That we realize, as we look on the rapt face of the captain who leads us now within the great church itself, where for three years all prayers have ceased. The marvellous stained glass from the thirteenth century, which made the religious light of the beautiful windows, now hangs literally in tatters like torn bed-quilts blowing in the wind. That great jagged hole in the roof was torn by a shell at the last bombardment. There are fissures in the side walls. The rain comes in, and the birds. Doves light there on the transept rail. Amid the rubbish of broken saints with which the floor is littered, there yet stands here and there a sorrowful statue hung with the garland of faded flowers reminiscent of some far-off fête day. And _Requiescat in pace_, you may read the legend cut in the stone of the eastern wall above the tomb of some Christian Father. In the nearby Rue du Cardinal de Lorraine, in a garden saying his rosary, walks an old man in a red cap, one of the few remaining residents who will not leave the city. He is the venerable Mgr. Lucon, Cardinal of Rheims. Always he is praying, praying to God to spare the cathedral. And God does not. “I do not understand. I suppose that He in His wisdom must have some purpose in permitting the church to be destroyed,” says the Cardinal of Rheims. “I do not understand,” he always adds humbly. “One may not understand,” repeats the captain. And he takes us to luncheon at the Lion d’Or, the little inn where the wife of the proprietor still stays to serve any “mission of the French _gouvernement_.” Then he shows us the famous champagne cellars of the _Etablissement Pommery_. Here one hundred feet below the ground, in the chalk caves built a thousand years ago by the Romans, are twelve miles of subterranean passageways with thirteen million bottles of the most celebrated champagne in the making. The superintendent pours out his choicest brand: “_Vive la France_ and the Allies,” he says, lifting his glass. He talks more English than the captain can. He is telling us of when the Germans entered Rheims. “Four officers,” he says, “came riding ahead of the army. And I met them by chance just as they arrived in the market place of Rheims.” “What did you do?” asks the New York correspondent of the _London Daily Mail_. “I wept,” says the Frenchman, simply and impressively. “Gentlemen,” he adds solemnly and sadly, “I hope you may never meet some day four conquering Chinamen riding up Broadway.” I find myself catching my breath suddenly at that. And I am glad when the captain hums a gay little French tune and holds out his glass a second time: “Give us again ‘_Vive la France_.’”