almost nothing,
suffered.

"Could not an effort be made," I said, "to replace the burned roof of
the cathedral?--to cover the vaulted roofs again as quickly as
possible? For without this they cannot resist the coming winter."

"Evidently," he said, "at the first snows, at the first rains, there
is a risk that everything will fall, the more so, as those charred
stones have lost their power of resistance. But we cannot even try
that, to preserve them a little, for the Germans never take their eyes
off us; at the end of their field-glasses, it is the cathedral, always
the cathedral; and as soon as a man ventures to appear on a turret, in
a tower, the rain of shells immediately begins again. No, there is
nothing to be done. It is in the hands of God."

Returning, the prelate graciously gives me a guide, who has the keys
of the barrier, and at last I penetrate into the ruins of the
cathedral, into the denuded nave, which thus appears still higher and
more immense. It is cold there; it is sad enough to make one weep.
This unexpected cold, this cold much keener than outside, is, perhaps,
what from the first takes hold of you, disconcerts you; instead of the
slightly heavy odor which generally fills ancient churches--the vapor
of so much incense that has been burned there, the emanations of so
many coffins that have been blessed there, of so many generations of
men that have crowded there, for agony and prayer--instead of this, a
damp and icy wind, which enters rustling through all the crevices of
the walls, through the breaches in the stained glass windows and the
holes in the vaulted ceilings. Those vaulted roofs, up there, here and
there smashed by grapeshot--one's eyes are immediately lifted up by
instinct to look at them, one's eyes are, as it were, drawn to them by
the up-springing of all these columns, as slender as reeds, which rise
in sheaves to sustain them; they have retreating curves of exquisite
grace, which seem to have been imagined, so as not to allow the
glances sent heavenward to fall back again. One never grows weary of
bending one's head back in order to see them, to see the sacred roofs
which are about to fall into nothingness; and they are up there also,
far up, the long series of almost aerial pointed arches, on which they
are supported, pointed arches indefinitely alike from one end of the
nave to the other, and which, in spite of their complicated carvings,
are restful to follow in their retreating p