"
* * * * *
It is difficult to tear oneself away from themes like this, when the
story one has still to tell is the story of Gerbeviller. At Vitrimont
the great dream of Christianity--the City of God on earth--seems still
reasonable.
At Heremenil, and Gerbeviller, we are within sight and hearing of deeds
that befoul the human name, and make one despair of a world in which
they can happen.
At luncheon in a charming house of old Lorraine, with an intellectual
and spiritual atmosphere that reminded me of a book that was one of the
abiding joys of my younger days--the _Recit d'une Soeur_--we heard from
the lips of some of those present an account of the arrival at Luneville
of the fugitives from Gerbeviller, after the entry of the Bavarians into
the town. Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had
escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen
kilometres that separate Gerbeviller from Luneville. No intelligible
account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the
nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their
extremity of fear.
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