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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BOOKS BY EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY
+
+    ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD
+    MY LORRAINE JOURNAL
+    DIPLOMATIC DAYS
+
+    HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+    [ESTABLISHED 1817]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER DOLLER AT MASEVAUX]
+
+
+
+
+                                  ALSACE
+                             IN RUST AND GOLD
+
+                                   _by_
+                           EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY
+                       [MRS. NELSON O’SHAUGHNESSY]
+                                AUTHOR OF
+                      _“A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico”
+                       “My Lorraine Journal” Etc._
+
+                               ILLUSTRATED
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                       HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+                           NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+                         ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD
+
+                   Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
+                 Printed in the United States of America
+                          Published March, 1920
+                                   B U
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                               PAGE
+
+        PREFACE                                                         ix
+
+     I. THE JOURNEY THERE                                                1
+
+    II. ALL SAINTS’ DAY, NOVEMBER, 1918                                 13
+
+   III. FÊTE DES MORTS, NOVEMBER, 1918                                  23
+
+    IV. THANN AND OLD THANN                                             34
+
+     V. THE BALLON D’ALSACE                                             43
+
+    VI. LA POPOTE                                                       55
+
+   VII. THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES                                  65
+
+  VIII. LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN RESIDENCE AT
+          ST.-AMARIN. SAINT-ODILE                                       81
+
+    IX. THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH                               100
+
+     X. THE VALLEY OF THE THUR                                         110
+
+    XI. THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE                                   120
+
+   XII. THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF                                        131
+
+  XIII. “LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN
+          AND ITS PHANTOMS                                             140
+
+   XIV. RETURN TO MASEVAUX                                             156
+
+    XV. THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE                                     159
+
+   XVI. DIES GLORIÆ                                                    175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  THE RIVER DOLLER AT MASEVAUX                               _Frontispiece_
+
+  THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1918, IN ALSACE                     _Facing page_ 14
+
+  PLACE DU MARCHÉ, MASEVAUX, JULY 14, 1918                      ”       14
+
+  THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS                                       ”       34
+
+  COMMANDANT POULET                                             ”       56
+
+  THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL                                   ”       82
+
+  THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR                                        ”      114
+
+  AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY    ”      132
+
+  FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE
+    BASTILE, JULY 14TH                                          ”      132
+
+  AMERICA AND ALSACE                                            ”      172
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Strangely caught up out of the rut and routine of Paris war-work, not
+even choosing my direction (the Fates did that), contributing, however,
+the eternal readiness of my soul, which the poet says is all, I was
+conveyed, as on a magic carpet, to the blue valleys and the rust and
+gold and jasper hills of Alsace, where the color is laid on thick,
+thick. There I was one, during many historic days, of the delightful
+group of blue-clad, scarred, decorated officers forming the French
+Military Mission, which since the autumn of 1914 had administered the
+little reconquered triangle of Alsace and planted in it the seed for the
+re-Gallicizing of Alsace-Lorraine. It was a bit of French history in the
+making, which detached itself quite peculiarly free from the mass of war
+happenings, somewhat as a medallion from that against which it is placed.
+
+My little book shows how humanly and simply the men of the French
+Military Mission, accustomed to supreme events, together with a woman
+from over the seas, lived through those thirteen historic days preceding
+the armistice. It will perhaps be worth the reader’s while—I mean the
+nice, bright, perceptive reader’s while—for mostly the throbbing,
+high-colored beauty of Alsace is veiled by dusty, argumentative,
+statistical pamphlets, so many of which are printed, so few of which are
+read. I once saw a great building full of such, and dozens of them were
+presented me for my sins, though I had never thought to read another book
+on Alsace, much less to write one. I see once again how foolish is the
+man or woman who says to the fountain, “I will never more drink of thy
+water.”
+
+In this record there are no polemics and no statistics. I have added
+nothing to each day’s happenings, which run along as life is apt to run
+along, even in supreme moments, and, Heaven help me, I have concealed
+nothing. It is because of all this that perhaps those who, like myself,
+have wept much and laughed much in their lives, will not ungladly
+accompany me to a corner on the sorrowful and glorious chart of the
+autumn of 1918.
+
+                                                      EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY.
+
+PARIS, 33 RUE DE L’UNIVERSITÉ, _February, 1919_.
+
+
+
+
+ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE JOURNEY THERE
+
+
+And this is what a woman was thinking, as she walked the platform of
+the Gare de l’Est at seven o’clock on a foggy October morning of 1918,
+waiting to take the train to the front.
+
+“Why, when trials and tribulations await us in every land, when every
+dearest affection is accompanied by its related grief and every
+achievement by the phantom of its early hope—why this illimitable ardor
+of the soul, pressing us forward into new combinations?” ...
+
+A few days before I had learned that Masevaux, the capital of that small
+triangle of Alsace, reconquered since the August of 1914, would be my
+journey’s term. Looking in the guide-book, I found Masevaux at the very
+end—on page four hundred and ninety, to be precise, and the book has
+but four hundred and ninety-nine pages in all—and it had seemed far,
+far, and the world an immensity, with few corners for the heart. I have
+realized since that it was only the chill of the unknown into which I was
+to venture, drawn inevitably as steel to the magnet or the needle to the
+north, by that very ardor of the soul....
+
+I had not slept at all the night before—I never do when I am to take
+an early train to pass out into new ways—and the somewhat dispiriting
+influences of “that little hour before dawn” were still with me as I
+stepped into my compartment and took my seat, while a captain of dragoons
+lifted my small leather valise and my not large Japanese straw basket to
+the rack. Settling myself, a bit chilly, into the depths of my fur coat,
+slipped on over my uniform, I looked out upon the throng of officers and
+soldiers, as many Americans as French, perhaps even more.
+
+Standing near my window was a blue-clad colonel, with many decorations
+and a black band on his arm. He was carrying a small bouquet of what
+seemed like wild-flowers, and he embraced in farewell a woman in deepest
+black who would bear no more children....
+
+Then a very young, crape-clad mother, carrying several pasteboard boxes,
+with three small children clinging to her skirts, hurried down the
+platform to get into a third-class compartment.
+
+But with it all I was conscious that the blue and khaki war was receding,
+its strange deeds, which had seemed cut in such high relief, were even
+then blurred against the red background, the background itself fading.
+“Eyes look your last, arms take your last embrace” of the world horror,
+the world beauty, where sorrow has so often been above sorrow and where
+many “chariots have been burned to smoke.” ...
+
+In the compartment are five French officers with dark rings under their
+eyes. I don’t know whether it is wounds or the effects of the _perm_.[1]
+Anyway, they almost immediately take attitudes inviting slumber. A young
+woman all in purple, whether third or fourth mourning I know not (it’s
+well done, though it couldn’t pass unnoticed), sits by one of the windows
+and waggles a short-vamped, very-high-heeled, bronze-shoed foot and
+rattles a gold vanity-box. From the neighboring compartment came classic
+expressions: “Can you beat it?” and “Search me.” My heart salutes the
+Stars and Stripes. The whistle blows, and the train starts for the very
+end of the guide-book.
+
+_8.30._—Read the masterly editorial of Jacques Bainville in _L’Action
+Française_, “Où est le piège?” (“Where is the snare?”) while going
+through the ugliest suburbs in the world, inclosing the most beautiful
+city in the world. And more beautiful than ever is Paris in uniform.
+Her delicate gray streets are mosaicked in horizon-blue, burnished with
+khaki, aglitter with decorations. (Oh, those men of the alert, expectant
+step, or those other broken ones dragging themselves along on canes and
+crutches!) Who has not seen Paris in uniform knows not her beauty, bright
+and terrible as an army in array; enchantment for the eye, bitter-sweet
+wine for the soul. And again, who has not seen her violet-nighted,
+black-girdled by the river, wearing for gems a rare emerald or ruby or
+sapphire light, and silent in her dark, enfolding beauty, knows her not.
+So lovers will remember her, and those whose sons are gone.
+
+_9.30._—Looking out of the window on fields and forests and groves.
+White-stemmed, yellow-leaved birches burn like torches in a pale, thin
+mist. The plowed fields are black with crows; it would seem to be a good
+year for them. We are due at Belfort at 3.35, but a large-paunched, very
+loquacious man blocking the corridor—his voice has not ceased since we
+started—tells a fellow-passenger that, with the delays caused by the
+shifting of troops and material, we’ll be lucky if we get there by seven.
+
+_10.30._—Rampillon with its beautiful old church, having two rows of
+Gothic windows and several medieval towers, seen from a foreground of
+smooth tilled fields. Over the green and yellow and brown world stretches
+a silver heaven, tarnished with yellowish-gray clouds.
+
+_Longueville._—Interminable trains of French and American troops cross
+one another. The French train has various barometrical indications of
+war-weather in chalk. _Guillaume, O là là, là là_; and the favorite and
+unrepeatable word —— mingles with _Le plaisir d’aller à Paris_, _O les
+belles filles_, _Adieu à jamais, Boches_.
+
+The cars containing American troops are inarticulate. They haven’t been
+at it long enough to express themselves.
+
+The handsome young officer next me opens conversation by asking me for my
+_L’Action Française_. Having previously torn out the article of Jacques
+Bainville, and wiped the windows with the rest, I pass it over to him
+with a smile. It wasn’t tempting.
+
+A group of Americans are standing in the corridor. I hear, “I’d like to
+burn the Rhine.” And the answer: “I don’t care what you burn, but I don’t
+ever want to see the Statue of Liberty from _this_ side again. Me for
+home. There’s more in it in one week in the clinic in little old Chicago
+than here in a month, in spite of the hunks of material. Leaving some to
+die or bandaging men in a hurry that you’ll never see again, and dead
+tired all the time. No, siree! No war thrills for me.” And then, all
+being devotees of Esculapius, they fall to talking about diseases, civil
+as well as military.
+
+The loquacious party (he hasn’t stopped even to take breath) says to his
+companion that he’s going to surprise his wife, who thinks he’s in Paris.
+Whatever else she’s enjoying, she must be enjoying the silence, and I do
+hope he’ll make a lot of noise when he opens the door.
+
+The young French officer next me with the _Légion d’Honneur_, _Croix de
+Guerre_, four palms and two stars, tells me he is with the Americans at
+Langres, which is _camouflé_ these war-days as A.P.O. 714, the ancient
+hill-town of the Haute-Marne being the setting for the celebrated
+“University” of the A.E.F.
+
+_11 o’clock, Romilly._—Near here, in the old Abbey of Scellières, was
+buried Voltaire, _l’enfant gâté du monde qu’il gâta_ (“spoiled child of
+the world that he spoiled”), having been refused ecclesiastical burial in
+Paris. And from here he journeyed in his dust to the Panthéon.
+
+At St.-Mesmin the sun came out, and the dull, plowed fields were suddenly
+spread with great covers, as of old-gold velvet, tucked in about the
+slender feet of pine forests.
+
+Now all this pleasant soil of France has many histories, and St.-Mesmin
+is where the priest Maximin (you see whence the name) was sent by the
+Bishop of Troyes to implore the mercy of Attila in favor of the great
+city. For answer the terrible king of the Huns put him to death. Against
+the sky is the tower of a twelfth-century church. A collection of objects
+in a field that I thought were plows turned out to be cannon.
+
+_Troyes._—Not a glimpse of the cathedral. Immeasurably long troop-train
+fills the station on one side of us. On the other a gorgeous (it’s the
+only word for it) American Red Cross train. Pressed against the windows,
+lying or sitting, were pale men of my race. I waved and smiled, and
+languid hands went up in answer. The box cars on the other side were
+filled with blue-clad men. Over the doors were green boughs, on the sides
+chalked portraits of the Kaiser, _Dur à croquer_, _Mort à Guillaume_,
+etc. And everywhere the once so familiar _On les aura_ is converted
+into _Nous les avons_.[2] Through the slits in the top of the cars were
+faces of _poilus_ looking out, just as one sees cattle looking out;
+then a long line of other box cars with American, khaki-capped heads
+also looking out of the slits in the top, while the side doors too were
+crowded with sitting, standing, leaning doughboys. Again I waved from my
+window, and every cap was lifted.
+
+There was a young man standing at the door of some sort of a refrigerator
+car, and he wore a wonderful goat-skin coat. Being so near my window I
+spoke to him, and said:
+
+“It’s a fine coat you are wearing.”
+
+“I’ll tell you in the spring,” was the prompt answer. “They’ve just
+given them out to us. You try living next to the cold storage.” He then
+proceeded to blow into some mottled fingers, after which he pulled a long
+tuft of hair from his coat. “I’m molting,” he added, as he held it up,
+“and winter’s coming.”
+
+And he didn’t know whence he had come nor whither he was going. Then
+either his train moved or mine did—I couldn’t tell which—and I saw him no
+more.
+
+_Vandœuvres-sur-Barse._—Wood, wood, piled high on every kind of wheeled
+thing. Forests from which it had been cut showing sharp and thin,
+fringing the gold-brown fields under the luminous noonday heaven. And
+here for a moment the green was so delicate and the yellow so tender,
+that I had a fleeting illusion of spring as I looked out.
+
+Then I fell to talking with some young officers of the 131st Artillery
+from Texas, but nothing that I remember. They had made no impression on
+France, neither did France seem to have made any impression on them.
+
+_Bar-sur-Aube._—Old houses, old walls, blue hills, a white road leading
+over one of them. Strange church tower, with a round, many-windowed top,
+and in each window hangs an old bell. A great trainload of American
+infantry “going up,” the station, too, flooded with khaki, and another
+train passed crowded with _poilus_ evidently _en permission_, making
+rather fundamental toilets.
+
+And around about Bar, as we slipped out, was a silver-vaulted world of
+terra-cotta and purple hills, green and brown fields, silver hayricks,
+silver sheep grazing near, and warm, brindled cattle, many green-painted
+bee-hives, and fruit trees trained against pink walls. Gentle slopes,
+later to become the Alps, appeared, and beech forests, like very worn
+India shawls, clung to them, and a row of nearby poplars had each its
+nimbus of yellow light.
+
+About this time, having had a hasty cup of tea at six, I began to be
+so hungry that the luster went from the landscape and my eyes received
+nothing more. I didn’t care whether the talkative man gave his wife a
+surprise or not, and the two Americans of the Texan Artillery section had
+long since also ceased to interest me, when I heard a “nosy” voice saying:
+
+“Gosh! I tell you, boys, there’s big money to be made over here after
+the war. All you have to do is to hang out the sign, ‘American Dentist,’
+and your waiting-room’ll burst.” I sat down and nearly slept by the
+side of the six-foot dozing handsome officer, with the beautiful blue
+uniform, and yellow pipings on his trousers and cap, and five service and
+three wound stripes, and the number 414 on his collar, besides a lot of
+decorations on his breast.
+
+_1.30, Chaumont._—Sitting in the dining-car, finishing an excellent
+lunch. Of course, in common with the rest of the world, I’ve heard a good
+deal about Chaumont, but I can say that on the word of honor of an honest
+woman the only thing I saw in khaki in that famous station of the A.E.F.
