Then--with one of those tricks of deliberate drama by which Nature
sometimes shames stage managers--the late afternoon sun came out just
after we crossed the frontier, and shone on us; and on the dapper young
officers driving out in carriages; and on the peaceful German country
places with their formal gardens; and on a crate of fat white German
pigs riding to market to be made up into sausages for the placid
burghers of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Chapter 8
Three Generals and a Cook
To get to the civic midriff of the ancient and honorable French city of
Laon you must ascend a road that winds in spirals about a high, steep
hill, like threads cut in a screw. Doing this you come at length to the
flat top of the screw--a most curiously flat top--and find on this side
of you the Cathedral and the market-place, and on that side of you the
Hotel de Ville, where a German flag hangs among the iron lilies in the
grille-worked arms of the Republic above the front doors. Dead ahead of
you is the Prefecture, which is a noble stone building, facing southward
toward the River Aisne; and it has decorations of the twentieth century,
a gateway of the thirteenth century and plumbing of the third century,
when there was no plumbing to speak of.
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