e little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for
though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little.
The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of
the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century,
and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window--though
it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the
flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent
adventures when he feels the first chill of age--is stamped with the
characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would
find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for
like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in
procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and
white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty
consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And
it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German
occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese
like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a
_maire_, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he
fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See.
Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little
house--surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which
there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and
his biretta.

We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial
mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and,
having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I
applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open
the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least
responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made
demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite
simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before.
With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hotel
de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning,
and thus also had the aged waiter at the Metropole disposed of a
flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough;
gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and
in the town o