+Headquarters was an emaciated Y.M.C.A. man about five feet four inches
+high, with an umbrella and a straw basket.
+
+Of course, I’m familiar with the phrases, “Chaumont has put its
+foot down,” “Chaumont won’t have it,” “Everything will be decided at
+Chaumont”; and once, entering a Paris restaurant, I heard the words,
+“It’s all Chaumont’s fault.”
+
+Then the fog closed in, a thick, impenetrable fog, and that’s all I know
+or ever will know of Chaumont, as I’m going back to Paris _via_ Nancy. So
+be it.
+
+On a nearby new railroad embankment, the figure of a _poilu_—the classic
+figure—the coat pinned back from his knees, bayoneted rifle over his
+shoulder, loomed up immeasurably large in the fog, while he watched the
+labors of a lusty, husky set of German prisoners, the familiar “P.G.”[3]
+stamped on their backs. A little farther along was another laughing,
+rosy-faced group of four of the same, watched over by one of their own
+under-officers. I could only see his field-gray back stamped with his
+P.G., but as his men were so unrestrainedly hilarious, there is no reason
+to suppose that _he_ was frowning.
+
+_4 o’clock, Culmont-Chalindrey._—Already three hours late. Fog-enveloped
+train of box cars filled with slightly wounded doughboys peering through
+the narrow slit at the top, bandaged eyes, noses, the same kind of groups
+looking out of the door. Suddenly everything seems dreary. I am tired,
+and wonder why, oh! why I came, and if the war is going to last forever
+and forever, and it is the hour of the day when those who have not slept
+the night before know profound discouragement and the noonday devil has
+ceased to walk, flicking his whip.
+
+_Vitrey._—Station full of Americans and wood—wood—wood, as if every tree
+in France had been cut. “Wood by the pound is how you buy it over here,
+all the same,” disdainfully remarked the Minnesotan artilleryman serving
+in the Texan regiment, as we stood looking out of the window.
+
+And if the journey down seems long, remember that life, too, is made up
+of wearisome and long things—that it is indeed but a pilgrimage, and
+mostly through a land more desert than this of Burgundy.
+
+And in the end this book may justify itself, though of that I know as
+little as you.
+
+At Vitrey there is a detachment of mustard-tinted, khaki-clad,
+red-_checchiaed_ Moroccan _tirailleurs_, exceedingly exotic-appearing,
+sitting on their accoutrement or leaning against the bare scaffolding
+of a new addition to the station. There came into my mind what an unwed
+friend told me of a conversation with a dying _tirailleur_, to whom she
+was giving a _tisane_ in a long, dim, hospital room at two o’clock in
+the morning. He looked at her and said suddenly in his strange French:
+“Woman, I know thy look; thou and many like thee have not been embraced
+in love. In my village thou wouldst be a grandmother” (I had never
+thought of her as old, but the _tirailleur_ knew that, as the men of his
+race rated women, she was old—old, and no one would have followed her
+to the well.) He continued: “If no man is to enfold thee, why not be as
+those of the great white coifs, who have given themselves to Allah? They
+have not thy look.” Then he went into delirium and cried out in his own
+tongue and picked at his sheet, and when she came that way again he was
+dead.
+
+_6 P.M., Vesoul Station._—Writing by the light that comes in from the
+gas-jet. Dim American forms silhouetted in the great station. Partake of
+the loneliness that possesses the soul of American youth in France on a
+foggy autumn night. One of them said to me to-day, with a curious, dulled
+look in his eye, a brooding, neurasthenic eye, “I’m the kind that gets
+killed the last day of the war.”
+
+Then a presence apparent only by the light of his cigarette, a being with
+an accent not immediately placeable, half cockney, half Middle-West,
+calls out, “Say, does anybody know when we pull into Belfort?”
+
+It had, all the same, something of confidence-inspiring, so I briskly
+chirped up:
+
+“Oh, in an hour or two or three.”
+
+“Well, I took the eight-o’clock train from Paris last night.”
+
+Chorus: “You mean this morning?”
+
+“I mean last night, and going ever since.”
+
+“What have you been doing in between times?”
+
+“Going, going,” he answered, casually, “and as you see, going still!”
+
+“How did you manage to get on this train?”
+
+“I don’t know. There I was and here I am, and God knows where my kit is.
+I’m a flier, and I’ve got to have my things,” he ended, rather irritably,
+and then there was another conversation about “burning the Rhine.”
+
+After interminable hours—two of them—we came to Lure, and everybody
+seemed to be getting out, even the woman in purple, and there was a
+fumbling with pocket-lamps and the voice of my country crying, “Where’s
+that d—— door, anyway?”
+
+The young man who started last night came into my compartment as the
+train jerked out of the station, and he was a Canadian aviator _en route_
+for the big camp of the Royal Independent Air Corps at Chatenoir. Before
+the war he had been a chartered accountant. “But,” he said, “once in the
+air, never again can I sit at a desk, crushed in by four walls.” And he
+told stories of hair-breadth escapes of himself and his comrades, and of
+combats in the air—once he had had his knee broken—and then he suddenly
+cried out in a sharp voice: “God! I’m tired! Somebody let me know if we
+ever get there,” and flung himself in a corner, and went to sleep, I hope.
+
+A young American officer standing smoking in the corridor, with whom I
+had sat at lunch, turned on his pocket-lamp for an instant during the
+ensuing silence, and said, “Do you mind if I come in?” Then, in the pitch
+darkness, lighting one cigarette from the other, and very lonely, I
+think, he almost immediately began to talk about himself, and his story
+might be called the story of the young man who was and wasn’t married.
+
+Stripped of non-essentials, it was this: He had become engaged at a
+“co-ed.” school, as he called it, some years before, and when he was
+drafted, in the possible event of his being ordered abroad, the twain
+decided to get married instead of waiting a few more years. One Sunday
+morning in November they hunted up a clergyman and the knot was tied.
+They then had lunch at the station and she took her train and he went
+back to his camp. She was an army nurse and he was in the Engineers.
+
+Now, as inclination alone could have caused them to unite (there wasn’t
+the ghost of another reason apparent; they hadn’t even mentioned the
+matter to their families), the sequel of the story becomes somewhat
+interesting; in fact, quite incomprehensible, let us say, to the Latin;
+even I myself was a bit muddled as to the whereforeness of it all.
+
+Well, to continue. The next time they meet is when Fate, not quite
+unmindful of them, sends him as instructor to a camp in the Middle West
+on the outskirts of the very town where her people live, and she goes to
+spend a three days’ leave with them.
+
+The not-too-eager and certainly not-over-inventive bridegroom (whatever
+combinations may have been in his mind, neither he nor history records)
+gets a few hours’ leave and goes to spend Sunday at the home of his bride.
+
+I begin to breathe. But not at all. Her people, innocent as the new moon
+of the marriage, ask a few neighbors in for lunch—to make it pleasant for
+them. The bride was to return that very same afternoon to her hospital.
+They did walk to the station (under the same umbrella, I hope) and there
+they said good-by.
+
+“It was what you might call a quiet wedding,” I hazarded at this stage,
+and it was too dark to see if he caught the point. Please bear in mind
+that this was a marriage of inclination; no other explanation, I repeat,
+being possible. And the luncheon took place the end of January.
+
+The next time the situation seems about to clear up is in the golden
+month of August, she having been transferred to the military hospital
+near the camp to which he, in the meantime, had been transferred as
+instructor. It seemed providential and again I breathe, thinking, “Love
+will find a way.” Not at all. The bride rings him up the Sabbath morning
+after his arrival (Sunday is evidently a bad day for that young man) and
+tells him her orders take her to Camp Sill that night. The next day he
+gets orders to report for overseas duty, and here we sit in the dark, on
+the outskirts of Belfort! He breaks the silence later, with a certain
+eagerness in his voice (not, however, for his distant bride, who, I also
+gather, still bears her maiden name): “I do hope if we beat them I get
+a chance to go into Germany with the troops. I’ve wandered all my life
+[he’s between twenty-five and thirty] and sometimes I wonder how I’ll
+take to living in one place and bringing up a family.”
+
+In the dark I wondered, too.
+
+_Later, much later._—To-morrow, All Saints’ Day, there will be some
+crowding of the heavens, and the day after, the Feast of the Dead, all
+France will be a-hurrying to her graves.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ALL SAINTS’ DAY, NOVEMBER, 1918
+
+
+_Evening._—Masevaux, a town of old fountains and old inns with charming
+old signs hanging out, the pebbly Doller running through it under
+ancient, balconied houses, and over all hanging faint odors of its
+century-old tanneries. A long day, but not too long.
+
+Punctually at eight-thirty I had descended the flashy stairway of the
+“Tonneau d’Or” at Belfort to find the officer sent to meet me finishing
+his coffee and reading the morning papers, always comforting these days.
+
+In a thin fog, we start out of town, passing under the antique high wall
+of the castle against the rock of which “The Lion” has been carved. Now
+all has been done that it is humanly possible to do with granite and a
+lion, but of that more another time—perhaps. I can’t stop now except to
+say that the hand that fashioned it fashioned also the Statue of Liberty
+in New York harbor.
+
+We meet, just out of Belfort, a funeral procession—three coffins, two
+draped with the Tricolor, one with the Stars and Stripes. Making the
+sign of the cross, I commended three souls to Heaven. I always remember,
+accompanying a beloved one of my blood to his narrow dwelling, how sweet,
+how very sweet, it was to see the gesture of that sign, and the lifted
+hats of those we met, saluting him on his last journey. Though I do not
+care inordinately how or when or where I lose my flesh, that much I would
+like done to me—in passing.
+
+Nestled in the corner of a broad, sloping field was a cemetery, a new
+cemetery, with French and American flags flying from its crowded graves,
+and many men were busy digging, and we heard the crunch of shovels in
+cold, gravelly earth as we passed, and yet I thought how well, how very
+well, the soldier sleeps!...
+
+We were on the flat road that leads to Cernay, where the Germans have
+lain intrenched since the beginning of the war.
+
+Shifting masses of horizon-blue, velvety in the thin mist, appear,
+disappear down white roads, between fields of barbed wire and against
+horizons of rusty beeches. In the villages black-robed women and children
+and old men are coming out of rose-colored churches or standing by
+elaborate, very decorative rose-colored fountains. There is the distant
+sound of cannon. It is again the front.
+
+At Masevaux, I find myself drawing up under some yellowing lindens
+in front of the building of the Military Mission—once the German
+_Kommandantur_, in turn once the nave of the old church of the Abbey of
+Masevaux. I walk over a rich carpet of rustling leaves to the door, and
+am shown up the broad, stone stairway of an immaculately kept building.
+
+Commandant Poulet having been called that morning to St.-Amarin, I am
+taken into a charming corner room hung with a wall-paper that might have
+been designed by Hansi, where a young, light-haired man with dark rings
+under his eyes, who knows both battles and desks, was sitting at a big
+table.
+
+We looked at each other, I must confess, with some curiosity, though
+of the politest. I, to see what the Military Mission might be going
+to offer, but prepared to be very easily and very much pleased, he,
+doubtless, to see what had been “wished on” them for the next week. It
+_might_ so easily have been awful, instead of a niceish lady who has
+both wept and laughed, and known many lands and many men. He asks me
+what I would like to do that morning. Not having the ghost of an idea
+what there is to do, I answer, “Everything is interesting,” and give a
+somewhat free Gallicization of “beauty lieth in the eye of the beholder.”
+This was received approvingly, even hopefully, and he tells me that in
+the afternoon I am to attend a ceremony in the military cemetery at
+Moosch, in another valley.
+
+[Illustration: THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1918, IN ALSACE]
+
+[Illustration: PLACE DU MARCHÉ, MASEVAUX, JULY 14, 1918]
+
+About this time I begin to remember that it is “La Toussaint,” and
+I say that if possible I should like to go to church. This, too, is
+encouragingly easy and I am turned over to an officer whose wife and two
+children have been in Brussels for four years, he himself a deserter from
+the German army.
+
+When we reached the church, built of _grès rose_, evidently and happily,
+from its abundance, the building stone of this colorful corner of the
+world, and which can take on the loveliest of _patines_ in even a
+generation or two, I find it overflowing with the faithful, many blue men
+standing on its pink steps. The curé, followed, I hope, by his flock, was
+off on a longish sermon, and for a good half-hour I was washed and blown
+about on a sea of mixed metaphor, though it did not seem too long, for
+mind and imagination were flinging themselves about reconquered lands and
+border peoples, and I only really “came to,” so to speak, when a great
+and splendid organ sounded and a deep, harmonious choir of men’s voices
+joined it. Then I knew I was indeed on the frontier, where music lingers,
+and amorously it would seem, near the last of the mad, Romantic peoples.
+
+When we passed out there was the noise of guns and everybody was looking
+up at little white balls of shrapnel unrolling themselves about some
+black specks in the blue, blue sky. It was the familiar firing on German
+airplanes.
+
+Then I was led to this charming old house, which is one of six placed
+at right angles, on two sides of the Place du Chapitre. It proved to be
+part of the old convent, done over by Kléber when he cultivated the arts
+of peace rather than those of war. It belongs to four agreeable sisters,
+the Demoiselles Braun, whose brother, also a deserter from the German
+ranks, was killed in Champagne. They were rehanging the portraits of
+their ancestors.[4] Whereby hangs the tale of two American nurses who,
+quartered there some weeks before, had left the water running in the tub
+one night, after which the drawing-room ceiling fell in and the paper
+peeled in hall and vestibule. Hence the rehanging of the ancestors, at
+their own, I mean the sisters’, expense.
+
+They take me up a beautiful, but very worn, stairway, with a
+time-polished oaken balustrade, and I find myself in a paneled room,
+looking out on the square shaped like this:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Many motors are drawn up in front of the Mission under the yellowing
+lindens. The old red inn of “Les Lions d’Or” is directly opposite, and on
+the left of the square at right angles with me are the four other houses
+once dwelt in by the _chanoinesses_ when it was decided that each should
+have her own establishment. The square is roughly, anciently paved,
+with grass growing in between the cobblestones, and Mademoiselle Braun,
+who showed me to my room, told me the steps of the old stairway were so
+uneven because after the Revolution (during which the Chapter had been
+dispersed) the house was long used as a school and they had been worn by
+generations of young feet running up and down.
+
+_At 12.15_—I am conveyed to _la popote_[5] for luncheon. More officers
+inspect me—I them also—and then we proceed to the consuming of an
+excellent meal, to the very exhilarating accompaniment of the news of the
+capitulation of Turkey, and a light, easy touching on other prospective
+and pleasant changes.
