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　　CHAPTER XVII

　　It was a pitiful adventure to go through Amiens in the days of its desolation, and we who had known its people so well hated its loneliness. All abandoned towns have a tragic aspect—I often think of Douai, which was left with all its people under compulsion of the enemy—but Amiens was strangely sinister with heaps of ruins in its narrow streets, and the abominable noise of high-velocity shells in flight above its roofs, and crashing now in one direction and now in another.

　　One of our sentries came out of a little house near the Place and said:

　　“Keep as much as possible to the west side of the town, sir. They've been falling pretty thick on the east side. Made no end of a mess!”

　　On the way back from Villers-Bretonneux and the Australian headquarters, on the left bank of the Somme, we ate sandwiches in the public gardens outside the Hotel du Rhin. There were big shell-holes in the flower-beds, and trees had been torn down and flung across the pathway, and there was a broken statue lying on the grass. Some French and English soldiers tramped past. Then there was no living soul about in the place which had been so crowded with life, with pretty women and children, and young officers doing their shopping, and the business of a city at work.

　　“It makes one understand what Rome was like after the barbarians had sacked and left it,” said a friend of mine.

　　“There is something ghastly about it,” said another.

　　We stood round the Hotel du Rhin, shut up and abandoned. The house next door had been wrecked, and it was scarred and wounded, but still stood after that night of terror.

　　One day during its desolation I went to a banquet in Amiens, in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville. It was to celebrate the Fourth of July, and an invitation had been sent to me by the French commandant de place and the English A. P. M.

　　It was a beau geste, gallant and romantic in those days of trouble, when Amiens was still closely beleaguered, but safer now that Australians and British troops were holding the lines strongly outside, with French on their right southward from Boves and Hangest Wood. The French commandant had procured a collection of flags and his men had decorated the battered city with the Tricolor. It even fluttered above some of the ruins, as though for the passing of a pageant. But only a few cars entered the city and drew up to the Town Hall, and then took cover behind the walls.

　　Down below, in the cellars, the damp walls were garlanded with flowers from the market-gardens of the Somme, now deserted by their gardeners, and roses were heaped on the banqueting-table. General Monash, commanding the Australian corps, was there, with the general of the French division on his right. A young American officer sat very grave and silent, not, perhaps, understanding much of the conversation about him, because most of the guests were French officers, with Senators and Deputies of Amiens and its Department. There was good wine to drink from the cold vaults of the Hotel de Ville, and with the scent of rose and hope for victory in spite of all disasters—the German offensive had been checked and the Americans were now coming over in a tide—it was a cheerful luncheon-party. The old general, black-visaged, bullet-headed, with a bristly mustache like a French bull—terrier, sat utterly silent, eating steadily and fiercely. But the French commandant de place, as handsome as Athos, as gay as D'Artagnan, raised his glass to England and France, to the gallant Allies, and to all fair women. He became reminiscent of his days as a sous-lieutenant. He remembered a girl called Marguerite—she was exquisite; and another called Yvonne—he had adored her. O life! O youth!... He had been a careless young devil, with laughter in his heart.... Now It Can Be Told