relaxed his hold.

On the third day, a most courteous and able official of the French
Foreign Office took us in charge, and we set out for Senlis on a morning
chill and wintry indeed, but giving little sign of the storm it held
in leash.

To reach Senlis one must cross the military _enceinte_ of Paris. Many
visitors from Paris and other parts of France, from England, or from
America, have seen by now the wreck of its principal street, and have
talked with the Abbé Dourlent, the "Archiprêtre" of the cathedral, whose
story often told has lost but little of its first vigour and simplicity,
to judge at least by its effect on two of his latest visitors.

We took the great northern road out of Paris, which passes scenes
memorable in the war of 1870. On both sides of us, at frequent
intervals, across the flat country, were long lines of trenches, and
belts of barbed wire, most of them additions to the defences of Paris
since the Battle of the Marne. It is well to make assurance doubly sure!
But although, as we entered the Forest of Chantilly, the German line was
no more than some thirty-odd miles away, and since the Battle of the
Aisne, two and a half years ago, it has run, practically, as it still
ran in the early days of this last March, the notion of any fresh attack
on Paris seemed the merest dream. It was indeed a striking testimony to
the power of the modern defensive--this absolute security in which Paris
and its neighbourhood has lived and moved all that time, with--up to a
few weeks ago--the German batteries no farther off than the suburbs of
Soissons. How good to remember, as one writes, all that has happened
since I was in Senlis!--and the increased distance that now divides the
German hosts from the great prize on which they had set their hearts.