+
+Now as, owing to circumstances too long to enter into, I hadn’t eaten
+since noon the day before, passing by Chaumont, I did full justice to a
+rabbit white as snow, garnished with noodles of the same hue, flooded by
+a delicious golden sauce. I only fleetingly remembered that I ordinarily
+avoid the little beast as food; for dessert we had a great cake filled
+with chocolate and whipped cream, such a one as I had not seen for many
+a month and year. A bottle of champagne was opened in joy at the Turkish
+news. And we drank to everything and to everybody—even to the health of
+the “Sick Man of Europe,” not, however, sicker than several others at
+that moment, as some one cheerfully added. It was all very pleasant, and
+I felt that everything was for the best in the best of war worlds.
+
+At 2.30 I start out with Captain Tirman over a smooth road, _camouflé_,
+kilometer after kilometer, with screens of wire netting interwoven with
+broom and pine branches, for the road runs along the side of hills which
+slope down to the valley where the Germans lie intrenched. Everywhere are
+shell-holes, new and old. We stopped on a high place and, getting out,
+peered through a hole in the screen. Spread out before my eyes was the
+rich plain of Alsace, one of the world’s gardens. Something crystal and
+shimmering half veiled its loveliness, but its beauty and richness I knew
+for the beauty and the richness of a thousand years of blood, and many
+men had found it fair and panted for its beauty and died for it.
+
+In the distance, very white and shining, were the chimneys of Mulhouse,
+and a pale-blue line against the horizon was the Black Forest. All the
+time there was the sound of cannon, ours and theirs, reverberating
+through the hills. I was greatly moved, and started to go higher up in
+the field, but Captain Tirman stopped me, saying: “It will be better for
+you to get away with your souvenirs than to take them unrecorded with you
+to the grave. The Boches shell anything they see; and we haven’t got our
+masks, either, in case they send a gas-bomb.”
+
+The roadsides were planted with cherry trees, scarlet-leaved, the
+_kirschbaum_ of Alsace. The hills had great patches of velvety,
+rust-colored beeches; dark pines traced black patterns through them,
+yellow larches shone here and there like torches; a soft sun was
+dispersing the last of the delicate, noonday mists.
+
+Then we slipped into the valley of the Thur, where lies the ancient town
+of Thann. From afar I saw the lacy, gray belfry of its cathedral, pressed
+against other heights of velvet rust and burnished gold. Nearby, the hill
+of the Engelburg, with its broken, overturned tower like a great ring, a
+souvenir of Turenne’s campaign during the Thirty Years’ War, was soft
+and lovely, too. The long street was sun-bathed, and filled with the
+black-bowed peasants of story-books, and the blue soldiery of the great
+war. I wanted to stop by a pink fountain, near the richly carved portal
+of the cathedral, but we feared to be late for the ceremony at Moosch and
+hurried on.
+
+At a place called Bitschwiller, however, we were obliged to wait while
+an almost endless procession of black-clad old men, women, and children,
+and blue-clad soldiers wound across the road, from its pink church to the
+distant green and yellow cemetery.
+
+Furthermore, the Fifteenth New York Infantry—black, black, black—is
+quartered at Bitschwiller, and the most exotic sight I have ever seen
+were those khaki-clad negroes in that valley, already very high-colored.
+
+Suddenly against the steep hill, like a picture slightly tilted back, we
+came in sight of the square cemetery of Moosch.
+
+Above and below it was framed by a line of helmeted men in khaki, and
+as we neared I saw they were _our_ black troops; the horizon-blue of
+a French infantry regiment made the frame at the two sides. High,
+high up were a group of white- and black-gowned priests, and red- and
+white-gowned acolytes swinging their censers. At the top of the steep
+stairway, running down the middle of the black-crossed cemetery, was
+a sacerdotal figure, with outstretched arms, exhorting, and around
+about the whole were groups of women and children. We left the motor
+and walked over to the cemetery, where I found myself standing near
+the resting-place of Norman Hall, the first American to die in Alsace.
+From the tall, black cross floats the Stars and Stripes, and some one
+had planted chrysanthemums thick on his grave. Peace to him. He lies
+not far from General Serret, who fell, too, on the nearby sacrificial
+Hartmannswillerkopf, where commingled lie fifty thousand who at the word
+of command had put out each other’s light.
+
+After the sermon the negro band of the Fifteenth played some grave and
+measured music, the French infantry band then something a little too gay.
+As one of the officers said afterward, “_Cela a presque frisé la polka_.”
+
+Then the “Marseillaise” sounded and “The Star-spangled Banner.” I felt my
+veil wet against my eyes and my lips atremble as I thought, a second time
+that day, how well, how very well, the soldier sleeps.
+
+Above the cemetery in a higher contour of eternal hill was a great patch
+of yellow and black and rust-colored forest against a clear blue-white
+sky, in which tiny black specks were moving eastward.
+
+We waited to watch the negro troops defile. They appeared very smartly
+dressed till the eye got to their feet, and such a collection of ripped,
+torn, cut, down-at-the-heel footgear was never seen! They seem to be
+a flat-footed race, too. I spoke to a couple of darkies very much _en
+repos_, who were leaning against a fence, near the motor, as I got in.
+
+One answered, with a broad grin, “You an American from America?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, have you heard dis here war’s about over?” The coalest-black one
+then contributes this to the conversation:
+
+“When peace is signed dis here nigger starts to walk home.”
+
+“What about the ocean?”
+
+“I’ll take a swim, lady; the water can’t be no colder and no damper dan
+dis here ‘Alice’ land.”
+
+The mulatto by his side said, “I subscribes,” and became a pale gray at
+the bare idea of getting colder or damper.
+
+Then we see Commandant Poulet, tall, blue-clad, with high decorations
+a-shine, coming toward us, and he and many officers are presented to me,
+after which I change into his motor, and we start out over a magnificent
+military road built since the war. It was begun and completed almost
+miraculously, it would seem, in little more than a year, and over it,
+safely hidden from German guns, come and go the great military supplies
+of the Alsatian front—troops, artillery, munitions, food, ambulances.
+
+As we mount, mysterious, dissolving twilight views present themselves
+near red cherry trees, burn against distant blue hills, yellow larches
+illuminate other “hilltops hearsed with pines,” and the beech woods are
+a deep, deep purple. Then we plunge into the dimness of the great cedar
+forests of the Route Joffre, talking, but not too much, in the large,
+enfolding twilight, of the war, and of Alsace of to-day. Commandant
+Poulet has been in charge of the Military Mission since Christmas Day of
+1914, and I thought, rolling over the broad road, contemporaneous with
+his administration, how out of thousands, nay millions of men, his part
+during these war years had been to construct and not destroy. He told me
+that almost his first official act was to be present at the burial of
+Norman Hall on December 26, 1915.
+
+As we issue from the dark forest we find ourselves on a crest overlooking
+many other twilit hills. There is a pale, pale yellow still burning in
+the west, and the most timid of evening stars shines above it. Then we
+dip into the deep blue valley where Masevaux lies.
+
+Peasants are hurrying to their villages, and there is a continuous, but
+dull, sound of cannon. In the chill of the fallen night we arrive at the
+Place du Chapitre, the town dark, dark as we enter it, and no light in
+any house. Having seen my pleasant room only in daytime, I proceeded in
+hunting for the light to try to turn on a barometer, then by another
+door feeling my way along, I fumbled about an arrangement of mandolin
+and pipe, then, as a last resort, I sought light from a stuffed owl.
+After which I went into the corridor and, re-entering the room, found the
+electric button just where it ought to be—by the door.
+
+A saving hour of solitude before I am fetched for dinner, which was
+very pleasant, but I can’t tell about it now, for sleep, dear sleep, is
+touching me, and it is two days and a night since it has been near.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FÊTE DES MORTS, NOVEMBER, 1918
+
+
+Church again, seemingly in company with the entire population, civil and
+military, after which I _flanéd_ in the old streets of Masevaux, word
+having been brought that no motor was available for our projected trip to
+Dannemarie. Indeed, I had early noticed from my window much mounting in
+hot haste, accompanied by the lively sound of two kinds of firing. Some
+_coup de main_, I suppose.
+
+I strolled about under an uncertain sun, occasionally sensible of that
+delicate, not unpleasant smell of bark and leather hanging on a windless
+air. About me was that world of blue-clad soldiers, black-robed women,
+and many children were playing in the pink and gray streets; a group
+of little girls were skipping rope to the words _ein_, _zwei_, _drei_,
+_quatre_, _cinq_, _six_!
+
+The post-office of modern Teutonic origin still wears, high up and
+indifferently, the Double Eagle, though the more accessible _Kaiserliches
+Post-Amt_ has been removed. A little farther down the street is the old
+inn of the “Golden Eagle” whose historic sign dates from Napoleonic days,
+and which, as was pointed out to me, turns its golden back disdainfully
+to the black, double face of the once proud eagle of the post-office.
+
+And this inn of the “Golden Eagle” hangs its charming sign out on a
+corner of the square called “La Halle aux Blés” (the Grain Market),
+surrounded by sloping-roofed, roomy houses. In the center is a
+rose-colored fountain, with three diminishing rose-shaped basins around
+a carved central column.
+
+And the cobblestoned square with its good fountain and its comfortable
+houses—there’s even a stable and a garage on one side—has something
+cozy about it, its atmosphere that of a place long used by human
+beings for the homelike customs of “the simple life,” which last bears
+no resemblance to that occasionally practised at great expense and
+inconvenience by those who “need a change” and can afford one.
+
+American troops passed through the Halle aux Blés on the 30th of May of
+this year, again on the 4th of July, and on the 14th, too, always drawing
+themselves up at last in the Place du Marché, one end of which is my
+Place du Chapitre. There, under the lindens, General Hahn and General
+Boissoudy watched them deploy, while gaily attired Alsatian girls grouped
+about the fountain acclaimed them, and from every window hung the Stars
+and Stripes.
+
+Then I found myself wandering out on the road to Belfort, past the
+high, grassy eminence known as the “Ringelstein,” once crowned by the
+proud castle of Duke Mason, founder of Masevaux. Traces of ancient
+walls embowered in ivy are still to be seen, and at its base are many
+old outbuildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, once
+dependencies of the Abbey and the Chapter, and when you are not expecting
+it you find old inscriptions and bits of carving plastered into them.
+On one high-roofed outhouse was a large crown and three fleurs-de-lis.
+Blasted through one end of the great rock of the Ringelstein rims the
+railway. And there is a near view of the red and green and yellow roofs
+of the houses of the _chanoinesses_ confounding themselves with the
+autumn foliage of the trees which embower them.
+
+I begin to know a little of the early history of Masevaux, enveloped in
+legends and many contrary tales—Masevaux, ruled now by abbots, now by
+feudal lords, belonging sometimes to the House of Austria, sometimes to
+the House of France.
+
+And the first legend is that of its foundation. How the lord of the
+country, by name Mason, a nephew of Saint-Odile, was feasting in his
+castle of this same Ringelstein, and the wines of Burgundy and Alsace and
+of the Rhine were flowing, and a troubadour was reciting a tale of war
+and love, when suddenly Duke Mason cries out:
+
+“Soul of my soul, misfortune is happening to my son! Night is falling.
+Where is he?” And he goes to the window and looks out. Some one answers:
+
+“Fear not, illustrious father of so dear a child. He has doubtless
+tarried with the holy fathers of Moutiers.” But the night gets blacker,
+the lords and ladies drop their golden hanaps and the troubadour is still.
+
+Then Mason, in the grip of deeper presentiment, cries out, “Who loves
+me to the succor of my son!” And they seek with torches for the child.
+Alas! the white body of Mason’s son, born of a dead, beloved wife, is
+found floating upon the little stream, and Mason, pressing what was once
+his child to his heart, cries out: “Nothing can ever give me joy again.
+I will build a monastery wherein to pass my days until God calls me from
+this heavy world.” And that is the origin of Masevaux—Masmunster. The
+legend has it, too, that on moonless nights the child returns, weeping,
+because he did not live long enough to read all the beautiful stories
+inscribed by the gods, the prophets and the wise, concerning the sons
+of men. And as I looked up at the great grass- and vine-covered rock
+whereon the castle of Mason once rose, the Doller flowing at its base,
+the cannon of the great war sounded. Down the white road was disappearing
+a battalion of blue-clad men, going toward the black and rust and
+yellow of the hills—a red cherry tree between me and them. Then I turned
+back into the town and hied me to the _popote_, where some half-dozen
+extremely agreeable men were awaiting me, as well as a sustaining repast.
+
+The American _communiqué_ was immediately and very appreciatively read
+out. Our victorious advance was continuing along the Meuse (known as the
+“Muse” by the doughboy), the First American Army attacking on the west
+bank in liaison with the Fourth French Army on the left. Then we looked
+over the Turkish armistice terms, quite satisfyingly comprehensive from
+the opening of the Dardanelles to promises on the part of the Turks not
+to speak to any of their former friends.
+
+And we talked of how from the terrace of Versailles, where the German
+Empire was proclaimed, the statesmen of the world will watch the twilight
+descending upon Walhalla and its gods; and here in Alsace the crash of
+falling temples can be heard.
+
+After lunch I went with Lieutenant Lavallée to see a bit of Alsace from
+within, for he was to invite various mayors of villages to go to Paris
+for the “Fêtes Alsaciennes,” to be held the middle of November, and also
+to select a discreet number of veterans of 1870 and school-children of
+1918 to accompany them.
+
+We went first to Gewenheim, a somewhat war-battered village and, as
+we entered it, Lavallée pointed out the iron plate on the sign-post,
+indicating the name of the village and the department. Like many others
+of the Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine), after 1870 it had been quite simply
+turned and marked in German. This proved most convenient and economical,
+for all the French Military Mission had to do when they came to Alsace in
+1914 was to turn them back as they had been before 1870!
+
+The mayor’s house, one of the usual dwellings with a small door for
+humans and a big door for harvests, had been much damaged. Passing
+in through a sagging entrance, we found the mayor, the classic,
+horny-fisted, wrinkle-faced mayor of a village, with cobwebs and straw
+and other substances adhering to his coat, but possessed of a certain
+air of dignity and authority notwithstanding. There was a moment’s
+silence after the lieutenant gave him the invitation, pride visibly
+wrestling with parsimony, accompanied by the working up and down of a
+very prominent Adam’s apple. He accepted finally with a sort of “I am a
+man” expression, but there was a quite apparent melting of his being when
+he found that it was the State that would defray expenses. Then the wife
+of his bosom, who had helped him make and save his money, came in and
+showed us some of their “best” shell-holes, and a statue of the Virgin of
+Lourdes under a large glass bell which had not a scratch, even, though
+everything around had been shattered.
+
+There was also a lithograph of Henner’s red-headed “Alsatian Girl,” who
+hangs in every home and every railway station, and is used for loans
+and appeals and calendars and advertisements of complexion washes and
+hair-dyes; and she was once a charming creature, before familiarity bred
+contempt.
+
+The worthy couple then fell to a discussion in Alsatian German as to
+which of the veterans would be possible candidates for the trip to Paris.
+There seemed to be something the matter with every one mentioned. Rudler,
+Franzi, was nice and it was a pity that his rheumatism prevented his
+getting about, as he had lost his dung-heap, though not his house, in a
+recent bombardment and needed distraction. It wasn’t quite clear to me
+_how_ you _could_ lose a possession of that kind, but I wasn’t at the
+front to ask questions, so I let it pass.
