I was deeply moved by her sorrow and by her not complaining. I sought means to console her. This is the means I have found, sir, and I tell it to you now....
Let us ask the Virgin, I said to her, to create young women in France so brave, so strong, and so devoted that they will gladly and proudly consent to marry the poor, injured men and to be not only their hearts but the limbs which will aid them to make their daily bread; leaving to the men the privilege of loving them, of respecting their presences and of guiding their lives.
The poor woman understood me. We separated. My own youngest daughter was in my thoughts; and do you not think that the men who have a wider audience could stir the hearts of the young women, twenty years of age in France, if they asked them to perform this act of devotion, and to be the companions of the mutilated, maimed men of France?...
Then, too, the women who had only their dignity and their high spirit to defend themselves against the grossness and the insults of the Prussians, have been the incarnation of the spirit of France.
An old woman who dwelt in a village on the Aisne was spattered with mud by the Kaiser as he passed by on horseback. He made a gesture excusing himself. She fixed her eyes on him and said simply:
"It doesn't matter, sir. That mud can be washed off."
A great lady in one of the châteaux in the invaded regions, had to receive one of the Kaiser's sons. The day of his departure he sent for her to thank her for the hospitality she had shown him. The old lady, looking at him, contented herself with replying:
"Do not thank me, sir. I did not invite you here."
And she reëntered her house with all dignity.
Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this, France has been able to fight on, and will be able to fight to the end. Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this, the soldiers, in the mud of the trenches, revere them as Madonnas.
The historian Tacitus tells somewhere how, on a hot spring day, a slave, panting and worn out, entered one of the gates of the Eternal City. He crossed the Forum without stopping and, in his course, mounted the Hill of Mars. Finally he came to one of the greatest houses of the patrician section of the city. His cries and shouts filled the house: