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We got very little country life during those years at the Foreign Office. Twice a year, in April and August, W. went to Laon for his Conseil-General, over which he presided, but he was rarely able to stay all through the session. He was always present on the opening day, and at the prefet's dinner, and took that opportunity to make a short speech, explaining the foreign policy of the Government.
The Bellovaci from the mouth of the Seine had sent 60,000; the Suessiones from Soissons 50,000; the Nervii, between the Sambre and the Scheldt, 50,000; Arras and Amiens, 25,000; the coast tribes, 36,000; and the tribes between the Ardennes and the Rhine, called collectively Germani, 40,000 more. This irregular host was gathered in the forests between Laon and Soissons.
These cursed people thus supported themselves in the countries between Paris, Noyon, and Soissons, and in all the territory of Coucy, in the County of Valois. In the bishoprics of Noyon, Laon, and Soissons there were upward of one hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires destroyed.
I bet it will ever be remembered as the biggest in history. It extends from Compiègne right away east to Belfort. Can you imagine such a sight? We flew at 5,000 feet and saw a sight which I hope it will never be my lot to see again. The woods and hills were literally cut to ribbons all along the south of Laon.
"Are we lovers?" asked Jeanne with a curious little laugh. "I wonder.... Have you ever been crazily in love, Jeanne?" "I don't know. There was a boy in Laon named Marcelin. But I was a little fool then. The last news of him was from Verdun." "Have you had many...like I am?" "How sentimental we are," she cried laughing. "No. I wanted to know. I know so little of life," said Andrews.
"Les Grandes Cathédrales" of the north are distinctly those of Paris, Amiens, Reims, Rouen, Beauvais, and Chartres; and it is to them that reference must continually be made; while the severely plain transitory types of Noyon or Soissons, or the more effective development of Laon, and the flamboyant structures of Troyes and Nantes, at least lean toward the decadence.
"Do you believe Imma guilty of the crime?" "I believe what I see." "And when you do not see?" "Doubt is then natural." "Do you know that in that murder Queen Imma's accomplice was her lover Adalberon, bishop of Laon?" "It was a great scandal to the church!" "After the poisoning of Lothaire, the Queen and the bishop, finally delivered from the eyes of her husband, indulged their love more freely."
But his notebook only contains statements of facts, and we have to turn to his correspondence for more details. "Decidedly," he wrote on June 17 to his sister Odette, "the Boches have quite a special affection for me, and the parts of my 'coucou' serve me for a calendar. Yesterday we flew over Chauny, Tergnier, Laon, Coucy, Soissons.
He sent a soldier to nail a notice on the gate of one of the handsomest houses in Laon a house whence the tenants had fled at the coming of the Germans which notice gave warning to all whom it might concern that Captain Mannesmann, who carried the Kaiser's own pass, and four American Herren were, until further orders, domiciled there.
"The clergy and knights," says a contemporary chronicler, "came to an agreement with the common folk in hopes of enriching themselves in a speedy and easy fashion." A commune was therefore set up and proclaimed at Laon, on the model of that of Noyon, and invested with effective powers. The bishop, on his return, was very wroth, and for some days abstained from re-entering the town.
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