+
+Handrupp, Hansi’s, eyes were giving him trouble. If he went, a boy would
+have to go to lead him about, and, even so, would he be welcome in Paris
+if it were known that his daughter, old enough to know better, had run
+away with a German?
+
+First names, it will be noticed, came last, and last names first, a relic
+of German order. Another incautious but evidently esteemed veteran, by
+name Bauer, Seppi, had fallen from a hayrick last summer and would never
+walk again. It was like looking at the back of the web of Fate, and I
+found myself wondering with somewhat of exasperation, “for this had a
+hero’s death at Gravelotte or Villersexel or Saint-Privat been denied
+him, where angels would have awaited his strong, young body to take it
+to the heaven of those who die for country?” Suddenly the _dulce et
+decora_ of so dying was quite clear to me, and Bauer, Seppi, who fell
+from the hayrick last summer, and all his still extant contemporaries,
+had the tragic part—as would these men of the great war some forty or
+fifty years hence, who were now going about with an astonished yet proud
+consciousness that, _ex millibus_, _they_ had been chosen and been spared.
+
+But as Lavallée very justly remarked, “What would happen to the world
+if everybody died young?” I suppose he is right, and I bethought myself
+that there are those who must await threescore and ten before the reasons
+for their having been born are apparent; the “Tiger,” for instance, and
+Moses, and many others.
+
+We then visited the curé, living at the very end of the village
+toward the lines. He was called from the church where he was hearing
+confessions, and Lavallée proceeded to ask him which of the schoolboys he
+recommended; wideawake ones, without, of course, being obstreperous, were
+wanted. Something, disappearing almost as swiftly as it came, passed over
+the curé’s face. It was a look of sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to
+go himself, and the immediate realization of the impossibility of that or
+anything else that meant change.
+
+On the round center-table was a book, _Deo Ignoto_, and _L’Echo de
+Paris_. A little harmonium with manuscript-music on its rack was near
+the bed; on the walls were shiny lithographs of three popes, and an
+illuminated Lord’s Prayer in German. As the upper rooms of the house
+were “unhealthy,” on account of the raids and bombardments, the curé
+lived and breathed and had his being downstairs in this one room, with a
+rather boisterous yellow dog that kept sniffing at my gaiters. He was a
+large man, with a naturally masterful eye, who would have been at home
+in many places, occupied with many things, but he had lived, and would
+die, Curé of Gewenheim. And he at least owed the Germans a temporary
+widening of his activities, for Gewenheim is but three kilometers from
+the firing-line.
+
+Then we crossed the muddy street to the schoolhouse to confer with
+the nuns concerning little girls, and were greeted by a dark-eyed,
+sparkling-faced Sister, very gifted by nature, who would have graced
+any drawing-room. There was something of elegance even in the way she
+had the washing of the stairs cease to allow us to pass up, and in the
+way she removed piles of coarse linen from the chairs in the room to
+which she conducted us. Then another Sister, not so bright, though she
+evidently ranked the gifted one, came in, and together they pondered
+the names of possible little girls. I had a feeling of being behind the
+scenes, and recognized how orderly and reasonable is the working of a
+so-often fortuitously appearing Fate, as they decided who should, or
+should not, take the journey to Paris. I thought, too, that it would have
+been well-nigh intolerable to me, had I been a little girl in Gewenheim,
+not to be among those chosen to go. But there was no longing on either
+of _their_ faces. Especially the charming one radiated happiness and
+content. And how true that nothing can enter the heart that is not
+already there! I wondered if I, to whom so much of life is known—its
+glories and its miseries—possessed what that graceful woman had found in
+the dullest routine of duty imaginable. _She_ knew whither she was bound,
+also whence she had come. In comparison, shaking, shifting, uneasy,
+appeared the compass of my life....
+
+A bottle of quite sour white wine was produced and they watched Lavallée
+and myself drink; no escape possible.
+
+They are of the Sisters of the Divine Providence with their mother-house
+at Ribeauville, who have taught in the schools of Alsace for generations.
+
+After leaving them, we visited the inn, entering into the _Gastzimmer_
+through a tiny antechamber of a shop, where thread and candles and oil
+for lamps, socks, and a few other strict essentials were sold. The
+black-toothed, thin-haired landlady, Tritter by name, might have been
+of any age, but a handsome boy of fifteen or thereabouts, with a bad
+cough, calling her “Mother,” gave a possible limit. A good-looking,
+high-complexioned girl appeared breathless from a bethumbed back
+door, arranging two little curls under her ears. After the greetings,
+Lieutenant Lavallée said:
+
+“Have you had any news of your daughter Odile?”
+
+“Not since last winter from Colmar,” both mother and sister answer;
+“the parcels we sent her, they cost each fifteen francs, have not been
+received. She was hungry when she wrote.”
+
+Then was poured out a confused story concerning the capture of a squad of
+Germans with their gun, in the autumn of 1914. A few days after the event
+the sisters had been standing in the street in front of their door, when
+a German officer came up and said to Odile, the younger:
+
+“You are wanted for a moment.” She followed him to another officer on
+horseback, waiting in a field. They had not seen her since. Then it
+appeared that it was the baker’s wife who through jealousy had denounced
+the pretty Odile (the rôle of the baker himself was not indicated), but
+such an expression of hatred for the baker’s wife, rather than for the
+Germans, came over the mother’s visage that I was reminded of faces
+in pre-Raphaelite pictures—I mean those on the goat side in Judgment
+Day scenes. It was evidently one of those obscure yet ruthless village
+tragedies set in the frame of equally ruthless war.
+
+When we came out we copied an old inscription over the house door of
+a man, Louis Vogler by name, who, returning from a campaign, had been
+decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1816, and had recorded the fact for
+all time over his door, his decoration even being carved in with the rest.
+
+Evidently a man who, having done a deed, was not content that it
+should be writ only in water (or blood), but had it put squarely and
+clearly over the door of the house to which he returned; and was he
+not justified? For here it is being recorded some hundred years after,
+instead of having been carried away on the great river of Napoleonic
+deeds.
+
+Then, through several wet villages, groups of girls with their felt
+slippers stuck into their clacking wooden sabots (very comfortable
+footgear, it appears) pass groups of blue-clad soldiers, and words are
+exchanged. I couldn’t hear, but by the looks accompanying them and the
+giggles I judged them to be the eternal words exchanged in all ages
+between soldiers and future mothers of the race. And there is a verse,
+old as the army, which runs:
+
+    _Le négligent troupier_
+    _Qui laisse passer l’heure_
+    _Et trop longtemps demeure_
+    _Sera puni par son sous-officier._[6]
+
+Everywhere along the road, through the mist, detachments of blue-clad
+men would appear and disappear. I thought with a touch of sadness, an
+esthetic sadness, to be sure, that this extreme beauty of dissolving
+distances would be lost when the world of blue-clad men would have
+disappeared, replaced by men in shabby, nondescript, civilian clothes, or
+by _des types à melon ou à tube_—those wearing derby hats or cylinders.
+
+Near Rodern, between some lines of poplars, a helmeted cavalryman, with
+his detachment, rode by on a great black horse. He was bending slightly
+forward, his lance in his hand, his eyes looking straight ahead, his
+ample, light-blue tunic almost concealing his saddle. He was a pure
+French type, pale of face, with black hair, black mustache, slanting
+nose, and I knew him for the archetypal Gallic warrior as he has appeared
+through the ages, making epics for France.
+
+At Bourbach-le-Haut, Lieutenant Lavallée was to invite a last mayor
+to partake of the trip to Paris, and hunt up some remaining veterans.
+Whatever gentle thirst I had had for mayors and veterans being now
+quite slaked, I went to the little church, instead of to the _Mairie_.
+Through the half-open door came light and chanting sounds. I went in to
+find a dim interior, with an ancient arch framing the altar space, in
+front of which was a narrow, black coffin. Only some very old bit of
+mortality, waxy and shrunken, could lie within. Women, children, and what
+may have been veterans were saying the rosary in German—the Sorrowful
+Mysteries—and I thought on my dead, and on that dear and holy brother
+born into the world on this day long years ago. In Alsace he had desired
+and received, dreaming and adolescent, the baptismal waters.
+
+Sadness invaded me, even as the dreary night was invading the day, and
+I would have groaned aloud, but I saw Lieutenant Lavallée standing by
+me. Haunted by the mournful chanting, with its mysterious indications,
+“_Jetz und in der Stunde unseres Absterbens, Amen_,” I passed out into
+falling night and rain; dark masses of mountain loomed up, lighter spaces
+were the stretching valleys. Soon we found ourselves on the deep road to
+Masevaux, I lonelier than the loneliest of the dark and hurrying clouds.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THANN AND OLD THANN
+
+
+_Sunday morning, November 3d._—Awakened at six by heavy firing. After
+wondering what could be happening, I remember that life, as far as I
+am concerned, is for the moment largely joy, or rather joyous riding,
+with a series of agreeable French officers (they certainly are of an
+amiability!), in a series of large, powerful military motors, through a
+series of beautiful autumnal hills, over a series of the newest and most
+wonderful of war roads.
+
+Enough church-going, however, as will have been noticed, to keep me
+mindful that man, and woman, too, is grass, and though it, or rather she,
+springs up in the morning, she may be cut down by night, and that this
+bending of the hills is by the journeys of her eternity.
+
+Well, to get to the point, or rather to Thann. We started out early, at
+nine, for I was to find a Mass in the cathedral, after which we were to
+proceed to Vieux Thann, where war has not spared the church nor left
+worshipers.
+
+Again we took the screened road overhanging the valley. Again we stopped
+on an eminence and climbed into a field, and again I was shown the blue
+valley, over the tops of some red cherry trees. Nothing detached itself
+from gradations of velvety mists and beaming distances, but I knew that
+on the grape-planted slopes of an unseen river that other wine of defeat
+was being drunk from cups held stiffly to unwilling lips.
+
+[Illustration: THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS]
+
+As we dipped down into the valley of the Thur, the belfry of the church
+of Thann appeared, so mistily, lacily soft that its form and substance
+seemed but as something breathed into the air, at any moment to be
+dissolved, against hills that were like brocaded stuffs, whose gold would
+be very thick if one turned them wrong side out. My heart was stirred
+because of the fairness of the Sabbath world.
+
+We drew up in front of the gorgeous portal of the cathedral, once a deep
+pink, but with time grown paler and softer at all its edges, and whose
+boardings and sandbags now partly hide the carved story of the life of
+Christ and His Mother. We grope our way in through several swinging
+doors, and find the high, Gothic space filled with a misty yellow light
+coming in through narrow windows, covered with oiled paper, the precious
+stained-glass having been long since removed.
+
+Little by little the forms of kneeling women and children, and many
+soldiers standing, detach themselves from the lovely gloom. The green
+vestment of the priest at the altar, on which are six tall, crystal,
+wide-branched candelabra, misty like the rest, is the only spot of color,
+for the splashes of horizon-blue become nearly white after a strange
+fashion of this color in dim light, whether of church or falling night.
+In the ancient wrought-iron pulpit the curé was just finishing a sermon
+in French, immediately beginning one in German. It appears that as the
+_communiqués_ improve, the French sermon gets longer, and the German
+shorter, and mercifully neither is long.
+
+We passed out quickly after the “_Ite, missa est_.” I had been feeling
+that Captain B—— might be in a hurry, but when I looked about to see if
+he were fidgeting, I found him doing what any _miles gloriosus_ should be
+doing from time to time, saying his prayers.
+
+And this is the story of the building of the church of Thann, and of its
+arms, which bear a single pine tree.
+
+Death found the holy Bishop Théobald in the Umbrian Valley, and, knowing
+that his hour had come, he said to his servitor Maternus, who knelt
+weeping by his side:
+
+“Thou knowest I leave no worldly goods, for the poor have needed what
+I had. But this sapphire ring, dear memory of her once loved, take it,
+thou, that worms may not dwell within it.” And then he entered into
+contemplation, saying nothing further of the things of earth.
+
+When Maternus had made ready to hide his master’s body from the light,
+he tried to take the ring from its finger. But with the ring came the
+finger, and both were inclosed as in a shining rim.
+
+Maternus, greatly wondering, hid the precious relic in a hollow place in
+his staff and started back to Alsace, begging his bread along the way.
+After many delays, having been set upon by wicked men and molested by
+prowling animals, he finally arrived in the valley of the Thur.
+
+Exhausted, he laid himself down to rest, placing against a pine tree the
+precious staff. The next morning he was awakened by the ringing of the
+Angelus, and when he started to grasp his staff he found that it was as
+if grafted on to the great pine, while to left and right were burning two
+tall, pale, sapphire flames.
+
+At this moment the lord of the Engelburg came by, the ruins of whose
+great castle are those one sees rising above the town of Thann. He had
+perceived the two blue flames from afar and, hastening to find out what
+they signified, he recognized Maternus, faithful servitor of his friend
+Théobald.
+
+Maternus then related the death of the saint in the Umbrian plain,
+showing him the finger and the ring; whereupon the lord of the Engelburg,
+weeping and sighing, cried:
+
+“Oh! my precious friend Théobald; oh! my dearly loved sister Adelaide,
+this is thy betrothal ring, and these two sapphire flames announce thy
+union in dear heaven!” (In those days they were quick to see divine
+meanings.)
+
+Now, the so well-loved Adelaide, in her green youth, had been struck by
+a bolt from heaven, after which Théobald, for whom the whole round earth
+held nothing more of value, had consecrated himself to God.
+
+The lord of the Engelburg, his gaze fixed upon the luminous finger and
+the familiar blue ring, knew soon the too often hidden will of God, and
+cried out again:
+
+“Here I will build a church, and its reliquary shall contain this
+precious ring and finger.”
+
+And so was built the church and monastery of Thann, and about them
+grew the town, and during long centuries on the vigil of the feast of
+Saint-Théobald, a freshly cut pine tree was placed in front of the
+cathedral, flanked by two great wax candles. Nor can any one, even of the
+very positive-minded, who look no farther than stones and mortar for all
+meanings, give a better reason for the arms of Thann.
+
+Then we motored on toward Vieux Thann, half destroyed, and evacuated
+since 1914, but were obliged to leave the too visible motor on the
+outskirts of the village, creeping close along a very high screen of wire
+and broom branches that we might not be seen by the enemy. For we were
+in the plain of Cernay, now known as the Ochsenfeld, once called the
+“Field of Lies,” where the three sons of Louis le Débonnaire routed their
+father’s army. Lothair, Louis, and Pépin were their names. But of all
+this another time.
+
+Vieux Thann is a half-demolished, echoing, empty town, with a background
+of neglected vineyards on very close-pressing hills.
+
+Everywhere were signs of German war occupation. The schoolhouse had
+been their evacuation hospital, and one of the old inns bore the sign,
+“Verband-Station.” The only living things in Vieux Thann were the
+fountains, quite lovely in the pink-stoned, gracious Alsatian way, with
+their gentle, unhurried streams of crystal water. It all reminded me
+vaguely of Pompeii, even in the misty light of a northern Indian summer
+sun.
