But alas! her mother had soon to know the worst, for brave little Denise had to have her leg cut off. When she awoke after the operation, she found by her bedside a pile of most beautiful presents sent her by kindly Parisians who had heard of her misfortune. Among them was a gold medal, and what do you think was engraved on it? Her own brave words to the policeman, “Surtout ne dites pas à maman que c’est grave.” III Before going back to the fighting line, and especially before taking leave of our ally, France, I want to tell you of what was, perhaps, the bitterest blow suffered by her in the early weeks of the war. That blow was the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral. Round Rheims are the most famous vineyards in France. All the little hills are covered with grape-laden vines, and when the writer was in that lovely, peaceful province of the Marne two years ago, all the happy peasant people, men, women, and little children, were gathering in the fruit, singing and laughing as they went along the narrow, fragrant pathways cut through the vines. Rheims is a beautiful city, as old as France herself. Once more, as in 1870, fierce fighting was taking place there at the time of the grape harvest, recalling the fine lines of Bret Harte: “Let me of my heart take counsel; War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come? But the drum Echoed, ‘Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum.” And death did reap a brave harvest amid the vineyards of France. Not a human harvest alone, but one composed of cherished memories—memories composed of all the French nation holds dear in its glorious, shadowy past. Memories of every figure in the magnificent procession of France’s kings and queens, of her saints, her statesmen, her warriors—especially of Joan of Arc, the beloved warrior-maid. The Cathedral of Rheims was not only the most perfect building of its kind in Europe—it was the Westminster Abbey of France, respected by her enemies for a thousand years. Rheims has been sung by many poets, but perhaps the most beautiful lines on the cathedral were written by James Russell Lowell: “I stood before the triple northern port, Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say, _Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realised as this._” It was with a feeling of amazement as well as of horror that one September day the world learnt of the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.