a bad job, and rode away up the hill towards my house.

Then he had a new panic. He did not dare go home. He was afraid
he would find them in the village, and that they would find out he had
lied and harm his old wife, or perhaps destroy the town. So he had
hidden down by the canal until hunger drove him home. It is a simple
tale, but it was a rude experience for the old man, who has not got
over it yet.

I am afraid all this seems trivial to you, coming out of the midst of this
terrible war. But it is actually our life here. We listen to the cannon in
ignorance of what is happening. Where would be the sense of my
writing you that the battle-front has settled down to uncomfortable
trench work on the Aisne; that Manoury is holding the line in front of
us from Compiègne to Soissons, with Castelnau to the north of him,
with his left wing resting on the Somme; that Maud'huy was behind
Albert; and that Rheims cathedral had been persistently and brutally
shelled since September 18? We only get news of that sort
intermittently. Our railroad is in the hands of the Minister of War, and
every day or two our communications are cut off, from military
necessity. You know, I am sure, more about all this than we do, with
your cable men filling the newspapers.

But if I am seeing none of that, I am seeing the spirit of these people,
so sure of success in the end, and so convinced that, even if it takes
the whole world to do it, they will yet see the Hohenzollern dynasty go
up in the smoke of the conflagration it has lighted.

Of course, the vicious destruction of the great cathedral sends
shivers down my back. Every time I hear the big guns in that direction