Useless! The name returned, and the citizens. At the end of the
fifteenth century it fell under Spanish rule, and had no kind of peace
whatever until after another siege by a large French army, it was
regained by France in 1640. Fourteen years later the House of
Austria had yet another try for it, and the Archduke Leopold laid
siege to the city. He lost 7,000 men, 64 guns, 3,000 horses, and all
his transport, and fled. (Last August was the first August in two
hundred and sixty years which has not witnessed a municipal fete in
celebration of this affair.) Since then Arras has had a tolerably quiet
time, except during the Revolution. It suffered nothing in 1870. It
now suffers. And apparently those inhabitants who have stood fast
have not forgotten how to suffer; history must be in their veins.

In the street where we first noticed the stove-pipes sprouting from
the pavement, we saw a postman in the regulation costume of the
French postman, with the regulation black, shiny wallet-box hanging
over his stomach, and the regulation pen behind his ear, smartly
delivering letters from house to house. He did not knock at the
doors; he just stuck the letters through the empty window-frames.
He was a truly remarkable sight.

Then we arrived by a curved street at the Cathedral of St. Vaast. St.
Vaast, who preached Christianity after it had been forgotten in
Arras, is all over the district in the nomenclature of places. Nobody
among the dilettanti has a good word to say for the Cathedral, which
was built in the latter half of the eighteenth and the first half of the
nineteenth centuries, and which exhibits a kind of simple baroque
style, with Corinthian pillars in two storeys. But Arras Cathedral is
the most majestic and striking ruin at the Front. It is superlatively