+
+Above, in the perfect blue, the usual firing on German airplanes was
+going on. Long after the black specks had disappeared to the east
+the little, round, soft, compact balls of shrapnel were still slowly
+unfolding themselves.
+
+About fifteen hundred feet from us were the battle-lines, where the
+French and Germans have faced each other in the “Field of Lies” since
+1914.
+
+One of the battered inns, “Zum Goldenen Lamm,” has its once lovely old
+sign still hanging out, but the golden lamb is gone, and only his golden
+feet and the green wreath of laurel that once entwined him remain.
+
+And to what winds had the dwellers of the great village been scattered?
+Where had they been received, unwillingly, by strangers, those hosts of
+refugees, fleeing from their homes, red with excitement, bright-eyed,
+voluble? I’ve seen them, too, after months of treading up another’s
+stairs and eating of the salt bread of charity—pale, silent, dispirited,
+returning to villages like Vieux Thann, to see their all among disorderly
+piles of fallen stones and crumbling mortar....
+
+Back to the living city, to an increasing sound of cannon, but the
+Sabbath stillness was so deep nothing seemed really to disturb it.
+
+The cathedral with its single, finely pointed tower was like a needle
+everywhere threading up long streets. I had a desire to see it empty,
+and as I entered, its perfect proportions gave me a sweet and satisfying
+welcome. The red lamp of the sanctuary was now the only spot of color
+in the thick yellow gloom, out of which line and proportion gradually
+detached themselves. The celebrated choir-stalls had been removed to
+Sewen, but above the altar of the Virgin is a Gothic triptych, and the
+beautiful pulpit is of fifteenth-century wrought-iron. We groped our
+way into a low, vaulted chapel which existed even before the church was
+built, passing a tombstone bearing the arms of the house of Ferrette, a
+family once all-powerful in these valleys. Over the altar of the chapel
+is an ancient statue of Saint-Théobald. He has a long, thin, shaven,
+upper-class face, his eyes are bent, and he is looking perhaps as he did
+shortly before death found him in the Umbrian Valley. It is the visage of
+a man having done with personal things, and a great pity is woven into
+the downward curves of the benignant face.
+
+We drove back to Masevaux, over one of the splendid new war roads, rising
+and dipping through forest-covered hills. The brilliant sun shone athwart
+each leaf, still dewy and sparkling, and a strong, rich, autumnal smell
+exuded from the earth. It reminded Captain Bernard of hunting before the
+war, that carefree _chasse d’avant-guerre_, and I thought of Hungarian
+castles, and long days in forests, walking through rustling leaves, or
+sitting silently in glades with men in green-brown hunting garb, awaiting
+the game. In the evening, shining dinner-tables, and talk about the day’s
+bag by men in pink hunting-coats and women wearing their best gowns and
+all their jewels.... And much that is no more.
+
+We descended at the _popote_ as the hand of the church clock pointed
+to 12.15. Blue-clad officers were standing by the windows reading the
+Belfort morning paper just arrived, and the Paris newspapers of the day
+before, as I went in.
+
+The enemy is beating his retreat through the Argonne Forest, to the
+sound of the hour of destiny, and there are armistice and abdication
+rumors, and indications that they want to _sauver les meubles_, or, as
+they would say, seeing they’ve got into a bad business, _retten was zu
+retten ist_—_i.e._, German unity, which, saved, means all is saved. But
+there are strange dissolvents infiltrating everywhere, scarcely any
+substance can resist, and the blood of peoples boiling over, and much
+good broth spilling, and too many cooks everywhere. For what man but
+wants to try his ’prentice hand at seasoning of the mess? And it was all
+talked about to the consuming of Mère Labonne’s especially excellent
+Sunday dinner, an example of _la vraie, la délicieuse cuisine française
+bourgeoise_. There were _pieds de veau_ that melted in the mouth, and
+creamed potatoes, after which a very delicious _hachis_, with some
+sort of horseradish sauce, and when I remark that it has also a touch
+of garlic, Sérin cries out, “But not at all—it’s only horseradish.” On
+my being supported by everybody at the table, he finally says, with an
+innocent but somewhat discomfited smile, “It’s true that there must be a
+lot for _me_ to notice it.” Then he tells with gusto of a repast in his
+dear Toulouse where there was a whole cold pheasant for each guest, and
+each pheasant was blanketed with such a thick cream of garlic that the
+bird itself could scarcely be seen. “It was exquisite,” he added. “I dare
+say; one can even smell it here,” some one cruelly finished.
+
+Then they spoke of how the French had supported captivity better than the
+English, and why.
+
+“We always talk while eating,” said Bernard, “no matter how scanty or
+ignoble the repast. It’s our hour for relaxation.” (Any one lunching or
+dining at French officers’ messes will have noticed this.) “But with the
+English it is different. They eat silently, and in captivity they easily
+get the spleen and fall into melancholy, because the food isn’t served
+as they would like, or because they can’t wash or shave or exercise.”
+
+And I told the story of the brother of a French friend whom I had
+recently seen, just back from nearly four years’ captivity, who returned
+in such a stout, rosy condition that his sister was ashamed to show him,
+and when asked about her _pauvre frère_ would blush.
+
+We sat long, talking now of books, now of personages, now of local
+happenings, Sérin telling of passing that morning through one of the
+smaller villages where even the young girls had saluted him with a
+military salute as he rode by—and one of the officers said, with a flash,
+“_Très délivrées celles-là!_”(“Very delivered, those!”) Then some one
+told the story of the man who came down to Masevaux to make a book on
+Alsace and, seeing the line of the trenches marked that day in blue on
+the commandant’s map, remarked, in a _dégagé_ way, “_Le Rhin, n’est-ce
+pas?_” (“The Rhine, I suppose?”)
+
+“Not yet,” was the quiet answer.
+
+He then rushed them all off their feet for ten hours, after which, having
+got what _he_ wanted, he went back to Paris and wrote his book. And from
+what I hear it wasn’t a bad book, either. Though one of the officers said
+he knew he could do the same about Prague or Peking, that he’d never
+seen, with some books, a good pair of scissors and as much paste as he
+wanted.
+
+All is handled lightly, as only a group of Frenchmen could handle it,
+_glissant, n’appuyant jamais_, each bringing his little gift of wit
+and culture, enjoying the impersonal with the same pleasure as the
+personal, in the French way. Of course, the _communiqués_ are as honey
+after four years of bitter herbs, very bitter, even though distilled in
+extinguishable hope.
+
+And I must say that to me lively and untrammeled conversation is the
+salt of daily life; and if, as it sometimes happens, one’s own thoughts
+are expanded, brightened, and returned to one, it is indeed delectable
+above all things, the true salt to be used in quantities (if you can
+get it). For, alas! the majority of people have no ideas, when you come
+down to it, or, having a few, they are pig-headed and look but into
+the converging point of the angle, knowing nothing of the splendor of
+diverging lines where self is swallowed up in unself. And there are
+the close-headed, whose minds work slowly in a cramped way, or not at
+all, and they are forever complaining that they only think of things to
+say when they get home and the lights are out. They might just as well
+not think of them (one sometimes doubts if they really do) for all the
+good they are to their neighbors. And there are those very thin-skinned
+ones who immediately get contentious, and think the arrow is meant for
+them instead of the universe at large, and one could go on indefinitely
+through the list of impenetrable heads, to whom the blow of an ax is as
+the brush of a feather, or cushiony heads that once dented, however,
+never regain their contours, and many, many others. These all need
+material sauces, good, rich sauces to their food, or they would find
+it tasteless, not having even a pinch of this other salt to season it
+with. And they are mostly those who do not work, but whose fathers
+worked—sometimes even their mothers—and _oh, là là_, the subject is
+endless, for everybody talks—even those who have nothing to say.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE BALLON D’ALSACE
+
+
+_Sunday afternoon._—At two o’clock I started out with Captain Bernard
+and Captain Antoni for the great mountain known as the Ballon[7]
+d’Alsace, sometimes called, too, “the knot of Europe,” in an especially
+high-powered motor (I never know the mark of any of them, distinguishing
+a Ford from a Rolls-Royce only by the generally pampered feeling
+pervading me when in the latter).
+
+The Ballon rises like a wall at the very end of the valley of the Doller,
+and we passed through many villages, shining pinkly in the prismatic
+November afternoon, where there was much going into church for vespers,
+of blue- or black-clad figures. The thirteenth century-towered church
+of Sewen is on a slight eminence in the heart of the village, and the
+cemetery around it was crowded with the faithful, regretting their dead,
+or some, perhaps, for one reason or another (What know I?), feeling,
+“’Tis better they lie there.” “Live long, but not too long for others,”
+is an excellent device.
+
+The charming lake of Sewen, though far from the village, seen from a
+certain angle, reflects the tower of the church and is, they told me,
+of Moorish origin. These valleys and hills seem everywhere like open
+books concerning the dim, dim youth of the earth; I had a sense of my
+transitories, with those lessons written everywhere. And it is autumn,
+too.
+
+We got out at the immense reservoir of Alfelt which dams up dangerous
+springtime floods with its giant wall of masonry, for from the “knot of
+Europe” loosened waters flow to the North Sea and to the Mediterranean.
+Climbing to the top of the rocky elevation, we read on the monument the
+date of the inauguration of the reservoir, 1884, and the name, Prince
+Hohenlohe Schillingfurst, Statthalter.
+
+And, looking down, the shining villages through which we had just passed,
+Sewen, Oberbruck, Niederbruck, Masevaux, are like beads on the thread of
+the lovely valley, lying between the breasts of the hills.
+
+The mountain-ringed lake of the reservoir reflects the rich coloring
+of the hills in which it is set; white-stemmed, yellow-leaved birches,
+blood-red cherry trees; rust-colored beeches, larch trees shining like
+torches borne by wanderers, on black pine slopes; all is seen twice—once
+on the hills and once in the mirror of the lake.
+
+Then we mount up, up, up, twisting and turning over the magnificent
+military road, made like so many others since the war, to become some day
+the joy of tourists, when, thousands upon ten thousands, nay, millions
+upon millions, they shall come from over ocean and mountain to see what
+it all looks like and get the belated thrill.
+
+Violet hills become black, outlined against a copper-colored band of
+western horizon. Captain Bernard points out some English airplanes just
+over our heads, tiny, tiny specks hanging in a high waste of heaven, and
+I wonder if in one of them sits my friend, the chartered accountant of
+the Belfort train, fulfilling his destiny in the air.
+
+We leave the motor at the highest point of the road, where trees no
+longer grow, and start to climb the grassy crest, patterned with great
+brown patches of barbed-wire defenses. Captain Bernard’s sharp eyes
+soon discerned the _chicanes_, intricate, almost indistinguishable
+pathways through the wire, and if one knew them one could get through
+without leaving one’s clothes. Breathless, we arrived at the _table
+d’orientation_ and find ourselves looking out over what seemed the edge
+of the universe. In front of us lay the gorgeous panorama of the Alps
+and behind it the wide band of copper-colored sky, with here and there
+a burnishing of glaciers by the dipping sun. To our left stretched the
+immense and splendid valley of the Rhine, behind it the Black Forest,
+clearly yet softly outlined against a paler horizon. One could have
+rolled the whole earth like a ball from the feet. I felt as if suddenly
+freed from any heaviness of the flesh, and Goethe’s soaring words brushed
+against my mind, and beckoned me on—those words he cried after he had
+reached the Brocken and was looking down on a cloud-covered Germany.
+
+    _Dem Geier gleich_
+    _Der auf schweren Morgenwolken_
+    _Mit sanftem Fittig ruhend,_
+    _Nach Beute schaut,_
+    _Schwebe mein Lied._[8]
+
+I knew those vast expanses for material out of which a new earth, if
+not a new heaven, must be formed, on some eighth day of creation. And
+the new earth was to be made out of old and conflicting desires, worn,
+yet persistent passions, small, yet greedy thoughts, the whole about as
+facile as the weighing of the winds, making one almost feel that He who
+worked with new materials those first seven days had the easier part.
+
+I was filled, too, with a great longing for an improbable wisdom and
+strength to be breathed into the men who are to reharness the plunging,
+escaping destinies of the nations. Each man that has his hands on the
+reins seems like some one clinging to a runaway horse, trying to dominate
+a relentless, unreasoning, reckless course.
+
+Reverberating through the eternal hills was the sound of heavy cannon;
+and before my mind came a vision of the great forges wherein they were
+formed, men working day and night in hot, dim, noisy spaces—Creusot and
+Krupp and Skoda, and all the rest....
+
+Some near summit hid the dread Hartmannswillerkopf, the “Verdun” of
+Alsace, and one of the officers spoke of that winter of 1916, when its
+snow was always pink with blood and black with death—“tens of thousands
+sleep there.” I thought of the souls breathed out into that pure, high
+ether, like to this, but cold, cold, almost as tenuous as the immortal
+stuff commingling with it.
+
+Then we started to the other edge of the summit, whence we might look
+into _l’élégante et douloureuse Lorraine_, for one side of the Ballon
+slopes toward Alsace and the other toward Lorraine.
+
+As we threaded our way carefully through more _chicanes_ of barbed-wire
+defenses “that you had to have your nose in before they could be
+distinguished,” I discerned on the crag three familiar silhouettes,
+outlined against the heavens toward the Lorraine slope. And as things are
+rarely in their proper setting nowadays, there on the Ballon d’Alsace
+were three dusty Y.M.C.A. men who had come from their _cantine_ at
+Belfort. We spoke to them and gave our names, and the brightest one,
+Tallant was his name, asked if I were the wife of my husband—and said
+he’d been on the Mexican border.
+
+Then we told them where the _table d’orientation_ was, but forgot to
+point out the _chicanes_, and we saw them from a distance entangled in
+barbed wire. Their souls were safe, I hope, but heaven help those khaki
+clothes!
+
+And looking down into Lorraine from my splendid height was as if looking
+into another world, for its distances were bronze and silver and pale
+green.
+
+Great black spots of shadow cast by wasteful masses of white clouds were
+lying heavily over those new and ancient battle-fields. Forever obliged
+to protect themselves from some invader, the villages hide rather than
+display themselves, and are barely detached from the silvery brown of
+the plain, crossed here and there by the bosky lines of the Meuse, or
+those of the great canal joining the French river to the Rhine. And each
+tiny hill has been an altar or a fortress, often both at once. Over the
+majestic, melancholy stretch Romans have passed, the hosts of Attila,
+Normans, Germans, Burgundians, Swedes, English, and many others. Now its
+white roads sound to the tramp of American armies, are encumbered by
+giant quantities of war material brought from over the seas. And of all
+who have passed over it, of the most ancient even, much remains. Close
+against one another are Roman encampments, feudal castles, the two-sided,
+two-faced bastion defenses of Vauban, the great, mined earthworks of
+modern times, and now in leafy darknesses are the cement emplacements of
+the big guns of the twentieth century.
