nd those favoured few must slip in and out almost
between breaths. Any instant the torturing may begin again, when the
Boches have bombs to spare for what they call "target practice"; for
think, how near is Laon!--and we'd been warned that, even at the portals
of the town, we might be turned back.

We had still another new French officer to take us to Rheims. (I am
getting their faces a little mixed, like a composite picture, but I keep
sacredly all their dear visiting-cards!) He was a captain, with a
scarred but handsome face, and he complimented Mother Beckett and me on
our "courage." This made Father Beckett visibly regret that he had
brought us, though he had been assured that it was a "safe time."
However, his was not the kind of regret which tempts a man to turn back:
it only makes his upper lip look long.

I never saw Rheims in palmy days of peace. Now I wish I had seen it!
But there was that lithograph of the cathedral by Gustave Simonau, the
great Belgian artist, hanging above your desk, in the den, Padre. I used
to study it when I should have been studying my lessons, fascinated by
the splendid facade, the twin towers, the three "portals of the
Trinity," the rose-window, the gallery of kings, the angels, the saints,
the gargoyles and all the carved stone lace-work which the picture so
wonderfully shows.

On the opposite side of the room was Simonau's Cathedral of Chartres, in
a dark frame to match, and I remember your saying that Chartres was
considered by some critics even finer than Rheims. The Cathedral of
Chartres seemed a romantic monument of history to me, because it was
built as a shrine for the "tunic of the Virgin"; but the Gothic
Notre-Dame of Rheims appealed to my--perhaps prophetic--soul. Maybe I
had a latent presentiment of how I should see the real cathedral, as _la
grande blessee_ of the greatest war of the world.

Anyhow, I always took a deep interest in Rheims from the day I first
gaped, an open-mouthed child, at that beautiful drawing, and I was glad
I'd forgotten none of its details, as we motored toward the martyr town.
Usually there's Brian, who can tell the dear Becketts all they don't
know and want to know, but this time they'd only me to depend upon. And
when I think what a cruel fraud I am at heart, there's some consolation
in serving them, even in small ways.

There's a wide plain that knows desolately what German bombardment
means: there are gentle hills rising out of it, south