of the hamlet there used to be a large
factory. Only the iron framework of this factory remained; the ashes
had commenced to smoke, giving forth flames from time to time. Here
also every house had been destroyed and pillaged. Only the church
remained standing, and on the belfry which was silhouetted against the
sky, the weather cock seemed to shudder with horror.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42