+
+But alas! as I turned to go, pulling my gaze from the wide horizon (a
+pale, pale pink where it covered the western way to the city that is the
+heart of France), I saw on that slope, directly under me, a cruel statue
+of Jeanne d’Arc. A stiff yet boneless Pucelle sat astride an equally
+stiff yet boneless steed; both seemed about to drop into space, the
+mountain falling away from them, and both were of a dreadful superfluity!
+However, one isn’t so plagued with horrid modern statues in Alsace as
+in other places I have been, for they run rather to fountains and living
+waters. At St.-Amarin, for instance, I don’t remember anything later or
+more personal than the fiery Gallic cock, “_der spuckende Welschhahn_,”
+surmounting a sphere, borne in turn by the column of the 1830 fountain;
+and the fountain in the Place du Chapitre at Masevaux, bearing the date
+1768, has a single, lovely column, too, on whose top burns a stone flame
+in an urn. And the shaft of the fountain of the wine-growers at Thann is
+a mass of rich yet noble carving, surmounted by a helmeted figure bearing
+a shield on his back. Furthermore, crystal water flows into its six-sided
+emblazoned basin.
+
+I think of the statue of Thiers, _Libérateur du Territoire_, in that
+dusty, begonia-planted, iron-railed plot in front of the station at
+Nancy, and I could weep.
+
+But hereabout I haven’t found a single nineteenth-century statesman
+in frock-coat and top-hat, done in granite, nor any bronze female
+pointing him the way to a dubious heaven, with a long finger and a heavy
+palm-branch—and so may it remain.
+
+Certainly the _très chic chef_ of the Military Mission will be well
+punished for _his_ good works in Alsace if they ever raise a statue to
+him. For they will make him, too, out of either bronze or marble with a
+_plaque de commissaire_ on his frock-coated breast, and heaven knows what
+kind of a hat they’ll put on him, or how the fancy will seize them to do
+his hair! And the statue won’t be of lapis lazuli, as it should be, nor
+of pale sapphire, nor of dull turquoise, nor of any of the lovely blue
+stones of the earth, alone fit to perpetuate the beauty of the blue-clad
+men who have written France’s greatest epic. Blue-clad men splashed about
+fountains at twilight, blue-clad men taking form and substance as they
+emerge out of gray mountain mists, blue-clad men weaving their cerulean
+patterns through the woof of long-trunked pine forests, blue-clad men
+like bits of turquoise embedded in the matrix of white roads, and what
+know I besides?
+
+As I gave a sigh for Art and a prayer for the serried ranks of her
+erring devotees, I found myself looking into another splendid valley,
+toward Giromagny, near where is a height known as La Planche des Belles
+Filles, after a story of the Thirty Years’ War, when men with blue eyes
+and very light hair and skin were for a while masters of the domains of
+Belfort and Ferrette. After the best manner of invading armies, ’tis
+recorded that these Swedes committed many excesses, and dark-eyed girls
+lay concealed in the forest, and when they feared their hiding-place had
+been discovered they fled to the mountains, but even there they were
+pursued by the hosts of fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed men, bent
+on the most elemental of errands. And again they fled precipitately,
+scarcely knowing their direction. When they got to the top they found
+themselves on a great ledge of rock and in their distress they tumbled
+from the height onto other rocks below, and the blue-eyed, fair-skinned,
+fair-haired men from the North knew them not. Hence the “Ledge of the
+Beautiful Girls.”
+
+And then we took a last look at the vast heaping of the Alps; to the
+left, the Jungfrau and the Mönsch, to the right, Mont Blanc, the whole
+great mass outlined against that persistent dark-red band. The glacier of
+the Jungfrau was as if in conflagration; Mont Blanc was soft and roseate,
+yet its beauty left me cold.
+
+Captain Bernard said he had climbed the Ballon many times and only twice
+before had he seen the great panorama; but as, alack! to him who does not
+want shall be given, except for their gorgeousness, I would have turned
+from them indifferently, had not my beloved mother been dwelling almost
+in the shadow of Mont Blanc.
+
+But one[9] has written, as men of genius write of things in times of
+peace, of this Ballon d’Alsace. He who brought out from his Gallo-British
+mind new things and old has said in one of the most charming of books:
+“Then on the left you have all the Germanies, a great sea of confused and
+dreaming people, lost in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the
+moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a
+word to us others. They cannot remain long apart from visions.” I thought
+they have, indeed, given a “word.” But when again the “visions”?
+
+I turned and followed my two blue-clad officers down the Alsatian
+slope, over the gray grass, threading neatly through the _chicanes_ of
+the brown, barbed-wire defenses, and got into the motor waiting on the
+roadway once known as that of the Dukes of Lorraine.
+
+We were silent as we started down the great mountain. I was again wrapped
+in thoughts of the New Day to be created out of old and rotting stuffs,
+and of the death of heroes. The hills were velvet-palled against the
+deepening crimson band of light.
+
+Later, a _panne_, and we waited in a violet-valleyed world, illumined
+only by white candelabraed torches of strangely luminous larch and birch,
+while the prudent yet daring chauffeur changed the tire.
+
+A great khaki-colored motor passed us, marked with two stars, filled with
+khaki-clad men of my race, going up, up, whence we had come.
+
+Then we stopped at the little restaurant of Alfeld. The lake of many
+colors was dark and mysterious. Its high tints had been dipped in
+something deep in the hours since last I saw it, though strange blues
+and purples and rust colors were still reflected in it, and the light of
+a single, very yellow birch had not yet been snuffed. At the restaurant
+four glasses of white liqueur were poured for us (one, of course, for
+the chauffeur), distilled from raspberries, the odor of the berry very
+strong, and long afterward the taste, the _arrière-goût_, remains in the
+mouth, as if one had just eaten the fruit. But one of the officers said,
+“All the same, it doesn’t equal a good _quetsch_ or _kirsch_ or, above
+all, a good _mirabelle_.”
+
+And then we dipped into the darkening valley of the Doller and through
+dim villages found the way to Masevaux and the house on the Place du
+Chapitre, where the Demoiselles Braun had tea awaiting us, and there
+were stories told that made us laugh. And one was of the renowned 15th
+Dragoons, so long quartered there, which, briefly—and humanly—is this:
+
+At intervals after their departure little dragoons saw the light of
+a war-world, and, to be exact, fifty in all saw it. The curé was
+broken-hearted at the ravages among his sheep, but he was also a
+practical, long-sighted curé, so he wrote, presenting his idea of the
+matter before the colonel of the regiment, with the result that from
+the savings-box of that same regiment a sum was subtracted to provide
+ten years later for the first communion and confirmation clothes of the
+fifty! (Would you have thought of it?) Then, casting about in his mind
+how he could further improve the general situation, this time not so much
+from the temporal point of view as from that of eternity, he decided upon
+a pilgrimage—a pilgrimage of reparation to Huppach, where is the shrine
+known as that of the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln, near Sewen, through
+which we had just passed. He announced the pilgrimage from the pulpit,
+then took the further precaution of rounding up his strayed sheep in
+person, and in person conducting them to Huppach to offer up prayers and
+tears to the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln. There were so many of them,
+however, and they were mostly so young, that history does not record the
+pilgrimage as being entirely without smiles—and God have mercy on us all!
+
+But the curé was not yet (so to speak) out of the woods, for fate
+replaced the Dragoons by another regiment, having, as it happened, a
+colonel possessed of a boundless love for his men and who couldn’t do
+enough for them (or rather have the inhabitants of Masevaux do enough for
+them).
+
+“The inhabitants of Masevaux are very nice, very nice indeed,” quoth he,
+“but the happiness of my men above everything. We left three thousand on
+the battlefield last week, and the others need distraction—of a pleasant
+sort. My men above everything.”
+
+So the colonel who loved his men with a boundless love and, furthermore,
+was not one to waste time in vain endeavors to portray the eternal
+feminine as undesirable, nor to render the chase unpopular, caused dances
+to be organized on this very Place du Chapitre, under these very linden
+trees, then heavy-scented, and every evening. The curé, foreseeing
+trouble, with the aid of Heaven and his own undiscourageable will, had
+them suppressed after eight days (eight days is a long time) of wrestling
+with leagued powers both civil and military. And again God have mercy on
+us all!
+
+Now the virtuous, I mean the truly virtuous (that is, the untried,
+untempted virtuous), mustn’t throw stones at Masevaux nor at this book,
+but rather remember that anything could have happened to anybody had
+everything been different. And even so, hasn’t a lot happened to many of
+you? You know a good deal better than I do just how much.
+
+To the _popote_ at seven-thirty, and before I’m an hour older I’m going
+to tell you about the _popote_. And you’ll wish you had been there
+instead of hearing about it—as runs the classic expression, “_Regarder
+manger des glaces_,” and I give the translation, “Watch others eat
+ice-cream,” partly because I want you all to know just what I mean, and
+partly because some one in the United States wrote to my publishers that
+_My Lorraine Journal_ was a nice book, but couldn’t they suggest to me
+that I write my books either in French or English.
+
+MRS. O’S.: “But, my dear Mr. Graham” (his name is Graham, and this may be
+his chance of immortality), “I couldn’t write one entirely in French to
+save my soul, and to save my soul I’d find it impossible when everything
+I’m writing about takes place in France not to slip into _la belle
+langue_ occasionally.”
+
+MR. GRAHAM (from a distance): “Occasionally! There you’re at it again.
+Occasionally!” (It does get on his nerves.)
+
+MRS. O’S.: “And there is another saying to the effect that ‘_On ne
+peut pas contenter tout le monde et son père_.’ That is to say, dear
+Mr. Graham, that you can’t please everybody and your father as well,
+and this, of course, mostly applies to young men (are you a son or are
+you a father?) trying to win smiles outside family circles—and father
+ultimately paying the bills. But as it occurs to me here, there must be
+some connection.”
+
+MR. GRAHAM: “I don’t see it. And while I’m about it, I’d like to tell you
+a thing or two concerning those Mexican books of yours. The Spanish was
+awful—even _The Yale Review_ and _The Nation_ noticed it.”
+
+MRS. O’S. (getting a bit nasty): “It’s about all either of them did
+notice, especially _The Yale Review_; and nobody loves me on _The
+Nation_, but it was entirely the printer’s fault. He received them
+immaculate. I turned my face to the wall for three days after a glance at
+_A Diplomat’s Wife_. But then you probably don’t remember how perfectly
+sweet about these very books _The North American Review_ was (a man with
+the most perceptive of souls and a neat flair for the imponderabilities,
+named Lawrence Gilman, does _their_ book reviews), also _The New
+Republic_, which possesses a man named Alvin Johnson, inexorably sure
+about the humanities, separating with a single, infallible gesture the
+goats of letters from the sheep (but he still thinks, alas! that all men
+are born free and equal). And _The New York Sun_ was kind, kind, and _The
+New York Evening Post_, too, and they do say this latter rarely says
+anything nice about people till they’re dead and can’t enjoy it, and _The
+New York Tribune_, which has the reputation of being very particular
+about itself, and _The New York Times_, which never jokes and is known as
+a searcher after truth.”
+
+Mr. Graham, dreadfully bored with me, mumbles something like “this is
+what you get when you try to do somebody a good turn.” I couldn’t catch
+it all, as he’d doubtless continued farther on his journey through the
+great Northwest. He wrote from one of a chain of “Grand Trunk Pacific
+Hotels,” and all I can think of to call after him is _Bon voyage_, though
+he won’t like it.
+
+And now back to Masevaux in the valley of the Doller—Masevaux smelling a
+bit like nice leather things in expensive shops, with a hint of falling
+leaves.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LA POPOTE
+
+
+And how shall he who has not dined be strong? And how shall he who is
+not girded fight? And how shall he who has not wept laugh? And how shall
+he who hath not made a free offering of his life find it? And many other
+things occur to me, but enough for the wise of heart.
+
+And now for _la popote_, which is in what was once the house of the
+Oberforster, in a street doubtless always muddy, looking out on the
+church, and it is square, of gray stucco, and red brick with a hall
+running through the center, like many and many a house.
+
+The woodwork is everywhere painted brown and the wall-paper, too,
+is brown, a lighter, depressing brown. Above the dining-table is a
+ponderous, imitation-bronze chandelier, but its cruel light now shines on
+blue-clad men who have fought the good fight, agreeable, cultivated men
+of the world, and it touches strongly scar and galloon and decoration of
+these, selected _ex millibus et ex millibus_, by hidden powers, to return
+from battlefield and trench....
+
+It’s the Oberforster’s glass that we use; it’s his imitation-bronze
+fruit-dish that is now filled with dark, rich grapes of victory. It’s
+his imitation-tin and real-glass punch-bowl that is on the table by the
+window. On the porcelain stove that heats well, too well (I sit with my
+back close to it), is a _dégagé_ marble bibelot, the heads of a man and a
+woman in _basso-rilievo_ cut in an obtrusively chance bit of marble, and
+it bears the motto, “_Amor condusse noi_.” Perhaps on their honeymoon,
+the Oberforster and his bride had made the classic _Italienische Reise_,
+and had pressed closely, so closely against each other in the railway
+carriage, that the apprehensive fellow-voyagers shut their eyes or sought
+another compartment. The Teutonic “will to live” is irresistible, and
+when it’s at work there’s nothing to be done except get out of the way.
+
+Theirs were the lithographs representing beings of the Biedermayer epoch,
+theirs the many-tiered machine-turned, walnut sideboard. Theirs was
+(I know not how it got into that company of _ersatz_ and imitation) a
+beautiful old glass carafe, a shepherd and a sacrificial lamb engraved
+upon it (perhaps once a church vessel), but in it was a stopper, half
+cork and half tin, with an imitation turquoise in the middle.
+
+Theirs was a smoking-set of imitation tin whose massive ash-receiver in
+the most horrid _art nouveau_ continually mocked the delicate spirals of
+smoke. Said the commandant one evening, flicking his cigar-ash into the
+dreadful thing:
+
+“That invasion was almost as bad as this. You could have bought an
+ash-receiver like it in every big shop in Paris.”
+
+“And in every little one,” finished Laferrière. “Thank God the frontier
+_is_ closed, even at the price.”
+
+In the corner between the windows was an upright piano piled with the
+best of music, and there was a large and completely uninteresting
+turned-wood clock, stopped at 12.25 on August 7th, four years ago.
+
+And the man that earned and owned it all is dead in a soldier’s grave,
+and the woman, Anna by name, weeps somewhere her lost love and the
+equally lost gods of her household. _Et c’est la guerre._
+
+[Illustration: COMMANDANT POULET]
+
+As for Madame Labonne’s cooking, she knows her business, and if it
+weren’t the obvious duty of those sitting about the table to take the
+gifts the gods and Madame Labonne provide, I should feel I were living
+much too well.
