The End How the Great War Was Stopped by L. P. Gratacap

Author:L. P. Gratacap [L. P. Gratacap]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783985311286
Publisher: OTB ebook
Published: 2021-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Well I got Sebastien away from Compiègne—and it was only about six days later that the Germans swarmed over this region—and after delays in the trains, crowded with the wounded, brought him to Paris. The city was in a suppressed excitement with a seething exodus of citizens going on, who stood in lines at the stations ten abreast and almost half a mile long waiting their turns to get away to the south. I stayed some days in Paris, putting Sebastien in one of the well equipped hospital échoppes in the Champ de Mars. He was yet weak and nervous, and his breast caused him much pain. I saw him every night, and we went over the orders and the news of each day together.

The government left Paris for Bordeaux, on September second, and it was thought that there might soon be a pitched battle around the Paris forts before a week was over. The enemy was pushing its outposts nearer and nearer, with the main advance directed against the left flank of the French centre. On September eighth the allied armies were more than holding their own from Ourcq to Verdun. Preparations went on furiously all over Paris, and the Bois de Boulogne was turned into a cattle ranch, and the ratio of available provisions to the population—then over two million—carefully calculated. The use of gas for cooking was prohibited, and its use confined to lighting. East of Paris were lines of refugees, filling the roads from Verdun, almost seventy kilometres (about 43 miles) long; the Chateau de Bizy was transformed into a hospital, and also the Chateau des Penitents at Vernonnet.

It was evident that St. Choiseul for the present was comparatively safe from invasion, the current of investment moving to the south-east, although a letter I received from Gabrielle said that German military motors had been seen near Briois and that their occupants had rifled the wine cellars of M. Villiers. Sebastien was impatient to get away, and I feeling too excited to remain with him, concluded to send him at once to St. Choiseul, writing to Gabrielle that we would come together. My intention to return to St. Choiseul was further quickened by some indefinite statements by my sister that father and mother had partly lost their memories. I instinctively divined that the relentless pall of paralysis was closing about them, and the miserable sombreness of this thought with all of the present darkness about me, plunged me into a dull speechless misery.

The autumn lights shone upon the fair lands about St. Choiseul and shone upon the gardens, thicketed with early chrysanthemums of the sweet village itself, with a lovelier tenderness. It was altogether charming, and as we rode from Briois gently—very gently—Sebastien caught my shoulders and head in his arms, and hid his face on my breast, sobbing softly. The poor boy's heart was full of memories and full too doubtless of presaging fears. The happiness snatched from his life by the nation's peril, the yet

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