Suddenly she turned and left them. I let her pass, unchecked,
and went on towards the cathedral, humming an old French chanson.
I did this because now and then I met soldiers and patrols, and my
free and careless manner disarmed notice. Once or twice drunken
soldiers stopped me and threw their arms about me, saluting me on
the cheeks a la mode, asking themselves to drink with me. Getting
free of them, I came on my way, and was glad to reach the cathedral
unchallenged. Here and there a broken buttress or a splintered wall
told where our guns had played upon it, but inside I could hear an
organ playing and a Miserere being chanted. I went round to its
rear, and there I saw the little house described by the sentinel
at the chateau. Coming to the door, I knocked, and it was opened
at once by a warm-faced, woman of thirty or so, who instantly
brightened on seeing me. "Ah, you come from Cap Rouge, m'sieu',"
she said, looking at my clothes--her own husband's, though she
knew it not.
"I come from Jean," said I, and stepped inside.
She shut the door, and then I saw, sitting in a corner, by a
lighted table, an old man, bowed and shrunken, white hair and white
beard falling all about him, and nothing of his features to be seen
save high cheek-bones and two hawklike eyes which peered up at me.
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