Caen seemed to be full of soldiers, marching and drilling for ever.
Louise, the handsome portress at the school, frankly avowed that she did
not know what the young women of her generation would do for husbands;
the conscription carried away all the finest young men. Janey loved to
watch the soldiers; she loved all manner of shows, and also to tell of
them. She asked Bessie if she would like to hear about the emperor's
_fete_ last month; and when Bessie acquiesced, she began in a discursive
narrative style by which a story can be stretched to almost any length:
"There was a military mass at St. Etienne's in the morning. I had only
just left father, but Mademoiselle Adelaide took me with her, and a
priest sent us up into the triforium--you understand what the triforium
is? a gallery in the apse looking down on the choir. The triforium at
St. Etienne's is wide enough to drive a coach and four round; at the
Augustines, where we went once to see three sisters take the white veil,
it is quite narrow, and without anything to prevent you falling over--a
dizzy place. But I am forgetting the _fete_.... It was _so_ beautiful
when the doors were thrown open, and the soldiers and flags came
tramping in with the sunshine, and filled the nave! The generals sat
with the mayor and the _prefet_ in the chancel, ever so grand in their
ribbons and robes and orders. The service was all music and not long:
soldiers don't like long prayers.
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