From a murmur which sweeps through the throng of people, a chant grows in volume until it is like the sound of a vast organ. All at once the gay burners, the smoking censers, and the gorgeously clad priests vanish around a turning in the street; the spell is broken; the crowd, before so orderly, swarms like bees in the hive, and here and there are couples dancing and jostling all unmindful of each other's proximity, but performing with stolid good humor. The spirit of the dance takes hold of the crowd, it spreads across the bridge, and sets of four, six and eight form in rows, holding one another at handkerchief length, eyes dancing with eyes to limbs' measure. There was little of passion but much of poetry in this dance, a sort of polka with three steps forward and two back, a serpentine swinging unison. Words are poor painters of the scene: like unto a moving wheatfield swept by two winds, or the sea surge whose oscillant ebb and flow is so fascinating. And so throughout the day, and far into the night the celebration continued, with meetings--rejoicings--and mild potations sacramental of reunited friendships; but not until long after the celebration ended and common events regained dominion over the streets and square, did one cease to see mentally the swinging sway of that dance, or hear the pounding, insistent, snarling drone on the barrel organs of that reiterated tune.... And this is how one likes to recall old, old Verdun, now so pathetically battered and shell torn, its cathedral towers ragged against the sky, and its Citadel dismantled. DOMREMY AND THE MAID |ALIGHTING from the ordinary train (none other stops here apparently) at the dismal little stucco station at Domremy-Maxey-sur-Meuse, in a downpour of rain, we asked the little roly-poly _chef de la Gare_, who wore a tall red cap ornamented with a band of gold lace, all a size too large for his round bullet head:--First, could we have a conveyance to Domremy?--Secondly, was there an inn there?--Thirdly, did he think that we could be accommodated there? To the first question he returned explosively,--"No, there was no conveyance; there had never been a conveyance there of any sort." To the second: "No, there was no inn there--but there was one at Domremy-la-Pucelle, 'toute en face,' near the church; no great thing, you understand--M'sieur and Madame--but not so bad, and clean of a surety." To the third: "Yes, possibly; stay, as it rains torrents, I shall go over there and enquire for M'sieur and Madame.'Tis but a short walk for me, and I have the paletot which resists the rain."