assers-by. Signs appeared upon the
street, "Safe Cellars Here," and when the bombardment began, people
would dash for the nearest shelter and wait until the storm was over.

Pierre and Pierrette played out of doors every day, though they did not
go far from their home, and had no one but each other to play with.
Pierrette made a play-house in one corner of the court. Here in a
little box she kept a store of broken dishes, and here she sat long
hours with her doll Jacqueline. Sometimes Pierre, having no better
occupation, played with her. He even took a gingerly interest in
Jacqueline, although he would not for the world have let any of the
boys know of such a weakness.

When the shells began to fall, they would leave their corner and run
quickly to the cellar. As Father Meraut could not go up or down, his
wife stayed in the kitchen beside him. In this way several weary weeks
went by. Mother Meraut went no more to the Cathedral. There was nothing
there that she could do. The great, beautiful church which had been the
very soul of Rheims and the pride of France was now nothing but a
ruined shell, its wonderful windows broken, its roof gone, its very
walls of stone so burned that they crumbled to pieces at a touch. Even
the great bronze bells had been melted in the flames and had fallen in
molten drops, like tears of grief, into the wreckage below. All the
beautiful treasures--the tapestries, wrought by the hands of queens,
and even the sacred banner of Jeanne d'Arc itself--had been destroyed.

Mother Meraut knew, but she did not tell her children, that precious
lives had also been lost, and that buried somewhere in the ruins were
the bodies of doctors and nurses who had given their own in trying to
save the lives of others, and of brave citizens of Rheims who had
fallen in an attempt to save the precious relics carefully treasured
there. Neither did she tell them that little Jean, the Verger's son,
was one of that heroic band. These sorrows she bore in her own breast,
but she never passed near the Cathedral after that terrible night.
Sometimes, when a necessary errand took her to that part of the City,
she would pause at a distance to look long at the statue of Jeanne
d'Arc, standing unharmed in the midst of the destruction about her
still lifting her sword to the sky. In all the rain of shells which had
fallen upon the City not one had yet touched the statue. Only the tip
of the sword had been broken off. It comforted