CHAPTER IV

A STROLL IN NANCY

_October 15th._

I spent yesterday a-wandering in the old streets of Nancy, between gusts of wind and rain and great bursts of sun. After much coaxing, _la Ford_ was cajoled into taking the road at 9.30, but as we got to Nancy and into the Place Stanislas suddenly her front wheels spread apart. E. M. gave one glance, but not at all the glance of despair she would have given had it happened on the road, and then flew to seek her waiting bridegroom at the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, while I, less enthusiastically, sought the blond chauffeur of the coreless heart. He seemed quite human, as, unscrewing the bar in front, which crumbled softly like a piece of bread, he held up a piece and said, “_C’était fait pour vous casser le cou_.”

Seeing the American flag flying from the ground-floor window of one of the beautiful old buildings of the Place Stanislas, I went in to find Mrs. Dawson installed in charge of the Nancy branch of the “American Fund for French Wounded.” It was another novelty for Stanislas to look upon out of his _right_ eye! He’s been kept busy, these past three years, looking about him. The large room was filled with furniture M. Mirman is collecting for refugees—wardrobes, tables, chairs, in and on which were piles of shirts, vests, sweaters, _cachenez_, handkerchiefs, all from over the ocean. And really, when one investigates the comfort-bags filled by too-generous American hands, one has a cupidous feeling. There is a lavishness in the matter of Colgate’s tooth-paste, for instance, which one can rarely get for love, and not at all for money, in Paris!

I came away in a gray, slanting rain that made the Place Stanislas look as if Raffaello had done it over and framed it beautifully in gray. Great scratchings of rainfall, and soldiers and women hurrying through it. But _le geste_ is not like the days when Raffaello painted—there are no skirts to lift up, or, rather, none that need lifting.

Then I crossed over to the Place de la Carrière, where _souvent en ces aimables lieux des héros et des demi-dieux_ had held their tournaments, and then into the church of St.-Epvre to get a Mass. The stained-glass windows, modern and very expensive-looking, were crisscrossed with broad stripes of paper on the side toward the railway, where the shocks from the frequent bombing of the station are especially felt. Everywhere in Nancy the windows are broken, or crisscrossed with paper, or both. The church was blue with military.

Afterward I walked through the Grande Rue. The ducal palace of the early sixteenth century, begun by René II, has its door scaffolded and sandbagged. It is the celebrated _Musée Lorrain_, whose treasures are now removed further from the frontier. It is here that the body of Charles III lay in such magnificence that there arose the saying in the sixteenth century that the three most gorgeous ceremonies in the world were the consecration of a king of France at Reims, the crowning of an emperor of Germany at Frankfort, and the obsequies of a duke of Lorraine at Nancy.

I continued down the Grande Rue between groups of _poilus_, officers, and the usual Sunday population coming from Mass, or getting in last dinner provisions, to the Porte de Graffe of the fourteenth century, beyond which is the Porte de la Citadelle, and then the garrison. As one walks along, the snatches of talk one overhears are “_Bombardé deux fois_,” “_Pas un vitre qui reste_,” “_Volant très-bas_,” etc.

I came back through the park. In it is a modern iron bandstand, fortunately copied after the delicious designs of Jean Lamour—only _he_ would have done something to relieve the heavy iron roof. And he quite certainly caught his inspiration musing about the park one autumn day, for everywhere I saw charming repetitions of his _grilles_ in that delicate tracery of yellow leaf against gray trunk and branch.

Old houses give on the park, where one might dream dreams, and find the world—perhaps well lost. Many windows broken, and more crisscrossing with bands of paper.

It was getting to be 12.30 when, having been as much of an angel as the three dimensions permit, I emerged on to the Place Stanislas to see E. M. approaching with a young blue-clad aviator, with something distinguished yet modest in his bearing, of whom I instantly thought he is one of those _qui cherche sa récompense plutôt dans les yeux de ses hommes que dans les notes de ses chefs_—and so it proved to be. He didn’t even wear the _brisquets_ of his years of service on his arm.

“_Tout le monde sait que je n’ai pas été trois ans sans rien faire_,” he said, later, during lunch, which we took in the Café Stanislas, crowded with gallooned and decorated officers. Several red-and-white marked autos of the General Staff were waiting before the door, where Stanislas also could see them, and those beings, half human, half divine, of the sky-line, framed it all. Afterward I again removed my three dimensions, hunting for M. Pierre Boyé, the great authority on all things of Lorraine, M. Guérin having given me a letter to him. On arriving at the house, through quiet gray streets, there was no answer to my numerous ringings of the bell, so I came back, drawn irresistibly to the Place Stanislas. By this time it was aglow in the afternoon light; great masses of clouds even at 3.30 were tinted with yellow and orange, and every inch of gilding caught the light. I hailed an antique cab and drove out where I could look over rolling stretches of country, along the road to Toul. The brown and yellow fields were aglow, the bronzing forests, too; above were piled the high and splendid clouds of autumnal Lorraine, and I saw where Claude le Lorrain had got _his_ masses. The _cocher_ then proceeded to bring me back to town by a perfectly hideous road, called Quai Claude le Lorrain—on one side the blackened railway, on the other modern claptrappy houses with their windows shattered and their roofs damaged.

