"Stop!" ordered the Russian, and at the foot of the steep, conical hill
which wore Verdun upon its crest they stopped and stared. The town was
poured over the slopes of the hill as though a titanic tipcart had let
out its rubbish upon the summit. Houses, shops and churches, still
upright, still formed Verdun, kept its shape intact, unwilling that it
should fall to dust while these deadly skeletons could keep their feet.
Light glared through the walls, and upon the topmost point of all the
palace of the bishop was balanced, its bones laced against the sky. The
Russian, who had stood up in the car, sat down. "Now go on...."

The streets which circled the base of the hill had been partially
cleared of fallen rock and stonework, and the car could pick its way
between the crazy shop-fronts, where notices of vanished cobblers,
manicurists, butchers, flapped before caverns hollowed by fire, upon
fingers of stone already touched by moss.

Here and there soldiers moved in bands at their work of clearing. But
the black hat, the drab coat of the civilian had long been left behind
--and here the face of a woman was unknown as the flying dragons of the
world's youth.

Now and then with a crash the remains of a house fell, as the block
of stonework which alone supported it was disarranged by the working
soldiers.

"Where am I to go?" asked Fanny, as the street wound round the base of
the hill.

"I will climb over beside you and direct you," said the French
lieutenant, and dropped into the front seat.