have to thank Fate for every fine thing and every well-loved view
which survives this war between the Marne and the frontier, where
the ground had been fought over in all the great wars of France since
the days of Charlemagne.

It seems that more people stayed at Meaux than I supposed.
Monsignor Morbeau stayed there, and they say about a thousand of
the poor were hidden carefully in the cellars. It had fourteen thousand
inhabitants. Only about five buildings were reached by bombs, and
the damage is not even worth recording.

I am sure you must have seen the Bishop in the days when you lived
in Paris, when he was curé at St. Honoré d'Eylau in the Place Victor
Hugo. At that time he was a popular priest--mondain, clever and
eloquent. At Meaux he is a power. No figure is so familiar in the
picturesque old streets, especially on market day, Saturday, as this
tall, powerful-looking man in his soutane and barrette, with his air of
authority, familiar yet dignified. He seems to know everyone by name,
is all over the market, his keen eyes seeing everything, as influential
in the everyday life of his diocese as he is in its spiritual affairs, a
model of what a modern archbishop ought to be.

I hear he was on the battlefield from the beginning, and that the first
ambulances to reach Meaux found the seminary full of wounded
picked up under his direction and cared for as well as his resources
permitted. He has written his name in the history of the old town
under that of Bossuet--and in the records of such a town that is no
small distinction.

The news which is slowly filtering back to us from the plains is another