With them
they brought rugs, blankets, and loaves of bread, and from daybreak
until night fell and the shells ceased to fall they sat in the hay-fields
and along the grass gutters of the road. Some of them were most
intelligent-looking and had the manner and clothes of the rich. There
was one family of five that on four different occasions on our way to
and from Paris we saw seated on the ground at a place certainly five
miles away from any spot where a shell had fallen. They were all in
deep mourning, but as they sat in the hay-field around a wicker tea
basket and wrapped in steamer-rugs they were comic. Their lives
were no more valuable than those of thousands of their fellow
townsfolk who in Rheims were carrying on the daily routine. These
kept the shops open or in the streets were assisting the Red Cross.
One elderly gentleman told me how he had been seized by the
Germans as a hostage and threatened with death by hanging. With
forty other first citizens, from the 4th to the 12th of September he had
been in jail. After such an experience one would have thought that
between himself and the Germans he would have placed as many
miles as possible, but instead he was strolling around the Place du
Parvis Notre-Dame, in front of the cathedral.
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