Orchards were thick about us, though the trees were leafless now. The
little thatched cottages had odd fungi sprouting from their roofs like
rosy mushrooms; the trees and streams had a silvery shimmer, like a
Corot fairy-land.
Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came the
ravaged villages. We were on the soil where in the first month of the
war the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, the
French had driven them back. We passed Cormizy, burnt to the ground
to celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died,
transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined houses
about a mourning, shattered church. It was the region where the Hun
triumph had spoken aloud, unbridled. Miss Falconer sat white and silent
as we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.
We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably. Then, leaving the
highway, we had taken a country road. Two punctures befell us; once
our carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it. By the time these
deficiencies were remedied I had collected dust and grease enough to
look my part.
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