CHAPTER xxx

s the fearful summer of 1914 dragged its festering
wounds on into tite Autumn, Marie grasped the
meaning of war all too well, for war preyed like a
vulture on northern France and even on peaceful
and distant Provence. The abortive recapture of
Alsace and Lorraine with its triumph and subsequent
humiliation, the grim fighting retreat of the English
from Mons, the bombing of the cathedral at Malines,
the tales of outraged and slaughtered civilians, these
things gathered over Saint Loup like black clouds,
menacing its homes with sorrow and death as the
women of Provence gave their men — a proud but
very terrible giving.
Marie Benedit looked at her sons, and strive though
she might to put her country before even them in this
hour of its need, she yet thanked God that her sons
were so young; God and His Golden Saints she must
thank, for while man created the patriot, it was God
Himself who created the mother. Kneeling at the
shrine of the warrior-bishop, which now blazed with
perpetual votive candles, she prayed that peace be
restored to the world, that the days of their tribulation
be shortened. And beside her might kneel the plump
Madame Hermitte who also had sons and they older
than Marie's, or the Simons whose Guillaume had
gone to the front, or Elise whose husband was still
of the age and the disposition to see active service,
Madame Roustan, as Ukely as not, would be there,
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