CHAPTER VI

AT THE GUÉRINS’

_October 16th._

In the park of the château, sitting on an old stone bench under yellowing chest nut-trees.

Soldiers are coming and going. The château has been for many years a barracks. One guardian of the park, of the now so-despised race of gendarmes, has walked by three times, for I have my little note-book in my lap and my pencil in my hand and I am plainly not of Lunéville. He is just passing me again, and I say

“_C’est beau, le parc._”

He answers, “Perhaps in summer,” evidently not stirred by autumnal Lorraine, and then, “_Madame est en visite?_”

I answer, “Yes, with Miss Crocker.”

That name being magic in these parts, he salutes and passes on.

Of the lovely old bosquets where Stanislas combined his _jets d’eau_, his _grottes_, his Chinese pavilions, and his _parterres_, the long avenue and the great flat basin of the fountain, in which black swans are floating, are all that remain. From the end of this avenue can be seen the aviation field with its great hangars. The low terraces have borders of autumn flowers, dahlias, chrysanthemums, red vines, dead leaves, and moss-grown and charming statues of ancient love-making gods, who came into their own again in those amorous days. There is a statue to M. Guérin’s poet son born and dead between two invasions, but a lovely eighteenth-century statue of a veiled woman renders _mou_ and without accent the flat, white-marble shaft that commemorates his earthly span (1874-1908). The statue of Erckmann is also in the nineteenth-century manner. Is the human race as uncharming as modern sculptors would make it? One feels apologetic toward the ages to come, and one wants to cry out that we weren’t so bad, after all, and that seemingly soulless individual in a frock-coat and baggy trousers and top-hat, looking so unattractive in white marble, was really a delightful person, an imaginative lover, a perceptive intellectual, and witty to boot. He would have been the first to protest against his memorial; and how he would have hated the geraniums and begonias planted at his base, and the wire fencing!

Beyond the park, where the trees have been cleared away, is the brown, reedy Vesouze, a little border of old houses on its banks. Beyond is the rolling stretch of forest-covered hills and russet and jasper and topaz fields, and above it all the sunless and gray, but strangely luminous, noonday heaven of autumnal Lorraine.

_Later._

Wandered about the town. Everywhere charming bits of _autrefois_ arrest the eye. Over one doorway, between two angels’ heads of pure Louis XV, was written, “_Fais bien, laisses dire_.” A little farther along, under a figureless niche, “_Si le cœur t’en dit un ave pour son âme_.” In the window of a pharmacy near by, occupying a good old house with flat, gray façade, is a big Lunéville porcelain jar bearing the words “_Theriaca celestis_,” interwoven among flowered scrolls, and I thought of eighteenth-century servants going in for herbs and various cures for masters and mistresses having “vapors.”

The portal of the church reminds me, with its rich, wine-colored tones, of the _tezontle_ of the Mexican houses of the viceregal period. The words over the door are “_Au Dieu de Paix_,” the God that this torn borderland seldom receives, and still rarely keeps, and above is a figure of Chronos, or the Almighty, I don’t know which.

A large black marble slab without name or date is near the door as one passes in; underneath lie the remains of Voltaire’s _divine Emilie_.[18] Having loved much, let us hope much was forgiven her. The choir, pulpit, and confessionals are very pure Louis XV. Over the organ-loft are the words “_Laudate Deum in chordis et organo_,” painted in among Pompadour knots which have been democratically colored red, white, and blue, near blue and gold fleurs-de-lys of another epoch.

Against the wall of the façade is a marble urn that once contained the heart of Stanislas, who was very devout, and left no stone unturned, though he continued to love not alone the arts, to placate the final judge. He was very fond of music while dining, but on Friday never permitted any except that of the harp, considered less earthly than violin and clavecin. He never missed Mass; he was merciful to the poor and appreciative of the things of the mind. Not a bad showing; one hopes he’s happy somewhere.

In one of the side altars is a Pietà and three long lists of those just dead for France, whose

graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each;

and then, as I sat quietly thinking upon the passing of heroes, Shelley’s immortal words kept sounding in my ears:

And if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou!... From the world’s bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonaïs is, why fear we to become?

Lunched at the Guérins’. _La Ford_ being the only means of locomotion in Lunéville, not even an old horse remaining to pull a cab, we had to give up the trip to Baccarat, and indeed any trip anywhere. Delighted to be able to _flâner_ in the old streets without my umbrella being turned wrong side out.

