bouring chateau to another. Surely even Germans could not doom such
a town to destruction. To be sure, some people did fly when a rabble of
refugees from Compiegne poured past, hurrying south; and others fled
from the bombardment when big guns, fired from Lucien Bonaparte's old
village of Chamant, struck the cathedral. But many stayed for duty's
sake, or because they believed obstinately that to _their_ bit of the
Ile-de-France no tragedy could come.

They didn't know yet that Von Kluck and his men were drunk with victory,
and that flaming towns were for the German army bonfires of triumph.
They didn't know that the Kaiser's dinner was ordered in Paris for a
certain date, and that at all costs Paris must be cowed to a speedy
peace, lest the dinner be delayed. "Frightfulness" was the word of
command, and famous old Senlis was to serve as a lesson to Paris.

But somehow the German master of Senlis's heart weakened when the
crucial moment came. He was at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, where a dinner
was being prepared by scared servants for thirty German officers. The
order was about to be signed when suddenly a _cure_, small and pale,
but lion-brave, entered the room. How he got in no one knew! Surprise
held the general tongue-tied for three seconds; and a French _cure_ is
capable of much eloquence in three seconds.

He gambled--if a _cure_ may gamble!--on the chance of his man being
Catholic--and he won. That is why (so they told us in the same room
three years later) Senlis was struck with many sore wounds, but not
exterminated; that is why only the Maire and a few citizens were
murdered instead of all; that is why in some quarters of Senlis the
people who have come back can still dream that nothing happened to their
dear haunt of peace on September 2, 1914.

Even if Senlis had fallen utterly, before the Germans turned in their
tracks, Paris would not have been "cowed." As it was, Paris and all
France were roused to a redoubled fury of resistance by the fate of the
Senlis "hostages." So these men did not die in vain.

The scars of Senlis are still unhealed. Whole streets are blackened
heaps of ruin, and there are things that "make you see red," as Father
Beckett growled. But the thing which left the clearest picture in my
brain was a sight sweet as well as sad: a charming little chateau,
ruined by fire, yet pathetically lovely in martyrdom; the green trellis
still ornamenting its stained facade, a few autumn roses peeping