The bombardment had grown sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations.  Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically.  With inborn sense of order, some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass into neat piles.  Habit is often so much stronger than fear.  So is curiosity.  All the boys and many young men and maidens were in the middle of the street watching to see where the shells struck and on the lookout for aeroplanes.  When about five o’clock one sailed over the city, no one knew whether it was German or French, but every one followed it, apparently intending if it launched a bomb to be in at the death.

I found all the hotels closed and on their doors I pounded in vain, and was planning to go back to my car when I stumbled upon the Hotel du Nord.  It was open and the proprietress, who was knitting, told me the table-d’hote dinner was ready.  Not wishing to miss dinner, I halted an aged citizen who was fleeing from the city and asked him to carry a note to the American consul inviting him to dine.  But the aged man said the consulate was close to where the shells were falling and that to approach it was as much as his life was worth.  I asked him how much his life was worth in money, and he said two francs.

He did not find the consul, and I shared the table d’hote with three tearful old French ladies, each of whom had husband or son at the front.  That would seem to have been enough without being shelled at home.  It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true that in war it is the women who suffer.  The proprietress walked around the table, still knitting, and told us tales of German officers who until the day before had occupied her hotel, and her anecdotes were not intended to make German officers popular.

The bombardment ceased at eight o’clock, but at four the next morning it woke me, and as I departed for Paris salvoes of French artillery were returning the German fire.

Before leaving I revisited the cathedral to see if during the night it had been further mutilated.  Around it shells were still falling, and the square in front was deserted.  In the rain the roofless houses, shattered windows, and broken carvings that littered the street presented a picture of melancholy and useless desolation.  Around three sides of the square not a building was intact.  But facing the wreckage the bronze statue of Joan of Arc sat on her bronze charger, uninjured and untouched.  In her right hand, lifted high above her as though defying the German shells, some one overnight had lashed the flag of France.

The next morning the newspapers announced that the cathedral was in flames, and I returned to Rheims.  The papers also gave the two official excuses offered by the Germans for the destruction of the church.  One was that the French batteries were so placed that in replying to them it was impossible to avoid shelling the city.