Overhead the _avions_ were thick; we counted twelve at one time, some of them flying so low that we could hear words. Observation airplanes, bombarding airplanes, the swift _avions de chasse_, going in the direction of the forest of Parroy, where the Germans are intrenched since the retreat from Lunéville, September, 1914. Parroy and all that part of the country was completely laid waste in 1636 by Richelieu, who sent the cheerful report to Louis XIV that “Lorraine was reduced to nothing, and the inhabitants dead for the most part.”

That conquest of the unsubstantial air seems the greatest of all man’s achievements. And as I walked along there was an almost perceptible flinging of my soul into the heavenly spaces and I thought not on battles and wrecks nor even of hungry children, but rather of the discoverers of nature’s secrets, the disciples of philosophers, the undiscourageable lovers of the arts, who everywhere are in the minority, and everywhere reach the heights, and everywhere in the end control the hosts, even of battle. And at the sudden dropping of the sun over the lovely Lorraine fields, become blue with scarcely a hint of the green and brown and amethyst of a moment ago, the band of yellow fringing the horizon—though with me walked the ghosts of men who at the word of command invaded or defended—I was not sad. A lean, brown, unexpectant urchin entered the town with me. I gave him a two-franc piece and a blessing, _Pax tibi_, which last, from the look in his eyes, some part of him understood. Then I turned into the beautiful old house of the mayor where _goûter_ and bridge had been arranged for us. I rapped with a large and very bright wrought-iron knocker bearing the date 1781, and, entering, found myself in a great hallway; to the left is the _escalier d’honneur_, with its beautiful wrought-iron balustrade. I mounted it, and passed through many rooms of noble yet thoroughly livable dimensions. They were filled with officers, some women came from their hospital service in nursing garb, groups of bright-eyed “_filles à marier_,” and a few young aviators. The large _salon_ has beautiful panelings, with heavy gilt _motifs_ of tambour, torch, helmet and shield in the corners. In it was signed the celebrated Traité de Lunéville, 1801, and it is all very seigneurial.

I found myself seated at a table with the mayor, General —— and Mme. de C., in nursing garb. I investigated, during a couple of hours, the surprises of the erratic yet brilliant bridge of the _maire de Lunéville_, whose delight was to mystify his partner as well as the adversary, and who, without in the least deserving it, won every rubber. I had a few bad “distractions,” but who would not, under that roof so rich in memories?

During the occupation in 1914 the German generals and high officers entering the town were lodged on the second floor of the old house. The same thing had happened in 1870.

We came away in pitch darkness at 7.30, but I can now skip and bound about the dark streets, with the best of them, no more feeling around for curbs, which seem again to be placed where they are to be expected.

Afterward, dinner at M. Guérin’s. General and Mme. de Buyer, General ——, M. Guérin’s two sons, one a mitrailleuse officer for the moment near by at Blainville la Grande, the other the student and lover of the arts of whom I spoke, and whose every instinct is remote from killing. I sometimes wonder at the stillness of men like that—except that there is nothing to be done about it. General de Buyer told us of _lances-flamme_, of _flamme-snappes_, of the _obus asphyxiants_, which burst without odor or smoke, but are deadly, all the same. Then the conversation turned on _le conflit historique entre la race germanique et la nation gauloise_ which had begun before the Roman conquest. M. Guérin told us of places where still may be seen colossal walls and thick, crumbling towers, mysterious witness of those legendary conflicts, just as the Place des Carmes, or Place Brûlée, is witness of those of 1917.

The younger Guérin son was preparing to go into diplomacy when the war broke out. I said, “Perhaps we will sometime be _en poste_ together,” and a strange look that the pleasant dinner scene did not allow me to interpret immediately came over his face.

“_Peut-être_,” he answered, slowly.

I knew a moment afterward that that young man who loves his life was thinking, “if I am alive.” He has seen so many fall. And suddenly came into my mind the lines of his poet brother, born and dead between two invasions:

_Nous sommes, ô mon Dieu, plusieurs dans la cité,_ _A porter haut le lys de la mysticité, ..._

And for an infinitesimal moment, in spite of the pleasant evening meal, my thoughts, too, turned to invisibilities—his and my last end, and our veiled destinies.