By June 1915, 150 “Friends” had rebuilt more than 400 houses, and rehoused more than seven hundred persons.  They had provided ploughs and other agricultural gear, seeds for the harvest fields and for the gardens, poultry for the farmyards.  And from that day to this, the adorable work has gone on. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another.”

* * * * *

It is difficult to tear oneself away from themes like this, when the story one has still to tell is the story of Gerbeviller.  At Vitrimont the great dream of Christianity—­the City of God on earth—­seems still reasonable.

At Heremenil, and Gerbeviller, we are within sight and hearing of deeds that befoul the human name, and make one despair of a world in which they can happen.

At luncheon in a charming house of old Lorraine, with an intellectual and spiritual atmosphere that reminded me of a book that was one of the abiding joys of my younger days—­the Recit d’une Soeur—­we heard from the lips of some of those present an account of the arrival at Luneville of the fugitives from Gerbeviller, after the entry of the Bavarians into the town.  Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen kilometres that separate Gerbeviller from Luneville.  No intelligible account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their extremity of fear.  And when, an hour later, we ourselves reached Gerbeviller, the terror which had inspired that frenzied flight became, as we listened to Soeur Julie, a tangible presence haunting the ruined town.

Gerbeviller and Soeur Julie are great names in France to-day.  Gerbeviller, with Nomeny, Badonviller, and Sermaize, stand in France for what is most famous in German infamy; Soeur Julie, the “chere soeur” of so many narratives, for that form of courage and whole-hearted devotion which is specially dear to the French, because it has in it a touch of panache, of audacity!  It is not too meek; it gets its own back when it can, and likes to punish the sinner as well as to forgive him.  Sister Julie of the Order of St. Charles of Nancy, Madame Rigard, in civil parlance, had been for years when the war broke out the head of a modest cottage hospital in the small country town of Gerbeviller.  The town was prosperous and pretty; its gardens ran down to the Mortagne flowing at its feet, and it owned a country house in a park, full of treasures new and old—­tapestries, pictures, books—­as Lorraine likes to have such things about her.