Mother Meraut knew, but she did not tell her children, that precious lives had also been lost, and that buried somewhere in the ruins were the bodies of doctors and nurses who had given their own in trying to save the lives of others, and of brave citizens of Rheims who had fallen in an attempt to save the precious relics carefully treasured there.  Neither did she tell them that little Jean, the Verger’s son, was one of that heroic band.  These sorrows she bore in her own breast, but she never passed near the Cathedral after that terrible night.  Sometimes, when a necessary errand took her to that part of the City, she would pause at a distance to look long at the statue of Jeanne d’Arc, standing unharmed in the midst of the destruction about her still lifting her sword to the sky.  In all the rain of shells which had fallen upon the City not one had yet touched the statue.  Only the tip of the sword had been broken off.  It comforted Mother Meraut to see it standing so strangely safe in the midst of such desolation.  “It stands,” she thought, " even as her pure spirit stood safe amidst the flames of her martyrdom.  But I cannot, like her, pray for my enemies while I burn in the fires they have kindled.”

There was yet another burden which she carried safely hidden in her heart.  She had not heard from her father and mother since the Battle of the Marne.  That the Germans had passed through the village where they lived she knew, but what destruction they had wrought she could only guess.  It was impossible for her at that time to go to them; so she waited in silence, hoping that some time good news might come.  The slow weeks lengthened into months, and at last Father Meraut was strong enough to get about on a crutch like Father Varennes.  It was a great day when first he was able to hobble down the steps and out upon the street, leaning on Mother Meraut’s arm on one side, and his crutch upon the other, with Pierre and Pierrette marching before him like a guard of honor.

It was now cold weather; winter had set in, and life became more difficult as food grew scarce and there was not enough fuel to heat the houses.  School should have begun in October, but school-buildings had not been spared in the bombardment, and it was dangerous to permit children to stay in them.  At last, however, a new way was found to cheat the enemy of its prey.  Schools were opened in the great champagne cellars of Rheims, and Pierre and Pierrette were among the first scholars enrolled.  Every day after that they hastened through the streets before the usual hour of the bombardment, went down into one of the great tunnels cut in chalk, and there, in rooms deep underground, carried on their studies.  It was a strange school, but it was safer than their home, even though there was danger in going back and forth in the streets.  By spring the children of Rheims had lived so much in cellars that they were as pale as potato-sprouts.

Mother Meraut watched her two with deepening anxiety.  Then, one day in the spring, a corner of their own roof was blown off by a shell.  No one was hurt, but when a few moments later a second explosion blew a cat through the hole and dropped it into the soup, Mother Meraut’s endurance gave way.