I then told him to take me to the church of the Cordeliers, where I stepped suddenly, not only into its late afternoon dimness, but into the dimness of past ages. A shaft of light from a high window showed me a dull, rich bit of color on an ancient pillar, in a sort of chapel; and then my eye fell on what I had come to see, the tomb of the Duchesse Philippe de Gueldre, widow of René II, bearing the incomparable stamp of the genius of Ligier Richier.

I tiptoed toward the stone slab where that great lady of another age is lying asleep, clad in the dark robe of the Poor Clares. Her hands, folded downward, are clasped at her waist. Under the cowl the pale head is turned gently, as if in sleep.[17] She is an enduring image of resignation, not alone for herself, but for all of us who live and die, we don’t quite know how or why, and who must “endure our going hence even as our coming hither.”

The church was constructed by her husband, René II, Duke of Lorraine, to commemorate the deliverance of Nancy and the defeat of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477. Duke René himself had a glorious reign; for him the arts and letters were the ornament of victory. I discovered a commemorative monument of my friend Duke Léopold, flanked rather flamboyantly by unquiet, yet charming, statues of Faith and Hope! Also an elaborate statue of Katerina Opalinska, the consort of Stanislas, who, though he had been somewhat forgetful of her in life, had done really all that a wife could wish in the matter of the tomb. But some virtue more mystic than the decorative Faith and Hope of the eighteenth century exhaled from the quiet figure of Philippe de Gueldre.

Near the high altar is the Chapelle Ronde begun by Charles III, the grandson of René, in 1607, intended as a sepulcher for the princes of Lorraine, and in a beautiful _grille_ are entwined the arms of Lorraine and Austria. Then the sacristan came in to light the candles of the high altar, the church got suddenly quite dark, from the organ came the strains of “_O quam suavis est, Domine_,” and people began to come in to Benediction. The blue and vermilion and gold of the mausoleum of René II faded and one saw only vague outlines of saints and angels, and a figure of the Eternal Father. It cried out of that other deliverance of Nancy; but when the world war is over will his widow, Philippe de Gueldre, _conjunx Piissimi_, still be sleeping quietly, her brown cowl over her head and her crown at her feet? Her soul “conducted to Paradise by angels, where martyrs received her and led her into the Holy City Jerusalem.” The church got quite full, the organist continued to play early Italian music, and the “Pietà, Signor” of Pergolese rose as I knelt by Philippe de Gueldre. The great cope of the priest shone, the smell of incense pervaded the dim spaces, the “_Tantum Ergo_” sounded, and I bowed my head....

Then out into a world of fading light, found the _cocher_ in the exact attitude I had left him, and begged him to drive quickly (which was impossible) to the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, bethinking me of the 5.30 train to Lunéville. As we went through the dim, charming streets I remembered an old verse I had found in one of M. Guérin’s books, by an unreservedly admiring individual, who said that if he had one foot in Paradise and the other in Nancy, he would withdraw the one in Paradise, that both might be in Nancy!

I found waiting at the door of the hotel E. M., the _distingué_ young aviator, and Don Kelley, _en permission_ for twenty-four hours from Gondrecourt, strong and eager, since a week at Gondrecourt, since a month in France for the first time in his life.

The young men took us to the station and deposited us in the train and made their adieux. For very special reasons at that moment I said to E. M.:

“If you are going back to Lunéville on _my_ account, don’t!”

The guard had closed the door of the compartment, had sounded his whistle, but I caught the look in her eye and out we jumped, returning to the hotel, where we gave what we hoped was a pleasant surprise party. _Dîner à quatre_ at seven o’clock. About a dozen Americans _en permission_ were dining among many Frenchmen, and we amused ourselves investigating the multicolored intricacies of the various uniforms, aviators, cavalry, infantry, artillery, and the many “grades.” Then again a dash for the station—Count de L. had to get to Paris, and Don Kelley to Gondrecourt. The latter said, as we stood in the dark, battered station:

“I am where I would most want to be in the world, and, though I am an only son, I am where my parents would most wish me to be. When I get back to Gondrecourt and get into that long, dark shed and see the men rolled up, and if it is raining, the water dripping in, I shall know it is the real thing, and those of my generation who have known it and those who have not will be forever divided.”

Permissions not being among things safely trifled with, we then saw them into their train, which was leaving first, and crossed the rails to where ours, dark, filled with returning officers, was waiting; and so out into the night with all curtains carefully drawn, the stars shining. It was a _nuit à boches_, one of the officers said, continuing, “It’s often an obsession with them—for a long time they won’t come near Nancy or Lunéville, and then every night when it is at all clear they appear.” The inhabitants can choose (in their minds) between good weather and _avions_ or bad weather and safety.

Trains from Nancy to Lunéville seem to have a way of hunting up stations, threading them up, and what one does easily in three-quarters of an hour in a motor takes an hour and a half to three, according to the stops. At Blainville we descended to show our _sauf-conduits_, the guard standing just behind a convenient puddle that every one splashed into and then stepped out of. Finally, Lunéville, night-enveloped, lighted only with flashes from electric pocket-lamps, like great fireflies. And coming through the night from Nancy, I kept thinking how France had done enough, more than enough, the impossible, and what a cold and dreadful grind the war had become, and of untried young Americans sleeping in dim villages so near. And many other things that it is bootless to record. _Nous sommes dedans._