Another day, another hour, another part of France.  They call it “Calvaire.”  It covers several acres.  The peasants go there to worship in pilgrimage every year.  There is a Garden of Gethsemane, with marvellous statues built life-size.  Then through the woods there is a worn pathway to the Sanhedrin.  This is of marble.  Jesus is here before his accusers in marble statuary.

As his accusers question him and he answers them not, they wonder.  But those who have seen “Calvaire” in France do not wonder, for from that room there is a clean swath of trees cut, and a quarter of a mile away looms, on a hill, a real Calvary, with the tree crosses silhouetted against the sky, and Jesus is seeing down the pathway the hill of the cross.

Then there is “The Way of the Cross,” built by peasant hands.  It is a road covered with flintstones as sharp as knives.  This flint road must be a mile long, and it winds here and there leading to Calvary, and along its way are the various stations of the cross in life-size figures.  Jesus is seen at every step of this agony bearing his cross until relieved by Simon.  Over this flintstone every year the people come by thousands, and crawl on their naked knees or walk on their naked feet.  Every stone is stained with blood; stumbling, cruelly hurt, bleeding, they go “The Way of the Cross,” and I have no doubt but that they go back to their homes better men and women for having done so.

The day that we went to “Calvaire” it was a fitful June afternoon.  As we walked along “The Way of the Cross,” across the field, past the living, almost breathing, statues of the Master bearing his cruel cross, past the sneering figures of those who hated him, and past the weeping figures of those who loved and would aid him, and as we came to the hill itself, suddenly black clouds gathered behind it and rain began to pour.

“I am glad the clouds are there back of Calvary.  I am glad it is raining as we climb the hill of Calvary.  I am willing to be soaked.  It seems more fitting so, with the black clouds there and all.  It reminds me of ‘The Return from Calvary’ in the painting,” one of the party said impressively.

Up the winding hill we climbed, and there gaunt and cruel against a sombre sky stood the three crosses, just as we have always imagined them.  The hill was so high that it overlooked as beautiful a valley as I had seen in all France.  It was in Brittany, as yet untouched by the war as far as its fields are concerned (not so its men and its women and its homes); but on that spring day as we looked down from the hill of Calvary we could see off in the distance the tomb, with the stone rolled away, and life-size angels standing there with uplifted wings.  Then farther along the road, perhaps another quarter mile away, on another hill, were the figures of the disciples, and the women watching the ascension with rapt faces, and a glory shone round about them all.