Energy books

For Arras was a city of beauty--a living expression in stone of all
the idealism in eight hundred years of history, a most sweet and
gracious place. Even then, after a year's bombardment, some spiritual
exhalation of human love and art came to one out of all this ruin.
When I entered the city and wandered a little in its public gardens
before going into its dead heart--the Grande Place--I felt the strange
survival. The trees here were slashed by shrapnel. Enormous shell-
craters had plowed up those pleasure-grounds. The shrubberies were
beaten down.
Almost every house had been hit, every building was scarred and
slashed, but for the most part the city still stood, so that I went
through many long streets and passed long lines of houses, all
deserted, all dreadful in their silence and desolation and ruin.
Then I came to the cathedral of St.-Vaast. It was an enormous building
of the Renaissance, not beautiful, but impressive in its spaciousness
and dignity. Next to it was the bishop's palace, with long corridors
and halls, and a private chapel.


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