To my joy, the greeting this morning was: "My dear, you look fresh as a rose!"
I didn't feel it; for you know I wrote late to you. And at last in bed, I disobeyed your advice about never worrying: I worried quite a lot over Brian and Dierdre O'Farrell; my having led him into a trap, when above all things I wanted his happiness and health. I could well have passed as pale: but I was so pleased with the secret signal that I braced up and bloomed again.
We had to start early, because there was a good deal to do in the day; and we were supposed to return early, too, for a rest, as there's the great adventure of Soissons before us to-morrow. The Correspondents' Château wasn't on our list: that was an accident, though now it seems as if the whole trip would have been worth while if only to lead up to that "accident!"
There were several ways we could have taken to Noyon, but we took the way by Dives and Lassigny. We shall have chances for other roads, because, to see various places we mean to visit, we shall go through Noyon again.
Once upon a time, before the Germans came, Dives had a lovely château, part of it very old, with a round turret under a tall pointed hat; the other part comparatively young--as young as the Renaissance--and all built of that pale, rose-pink colour which most châteaux of this forestland, and this Île-de-France used to wear in happy days before they put on smoke-stained mourning.
Now, instead of its proud château, Dives has a ruin even more lovely, though infinitely sad.
As for Lassigny, it was battered to death: yet I think it was glad to die, because the Germans had turned it into a fortress, and they had to be shelled out by the French. Poor little Lassigny! It must have had what the French call "_une beauté coquette_," and the Germans, it seemed, were loth to leave. When they found that they must go, and in haste, they boiled with rage. Not only did they blow up all that was left in the village, but they blew up the trees of the surrounding orchards. They had not the excuse for this that they needed the trees to bar the way of the pursuing French army. Such trees as they felled across the road were the big trees of the forest. Their destruction of the young fruit trees was just a slaughter of innocents; and I've never hated war, Padre, as I hated it to-day--above all, German methods of making war. Even the countless graves on the battlefields do not look so sad as those acres of murdered trees: blown-up trees, chopped-down trees, trees gashed to death with axes, trees that strove with all the strength of Nature to live, putting forth leaves and blossoms as their life blood emptied from their veins.