..
Then, too, the women who had only their dignity and their high spirit
to defend themselves against the grossness and the insults of the
Prussians, have been the incarnation of the spirit of France.
An old woman who dwelt in a village on the Aisne was spattered with
mud by the Kaiser as he passed by on horseback. He made a gesture
excusing himself. She fixed her eyes on him and said simply:
"It doesn't matter, sir. That mud can be washed off."
A great lady in one of the chateaux in the invaded regions, had to
receive one of the Kaiser's sons. The day of his departure he sent for
her to thank her for the hospitality she had shown him. The old lady,
looking at him, contented herself with replying:
"Do not thank me, sir. I did not invite you here."
And she reentered her house with all dignity.
* * * * *
Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this,
France has been able to fight on, and will be able to fight to the
end. Because the women of France have been all this and have done all
this, the soldiers, in the mud of the trenches, revere them as
Madonnas.
The historian Tacitus tells somewhere how, on a hot spring day, a
slave, panting and worn out, entered one of the gates of the Eternal
City.
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