tailieunhanh - FIGHTING FRANCE FROM DUNKERQUE TO BELPORT

On the 30th of July, 1914, motoring north from Poitiers, we had lunched somewhere by the roadside under apple-trees on the edge of a field. Other fields stretched away on our right and left to a border of woodland and a village steeple. All around was noonday quiet, and the sober disciplined landscape which the traveller's memory is apt to evoke as distinctively French. Sometimes, even to accustomed eyes, these ruled-off fields and compact grey villages seem merely flat and tame; at other moments the sensitive imagination sees in every thrifty sod and even furrow the ceaseless vigilant attachment of generations faithful to the soil | FIGHTING FRANCE 1 FIGHTING FRANCE FROM DUNKERQUE TO BELPORT BY EDITH WHARTON NEW YORK MCMXV CONTENTS THE LOOK OF PARIS IN ARGONNE IN LORRAINE AND THE VOSGES IN THE NORTH IN ALSACE THE TONE OF FRANCE THE LOOK OF PARIS BY EDITH WHARTON 2 AUGUST 1914--FEBUARY 1915 I AUGUST On the 30th of July 1914 motoring north from Poitiers we had lunched somewhere by the roadside under apple-trees on the edge of a field. Other fields stretched away on our right and left to a border of woodland and a village steeple. All around was noonday quiet and the sober disciplined landscape which the traveller s memory is apt to evoke as distinctively French. Sometimes even to accustomed eyes these ruled-off fields and compact grey villages seem merely flat and tame at other moments the sensitive imagination sees in every thrifty sod and even furrow the ceaseless vigilant attachment of generations faithful to the soil. The particular bit of landscape before us spoke in all its lines of that attachment. The air seemed full of the long murmur of human effort the rhythm of oft-repeated tasks the serenity of the scene smiled away the war rumours which had hung on us since morning. All day the sky had been banked with thunder-clouds but by the time we reached Chartres toward four o clock they had rolled away under the horizon and the town was so saturated with sunlight that to pass into the cathedral was like entering the dense obscurity of a church in Spain. At first all detail was imperceptible we were in a hollow night. Then as the shadows gradually thinned and gathered themselves up into pier and vault and ribbing there burst out of them great sheets and showers of colour. Framed by such depths of darkness and steeped in a blaze of mid-summer sun the familiar windows seemed singularly remote and yet overpoweringly vivid. Now they widened into dark-shored pools splashed with sunset now glittered and menaced like the shields of fighting angels. Some were cataracts of sapphires others roses .