Explore "Paths of Glory" by Irvin S. Cobb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To get to the civic midriff of the ancient and honorable French city of / Laon you must ascend a road that winds in spirals about a high, steep / hill, like threads cut in a screw. Doing this you come at length to the / flat top of the screw -- a most curiously flat top -- and find on this side / of you the Cathedral and the market-place, and on that side of you the / Hotel de Ville, where a German flag hangs among the iron lilies in the / grille-worked arms of the Republic above the front doors. Dead ahead of / you is the Prefecture, which is a noble stone building, facing southward / toward the River Aisne; and it has decorations of the twentieth century, / a gateway of the thirteenth century and plumbing of the third century, / when there was no plumbing to speak of.
We had made this journey and now the hour was seven in the evening, and / we were dining in the big hall of the Prefecture as the guests of His / Excellency, Field Marshal von Heeringen, commanding the Seventh Army of / the German Kaiser -- dining, I might add, from fine French plates, with / smart German orderlies for waiters.