He stood up from the wooden chair with its widely-curved arms in which he had been sitting stiffly, and spoke to the priest.
“It is not amusing, _mon père_, what you tell us, and what we have all guessed. It is one more chapter of tragedy in the history of our poor France. Pray God the war will soon be over.”
“With victory!” said the old priest. “With an enemy beaten and bleeding beneath our feet. The Germans must be punished for all their crimes, or the justice of God will not be satisfied.”
There was a thrill of passion in the old man’s voice and his nostrils quivered.
“To all Frenchmen that goes without saying,” said Pierre Nesle. “The Germans must be punished, and will be, though no vengeance will repay us for the suffering of our _poilus_--nor for the agony of our women behind the lines, which perhaps was the greatest of all.”
The Abbé Bourdin put his claw-like old hands on the young man’s shoulders and drew him closer and kissed his Croix de Guerre.
“You have helped to give victory,” he said. “How many Germans have you killed? How many, eh?”
He spoke eagerly, chuckling, with a kind of childish eagerness for good news.
Pierre Nesle drew back a little and a faint touch of colour crept into his face, and then left it whiter.
“I did not count corpses,” he said. He touched his left side and laughed awkwardly. “I remember better that they nearly made a corpse of me.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then my friend spoke in a casual kind of way.
“I suppose, _mon père_, you have not heard of my sister being in Lille? By any chance? Her name was Marthe. Marthe Nesle.”
“I do not know the name. There are many young women in Lille. It is a great city.”
“That is true,” said Pierre Nesle. “There are many.” He bowed over the priest’s hand, and then saluted.
“_Bon jour, mon père, et merci mille fois._”
So we left, and the Abbé Bourdin spoke his last words to me:
“We owe our liberation to the English. We thank you. But why did you not come sooner? Two years sooner, three years. With your great army?”
“Many of our men died to get here,” I said. “Thousands.”
“That is true. That is true. You failed many times, I know. But you were so close. One big push--eh? One mighty effort? No?”
The priest spoke a thought which I had heard expressed in the crowds. They were grateful for our coming, immensely glad, but could not understand why we had tried their patience so many years. That had been their greatest misery, waiting, waiting.