+
+She gives us a _gâteau à la crème_ that disappears smoothly, leaving but
+an exquisite memory. She has another _gâteau à l’oignon_ (don’t turn
+away; it’s perfectly delicious and takes a day to make the onion part),
+her _filets_ melt in the mouth, and her _purées_ are the insubstantial
+fabric of a dream. When she serves the classic Alsatian dish of
+sauerkraut decorated with boiled potatoes and shining pieces of melting
+pork, you don’t really need to eat for twenty-four hours, and wouldn’t go
+to the _popote_ except for the conversation and the company. Sometimes
+the officers, the unwedded ones, think of marrying Madame Labonne—she’s
+fat and about sixty and doesn’t try to look young (by her works alone
+they shall know her), and the married ones think of trying to introduce
+her into their happy homes in some rôle or other.
+
+And when they move into the rich, shining Alsatian plain, that they
+have looked down upon these four long years, she is to take part in the
+triumphal procession.
+
+And this is how we generally find ourselves placed at table. I sit on
+the right of Commandant Poulet, who, somewhat as a prince of story, for
+these four years has administered with much calm, with great good sense,
+with wide understanding, and, above all, with immense tact and kindness,
+the not always simple affairs of the delivered ones of the reconquered
+triangle.
+
+Only he can know the difficulties of the French Military Mission, though
+all may see the results. It is a land flowing with honey if not with milk
+(the busy bee in and out of war-time doth its work, though, it would
+seem, not so the cow).
+
+In full maturity it has been given to Commandant Poulet to see results,
+and sometimes I have looked almost in and at a man whose strange lot
+during the war years has been constructive work. His first public
+appearance was when, as _tout jeune lieutenant remplissant des bouts de
+table_, he accompanied President Loubet to St. Petersburg on his 1902
+visit. Since then many honors have been his, and here in Alsace he has
+been both Paul and Apollo, for he has reaped where he has planted and God
+_has_ given the increase. _Très chic_, in his horizon-blue, with his high
+decorations on his breast, _et très homme du monde_. This is what I see
+and it seems very fair. Of his personal life what can I know?—except that
+it must be as the life of all that walk the earth, disillusion succeeding
+illusion, grief tripping up joy; for there is no getting away from the
+old verses:
+
+    _Ainsi du mal au bien,_
+    _De la joie à la peine_
+    _Passe la vie humaine._
+
+Somewhere in Lorraine the commandant has a destroyed château. But he can
+always dwell in the dwelling of his labors in Alsace.
+
+Vis-à-vis is his first aide, Captain Tirman, whom I saw on my arrival,
+always with deep rings under his eyes, too much in rooms and bending over
+desks—_il boit le travail_. Entirely devoted to his chief. He is musical,
+too, and sometimes while waiting in the dining-room for the mess to
+assemble we find him playing Beethoven or Bach, or more recent and more
+compromising Germans, from the piles of the Oberforster’s music on the
+Oberforster’s piano. _La musique n’a pas de patrie_—for musical men who
+have fought. (But let a zealous _civil_ far from the front hear a strain
+of Schumann or Brahms issuing from some window and he runs straightway
+to the police.) Captain Tirman wears the Legion of Honor and the _Croix
+de Guerre_, and is so pale, I am told, because of the hard campaigns he
+has passed through, and wounds and illness. He is always in charge in the
+absence of the commandant, but though _être Tirmannisé_ is one of the
+gentle jokes of the _popote_, no signs of tyranny were apparent to me.
+
+Captain Bernard, second aide, is, like the commandant, from Lorraine, and
+had prepared himself for the Paris bar. He conducted himself admirably
+during the war, Laferrière tells me. Wounded three times, he bears a
+great scar—_sa belle cicatrice_, as his comrades proudly call it—on his
+forehead (Verdun, August, 1916) and over his heart _la Légion d’Honneur_
+and the _Croix de Guerre_. Always very carefully dressed—_tiré à quatre
+épingles_ (pulled out by four pins), as they nearly all are.
+
+At his right sits Captain Sérin from Toulouse, the only Meridional at the
+table. He is very straightforward and uncomplicated, I should judge, as
+regards his psychology, with the rather objective eye of the man from the
+south. (They don’t dream the way we farther north do.) He sees a joke at
+any distance and is the sort, they tell me, who would obey as simply as
+he would breathe, without a thought of hesitation, an order unto death.
+The sort that when told to bring up reinforcements at a moment when it
+seems impossible, quite simply does it, and it only _happens_ to happen
+that he is living. He is not tall, but wide of shoulder, holding himself
+very straight, and on his breast there are ribbons, too. He is chief of
+the Gendarme Service, the first and last provost of Alsace reconquered.
+
+On the other side of Captain Bernard sits Captain Toussaint, chief of the
+Forestry Service of the Masevaux district, clad in bottle-green, with
+silver bugles on his collar and the Legion of Honor and other decorations
+on his breast, _d’une grande bonté_, his comrades tell me. He is from
+the north, from Douai (his brother was killed at the front), tall, slim,
+pale-faced, lantern-jawed, everything is in his eyes—in the _regard_, as
+some one said of him—and much of his life is passed alone in forests. So
+different from Captains Bernard and Lavallée, living in Paris, between
+whom he generally sits; and he nearly always comes in late from his
+forests for luncheon and dinner.
+
+“For Toussaint, Creation is represented by the first day when the heavens
+were formed, and everything that came afterward had something to do with
+forests,” some one said last night, as he was talking rather hotly about
+the war-time cutting down of the trees of France, and the influence the
+loss of forests had on the life of nations. _Très catholique_, also;
+but then these men of the Mission, with all of whom I have entered
+tabernacles, are of an extreme reverence. What they “believe” I know not.
+
+Lieutenant Laferrière sits sometimes by me, sometimes at the end of the
+table. He has early gray hair, a fresh complexion, gray-blue eyes with
+a certain inwardness of expression, a smiling movement of the lips when
+speaking, and, with all his wit, an extreme kindness in human judgments.
+Indeed, I am struck by something of softness and patience in the eyes of
+each one of these men to whom nothing of war is foreign, who have looked
+on all combinations of mortal anguish, and whose eyes at times, too, have
+had the red look, the hard, bright look of men who have just killed.
+
+Laferrière is very cultivated after the way of us dwellers in cities.
+He was Doctor of Law at the University of Lille. On the 2d of August,
+1914, he closed his books, after which, as under-officer, he had lived
+for months that closely packed life of the trenches, “where one was
+never physically a moment alone” (hardest of all hardships, I have heard
+fastidious men say), then he had been called as jurist to the Mission.
+Emotional, but through circumstances or will, how can I know? giving the
+effect of having dominated the personal—to what point also I know not.
+
+Lieutenant Lavallée, but recently come from Paris, sits at another
+end. His personality is less striking than some of the others at the
+table, though he has _une tête un peu mauresque_, like pictures of the
+_Conquistadores_, and is inclined to solemnity of mien. He has a charming
+voice, fresh, with warm notes in it, and sometimes of an evening sings
+Breton _chansons populaires_. We especially like the one concerning _la
+douce Annette_, who spun a fatal love-story with a certain Pierre who
+wouldn’t let go her hand.
+
+There is one, Stroll by name, now absent, but his comrades evidently love
+him, for I often hear, “What a pity Stroll isn’t here”; or, “That is
+Stroll’s story.”
+
+Also for a few days _en visite_ like myself is Captain Antoni, born at
+Strasbourg, but very French in appearance, a tall, _svelte_, thin-faced
+man with a rising and falling inflexion in his voice, who has been
+through the whole campaign and wears many decorations. He said last night
+that the fighting at Verdun, especially that at Hill 304, was the worst
+he had seen.
+
+At this moment the Verdun sector, which knows the blood of men of many
+climes, is moist with that of _my_ countrymen.
+
+Now this is part of what I see as I sit at table with these men. The
+common patriotic effort tends to screen the personal life of each, of
+which I know nothing. But I do know that destiny is largely formed by
+character and endowments, and, barring the fact that time and chance
+happeneth to all, I would be tempted to wager that when such or such a
+thing came to such or such a one, _thus_ he received it—gift or blow—thus
+he used it, once his own. So unescapable and visible are the sequences of
+character.
+
+Sometimes we play bridge in the evening, pleasant, easy bridge, anybody
+taking a card back when once played, and changing his mind about
+declarations. As they so truly say, “_Nous jouons pour nous amuser_.”
+
+And yesterday there appeared on the table the famous _cafetière_ and
+Sérin, his face shining with a great light, performed the rites. It was
+one of those large, high glass bulbs with a nickel coffee-pot below. Dry
+coffee is put into the glass bulb, water into the pot, an alcohol-lamp
+beneath, and the whole is hermetically sealed. After which, according to
+the mysterious and wonderful laws of nature, the water rises and wets
+the coffee; it must rise thrice, giving forth at the same time volcanic
+sounds. During the ceremony nothing else is thought of. The officiating
+high priest is harried with liturgical suggestions, or unkind remarks
+are made about his natural endowments. As that corked spout of the pot,
+horrid with potentialities, is turned now toward one, now toward the
+other, men who would have given their lives without a thought in the
+trenches, get nervous and call to Sérin, “_Dis-donc, tu vas me crever un
+œil!_” “Not toward Madame. It would be too terrible,” etc., etc., and
+in the end the spout, with all its possibilities, is turned toward the
+Oberforster’s made-in-Germany clock. After which one has a delicious cup
+of coffee and conversation becomes normal.[10]
+
+Last night I found they were talking about giving a certificate of
+good conduct to one of them who is married, to take home with him to
+reassure his wife. A comrade, after a little badinage in the Latin
+manner, but very discreet I must say, objects: “But now there won’t be
+any _permissions_,” and, doubtfully, “We would have to give him the
+certificate for three whole months.”
+
+Then, like the antiphon of some song, a voice said, “_Trois mois, c’est
+long_.”
+
+Another said, “_Trois mois, c’est très long_.”
+
+Another, with a sigh, “_C’est trop long_....” And I to smile—within
+myself.
+
+Then a stumbling home on an invisible but strong horizon-blue arm,
+through the inky streets, ankle-deep in mud. Sometimes I haven’t known
+which one of the various kind arms it was, the electric pocket-lamp only
+occasionally making the darkness more manifest. No one to bump into, as
+circulation in the streets is forbidden after nine o’clock, on account of
+possible espionage.
+
+And you will say these are pleasant days!
+
+_Later._—Hunting in the bookcase, I found a small diamond-printed copy
+of _Hermann und Dorothea_. As, to the sound of near night-firing, I
+turned its smooth old pages, I realized it for one of the most completely
+objective works of genius ever born into the world. No thread of its
+maker’s identity is woven with it, no color of his personal experience.
+I felt but a sense of his complete and serene equilibrium, though the
+stream of words, bearing those golden thoughts, was so softly flowing, so
+crystal-clear, that it made me remember a line from another of Goethe’s
+poems, as subjective as this is objective:
+
+    _Der Geist ist Bräutigam._
+    _Wort sei die Braut._
+
+In the little preface I found that the poet, in his old age, was wont to
+say of _Hermann und Dorothea_ that of his long poems it was almost the
+only one that gave him pleasure. I seemed to understand what he meant. By
+reason of its complete objectivity, he could have had no consciousness
+of that inadequacy familiar to mortals contemplating anything formed
+from themselves. No suffering had attended its birth; rather it would
+seem to have formed itself spontaneously on the heights out of some
+plastic stuff, light and bright as summer air, imperishable as granite.
+It did not recall to Goethe (nor does it to one who reads) that night of
+personal anguish, that day of emptiness, that hour of longing, nor even
+some glimpsing, vistaed moment wherein personal fulfilment held out its
+shining, shadowy hand.
+
+In spite of the sound of cannon and the smarting of my eyes from the
+strain of the tiny Gothic print, for a moment within myself an almost
+equal feeling of harmony arose, taking a form of Peace, like an antique
+statue, free yet restrained, noble yet persuasive; bearing no one’s mark,
+nor any signs of workmanship, except that stamped by its own beauty. Then
+it vanished, leaving the little book to throb between my hands to the
+beat of my own times. Though generations had passed on and other wars
+were being fought, and the word “freedom” was again on every lip, as
+always, the women, the children, the old, were paying the heaviest tithes
+of invasion. Had I not seen like streams of fugitive populations flooding
+into Paris that hideous spring of 1918, heard the cries of anguish from
+those fleeing before an enemy army? Then also death and birth waited not
+on circumstance, and love and hate, fear and hope, hurry and exhaustion,
+were at work in strange commingling. I had seen deeds of succor, too,
+like unto those of the lovers, proffered in boundless devotion, by
+nameless, uncounted men and women, coming from the world’s ends to
+minister to its woe.
+
+A vision of _toux ceux qui ont bu à la coupe amère de cette époque_
+passed before me. Deeply sighing, I at last put out my light, thinking
+“war is war,” needing no adjectives, and of the changelessness of the
+human heart, however the formulas may be multiplied and renewed; and
+forever _Væ victis_!
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES
+
+THE COMMANDANT TRACES THE RECONQUERED TRIANGLE ON MY MAP. THE MILITARY
+MISSION
+
+
+_Monday, November 4th._—Dreamed of old griefs and awakened with the heavy
+taste their memory can even now distil. Raining. The yellow-and-brown
+carpet under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre is wet and dull and the
+few leaves still on the trees are soft and heavy, the houses damp and
+shabby. “The old wounds burn,” even here, where all is new and bright,
+and fancy flings itself delicately, amorously, consolingly about the
+pleasant happenings of each day.... Fortunately my breakfast is brought
+early by a smiling maid, who enters, bringing with her the aroma of fresh
+tea and the delicately scented, dark-green, liquid honey of these pine
+forests. There is that blessed volatilization of night-grief, and I arise
+to another pleasant day, knowing once again, however, that everywhere the
+old ghosts find one....
+
+The rainy light coming in seems but to darken the oak-paneled room. What
+there is of wall-paper is a darkish blue with a narrow frieze of red. The
+curtains are stripes of red-and-blue cloth. Even the daytime cover of the
+very comfortable eider-downed bed is of the same red-and-blue-striped
+stuff. It was because they were the colors of the French uniform that the
+young man once living herein, under German rule, chose them.
+
+But he himself is gone, gone the hope of his house. One of his sisters
+was saying to me last night as I tarried for a few minutes in the little
+sitting-room, where I had first found them all rehanging the portraits of
+their ancestors:
+
+“The price for peace is so high and terrifying that one can’t yet rejoice
+in it. Rather one says to oneself in desolation, ‘and all that was so
+precious is gone, that in the end one may sit around deserted fireplaces,
+or try to find shelter under bombarded roofs, and be at grips with the
+terrible _après-guerre_!’” And of her brother:
+
+“At least he fell for the cause that is so dear to us;” she added after a
+moment’s silence, “it might so easily have been otherwise.”
+
+I have noticed everywhere a great pride tempering grief over fallen
+beloved dead. Even in mothers’ hearts this pride is strong enough to
+console. They know why their sons were born, and to many a death of glory
+has been as a second birth; he whom they lost is, in some way, laid a
+second time, bright, beautiful, complete, in their arms, and _safe_ from
+life. And they are blessed who so mourn.
