t this Route de Strasbourg, and
to meet us as we passed. You know how you see the characters in a
moving-picture play, and behind them the "fade ins" that show their life
history, visions that change on the screen like patterns in a
kaleidoscope? So on this meadow-bordered road, peaceful in the autumn
sunlight, we saw with our minds' eyes the soldiers of 1914: behind them
the soldiers of 1870: farther in the background Napoleon the Great with
his men: and fading into the distance, processions of kings who had
marched along the Marne, since the day Sainte-Genevieve ordered the
gates of Paris to be shut in the face of Attila.

Such a gay, gold-sequined blue-green ribbon of a river it looked! Almost
impudent in gaiety, as if it wished to forget and be happy. But souls
and rivers never really forget. When they know what the Marne knows,
they are gay only on the surface!

It was at Meaux where we had our first close meeting with the Marne:
Meaux, the city nearest Paris "on the Marne front," where the Germans
came: and even after three years you can still see on the left bank of
the river traces of trench--shallow, pathetic holes dug in wild haste.
We might have missed them, we creatures with mere eyes, if Brian hadn't
asked, "Can't you see the trenches?" Then we saw them, of course, half
lost under rank grass, like dents in a green velvet cushion made by a
sleeper who has long ago waked and walked away.

From a distance the glistening gray roofs of Meaux were like a vast
crowd of dark-winged doves; but as we ran into the town it opened out
into dignified importance, able to live up to its thousand years of
history. There was no work for the Becketts there, we thought, for the
Germans had time to do little material harm to Meaux in 1914: and at
first sight there seemed to be no need of alms. But Jim had loved Meaux.
His mother took from her blue morocco bag his letter describing the
place, mentioning how he had met the bishop through a French friend.

"Do you think," she asked me timidly, "we might call on the bishop? Who
knows but he remembers our Jimmy?"

"He's a famous bishop," said Brian. "I've heard _poilus_ from Meaux tell
stories of how the Germans were forced to respect him, he was so brave
and fine. He took the children of the town under his protection, and no
harm came to one of them. There were postcard photographs going round
early in the war, of the bishop surrounded by boys and girls--like a
benevolent Pied