Least credible art thou on the old battle-fields,
where the mother of the race denies thee with breeze and sun and leaf and
bird, and every blade of grass! The red stain in Basil's thought yielded
to the rain sweeping across the pasture-land from which it had long since
faded, and the words on the monument, "Here died Wolfe victorious," did
not proclaim his bloody triumph over the French, but his self-conquest,
his victory over fear and pain and love of life. Alas! when shall the
poor, blind, stupid world honor those who renounce self in the joy of
their kind, equally with those who devote themselves through the anguish
and loss of thousands? So old a world and groping still!
The tourists were better fitted for the next occasion of sentiment, which
was at the Hotel Dieu whither they went after returning from the
battlefield. It took all the mal-address of which travellers are masters
to secure admittance, and it was not till they had rung various wrong
bells, and misunderstood many soft nun-voices speaking French through
grated doors, and set divers sympathetic spectators doing ineffectual
services, that they at last found the proper entrance, and were answered
in English that the porter would ask if they might see the chapel.
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