+
+Sometimes there are further griefs. I knew a mother of twin sons; one
+had fallen far away, a gentle, young, musician son, in a fierce, unequal
+conflict, whose details she was not spared; the other had been brought
+back to her on his twenty-first birthday a sightless stump. I cannot
+forget her as she stood, tall, black-veiled, by a pillared door, like an
+antique statue of grief, her eyes as dry as marble eyes. And though she,
+too, said:
+
+“At least I know why I bore them, and it was for something more than
+myself,” the obsession of a further grief was in her eyes as she added,
+“_I must not die first_—and he is so young!”
+
+Here on the borderland I find there is often an additional reason for
+pride, where Fate, which could so easily have willed it otherwise,
+sometimes has allowed the beloved to die for the beloved cause, as did
+the brother whose room is now mine. And this is his story, or rather
+the end of it. Those first four days of August, 1914, he had gone about
+the mountain heights and passes with his field-glass continually at his
+eyes to see if help were not coming from the hills in the guise of the
+_pantalons rouges_. But on the fourth day he was obliged to accompany his
+regiment into Germany, where he stayed three months. On hearing of the
+battle of the Marne through a French prisoner, he cried, “_Nous avons
+eu là une belle victoire!_” (“We have had a great victory!”) and he was
+put under arrest. His one idea being to desert, he asked to go into the
+lines again, knowing there would be no opportunity, if he remained in
+prison, training recruits. His chance came when he was fighting against
+the English in the north. His chiefs being killed or wounded, he, as
+under-officer, found himself in command of a company of a hundred and
+fifty men. With him deserted ninety-seven others. Later, he fell fighting
+in the French lines near Tahure. And this (it is perhaps much) is all I
+know of him or ever shall; if he were beloved of a woman or had loved
+many, I know not. He, the last of his race, took his name with him to the
+grave.
+
+All that surrounds me as I write was his. His the full bookshelves, with
+an elaborate set of a _Geschichte der Literatur_, and a _Welt-Geschichte_
+in many volumes, his the books of early boyhood, of travel, the many
+old, little books of prayer in tooled and beveled bindings of a
+generation or two ago, and the piles of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Two
+eighteenth-century maps hang on the walls, one of “Alsatia,” with queer
+German names for familiar places, and another of “Gallia,” and there is
+an incomparable, white, porcelain stove which heats quickly and gives out
+its pleasant heat during long hours.
+
+On a little corner shelf is an old engraving of the last _chanoinesse_
+of the Chapter of Masevaux, Xavière de Ferrette. She is dressed in full
+canonicals, with a large ruched coif and ermine-trimmed mantle; some high
+order in a Maltese-cross design is suspended from the broad ribbon worn
+across her breast, and in her hands is a richly embossed prayer-book.
+
+The long face with its immensely high forehead has a full-lipped, very
+human mouth, and in the right, upper corner is her sixteen-quartered coat
+of arms.
+
+The story of the Chapter would make good, though long, reading, for, like
+many other things in this part of the world, it begins with Charlemagne
+and ends with the French Revolution. Of both France seems equally proud,
+and certainly _il y en a pour tous les goûts_.
+
+Women always seem to have had great influence on the life of their times
+in Alsace. Not even those with the vote and all the rights, together
+with all the privileges of our times, can pretend to half the influence
+of certain holy women of the so-called dark ages. They built on hilltops
+and in valleys those many citadels of peace whose traces still are to be
+seen, where life was free from violence, and, like sweet odors uncorked,
+their good deeds have perfumed the ages. Saint-Odile, _Vierge Candide
+et Forte_, daughter of Duke Atalric, is patroness of Alsace, and in her
+many have sought the feminine ideal of the Alsatian soul; and there are
+Saint-Richarde, tried by fire for a guiltless love, wife of Louis the
+Fat, and Herrade, Abbess of Hohenburg, author of the famous _Hortus
+Deliciarum_, preserved through seven centuries and destroyed in the siege
+of Strasbourg in 1870. These are but a few, and the histories of the
+secular dwellers in the Rhine Valley, spectacular though they were, seem
+often quite colorless contrasted with those of these saints of the Holy
+Roman Empire.
+
+The first monks and pilgrims to come to Alsace were from Ireland (the
+last of these before the very end of the world will doubtless also come
+from Erin). It would appear that even in those days it could not be said
+of the Irish that they were neither hot nor cold, which is probably one
+of the reasons “why God loves them.” In the lovely rivered plains and
+great forests of the Rhine Valley it was they who built the first chapels
+and traced the first paths. It was an Irish monk whom Atalric, hoping for
+a son, consulted before the birth of his daughter; but of Saint-Odile
+another time.
+
+The house next the one wherein I dwell was that of the abbess, and now
+belongs to Madame Auguste Lauth.
+
+It, too, has a beautiful stairway, with a time-polished oaken balustrade,
+and it contains the great room of noble proportions and lovely panelings
+(still heated by the celebrated porcelain stove, fit only for a museum),
+where the ladies of the Chapter assembled in their rich toilets and great
+coifs to go to the church, reached by a two-storied gallery, which old
+prints show as having a most distinguished air, with its sloping roof
+pierced with oval windows and its pleasant proportions. But the upper
+story and the roof were done away with in the nineteenth century, which
+has demolished so much (not always in heat of battle), and it is now but
+a long, formless building used for some sort of storehouse connected
+with the Koechlin manufactories. And the way the six houses came to be
+constructed was this:
+
+The Abbess Xavière de Ferrette, a woman of resolution and energy, as
+one can easily see by the high forehead and long jaw, becoming alarmed
+at the increasing expenses of the Chapter and the equally decreasing
+revenues, decided on some radical remedies. Through the Middle Ages, down
+to her time, the _chanoinesses_ had lived under one roof, and, according
+to the holy rule, ate together. But with them fared so many outsiders,
+their friends and their friends’ friends, with their domestics, that
+they found themselves being literally eaten out of house and home. The
+abbess called a solemn meeting wherein they arranged for the building of
+separate houses, whose construction was given into the hands of Kléber,
+then architect and inspector of the royal buildings at Belfort. Pictures
+of Kléber, known rather impersonally to Americans by the Parisian avenue
+that bears his name, abound in Alsace, and show a sensitive, artistic
+face, with a pleasure-loving mouth above a short chin, and a halo of
+light, curly hair. He met an early death in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
+“_Il avait six pieds en tout_,” his contemporaries were wont admiringly
+to say of him.
+
+In these separate houses, with garden attached, each _chanoinesse_ was to
+live alone with her _demoiselle_, who at her death would step into her
+very comfortable shoes, and the abbess only was to receive guests in the
+name of the Chapter.
+
+The house I lodged in was that of the Chanoinesse von Reutner. These
+dames had to make their titles very clear to their earthly mansions,
+each having to possess sixteen quarterings evenly balanced, eight on her
+father’s side and eight on her mother’s side. Gentlemen were chosen to
+give their word on this somewhat elusive subject, and methought ’twas
+well they didn’t have to put their hand in the fire at the same time,
+for what can be sworn to with certainty of those things which have their
+origin on the mysterious borderland of the emotions? However....
+
+The _chanoinesses_ belonged mostly to the great families of Alsace, the
+Masevaux, the Ferrettes, though the records show many German names like
+Furstenburg and Seckingen, or French like Beauffrémont and Fontenoy.
+
+Sometimes the Abbey and Chapter were under French domination, sometimes
+under Austrian, sometimes they would be ceded to noble families like
+those of the Counts of Bollwiller and of Fugger, and in many ways their
+history had been checkered since their foundation in the eighth century.
+
+And as for the Thirty Years’ War, they could have told tales of the
+Swedish invasion scarcely to be beaten by certain tales of our days.
+Indeed, so complicated is the history of those times, every shade and
+branch of combatant having fought against every other shade and branch,
+in kaleidoscopic changes, that when Turenne, allied with the Spaniards,
+revolted against the king, Louis XIV, it was a Swede, Rosen by name, who
+helped the Maréchal du Plessis Praslin to conquer him at Réthel. Rosen,
+who with his brothers had come originally from Livonia with the armies
+of Gustavus Adolphus, then promptly put on his standard a tower falling
+on a rose-bush in full bloom, with the device, _Malgré la Tour les Roses
+fleuriront_.[11]
+
+In turning over pages concerning the involved chronicles of this
+borderland, I feel once again that history is, of all things, the most
+difficult to write, because of having to do with facts, and what more
+elusive than facts, eternally subjective? Even this simplest record of
+historic days is as different from one that another might have written
+about the same things as if it dealt, instead, let us say, with the
+genial suggestion of letting the Hottentots and the Zulus have their own
+government. It is that fantasy-awakening thing called temperament that
+is forever at work with facts, one thing always suggestive of another,
+rather than explanatory of itself, and I frankly rejoice that the
+“primrose by the river’s brim” _is_ to me something more than a primrose.
+
+I am now such a long way from the history of the Chapter that there is
+scarcely time to get back, and so I will finish quickly by saying that in
+the epoch preceding the Revolution it found itself entangled in various
+temporal affairs, especially lawsuits with the inhabitants concerning
+their convenient but disappearing feudal rights. Otherwise life was
+probably not too strenuous for the _chanoinesses_. As nothing escapes the
+influence of its hour and age, why should one think the Chapter entirely
+escaped those of that light, pervading, charming, inconsequent, rich
+thing known as the eighteenth century, where everything seems to have
+finished by a song, or a witty quatrain, or by delicious angels holding
+up holy-water founts in the shape of lovely shells.
+
+_To the popote at 12.15._—Its windows look out on the unmistakably plain
+timepiece in the church tower, and everybody knows when anybody is late,
+and just how late, and there’s a nice little green box on the table
+designed for fines, but only intermittently insisted on.
+
+Commandant Poulet greets me with the words, “At three o’clock to-day
+Austria ceases hostilities.” Something cruel and red seemed suddenly
+rolled away.
+
+In a flash I saw that Viennese pre-war world I had known so well,
+partaking tranquilly of the pleasant things of life, public events making
+little noise, intellectual passion absent—or discouraged, and things
+easy, easy—except for those dying of hunger. But that world has been
+burned to ashes, and the winds of destiny are about to scatter even them.
+
+Then, as usual, some one read the American _communiqué_.
+
+And to the deeds of the First Army must be added those of the National
+Guard, for the words Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, New
+Mexico, New York, New Jersey, are stamped in fadeless red upon the
+villages and banks of the Meuse.
+
+We talked long, and at two o’clock, as we arose from table, I knew that
+those others to the east had already arisen from the bitter meal of
+defeat, and after the manner of human hearts were adjusting themselves
+to the things that _are_. And perhaps there in Vienna they may not find
+it so difficult. They’ve been defeated before and they’re far enough east
+to have a touch of fatalism.
+
+_Later._—Through mist and low-hanging clouds and rain with Captain
+Bernard to Sewen, where we visited first the school. Neat rows of sabots
+were in the hallway, all alike to _me_, but it appears some spirit in the
+feet leads each unmistakably to his or her own pair. A dozen children
+only were in the schoolroom, the others ill with grippe.
+
+The school-teacher, a tall, horizon-blue-clad Frenchman, with kind eyes
+and a decoration on his breast, had just finished the dictation. Its
+subject was _de la viande_ (concerning meat). Looking at the copy-book of
+the nearest little boy, very blue-eyed, I read _de la fiande_, and his
+dictation was further embellished by sounds reminiscent of German rule.
+“_Chez le bourgé, le tinton, le charcoutier, le boutin, le zocisse_,” but
+as I said, that’s their German ear—and little by little it will be done
+away with and “French as she is spoke” will take its place. One small boy
+who wrote a beautiful, copper-plate hand was stone-deaf, but he had dear,
+questioning eyes and something patient in his being. I asked, when we
+came out, if nothing could be done for him. But the master said, with a
+terrible finality, “His father is an alcoholic.”
+
+It is evidently not without result that they distil their _quetsch_
+and their _kirsch_, their rose haws and their gentian, and everything
+else that has the merest embryo of a fruit or a berry or leaf in these
+pleasant valleys; as to which the bright-eyed, Italian-looking curé
+initiated us further, as you will see.
+
+Leaving the school, we went to the church, beautifully familiar to me
+against the sky, but completely and, from our point of view, hopelessly
+modernized within; though I couldn’t help feeling that for those who come
+from dingy farms and dung-heaps the crude splendor of that house of God
+must be greatly comforting.
+
+The old ossuary chapel nearby, with its fifteenth-century vaulting, was
+crowded with beautiful things from the church at Thann. The carvings
+on the choir stalls, of the most delicate workmanship, were amusing to
+boot, nothing human being foreign to the artists that made them. One
+figure forming an arm-rest had a swollen cheek bound up in a cloth, and,
+furthermore, he evidently had an ache in the center of his being, for
+he was doubled up, his hands pressed close to his person in the classic
+position of one so suffering. Another showed a man leaning over, with
+delicately modeled back, his head in his hands, but _his_ ache was very
+manifestly spiritual. Another had a goiter, and monkeys and parrots
+abounded, the native fancy of the fifteenth century evidently being out
+on a loose snaffle. A celebrated row of musical angels were so delicately
+carved, with cymbal and harp and bugle and lyre and flute, that they
+would be well placed in some vitrine rather than high on a choir stall
+in a dim Gothic church. The celebrated statue in stone of Saint-Théobald
+from the column of his fountain at Thann had been brought here for
+safety, too, and I fingered it as well as many another thing generally
+beyond reach.
+
+As we came out, the clock in the tower of the church struck three. The
+great and disastrous Austrian war-act was finished.
+
+It was a moment beyond words, and as we walked silently over to the
+curé’s house I thought of the cruel, interminable lists of dead and
+wounded and missing in the Vienna newspapers that winter of 1915, when
+the Russians were flooding Galicia and spilling over the ridges of the
+Carpathians. The curé, however, young, with fine, Italian face-bones,
+and frayed and spotted cassock, somewhat changed our thoughts by bringing
+out various of the thirty-four specimens of distilled liqueurs which are
+the pride and playthings of these valleys, explaining to us with snapping
+eyes special variations of his distillings. Holding a bottle and a glass
+up against the light in his long, thin _primitif_ hands, he poured me
+slowly something wrested from the mountain-ash (I had thought I might as
+well have a completely new sensation), and I went about the rest of the
+afternoon feeling as if a hot stone were lodged in my breast.
+
+Arrived at Masevaux, we drove to a house on the Place du Chapitre, where
+I found another interior of the kind I am now familiar with—that of the
+high and comfortable Alsatian bourgeoisie.
+
+Madame Chagué, large, white-haired, energetic, intelligent, agreeable,
+received us flanked by an amiable married daughter and a thin, upstanding
+veteran, his ribbon of honor in his buttonhole. But, to be perfectly
+frank, the veterans get on my nerves. It’s the picture of what the
+gorgeous young heroes of our great war will be one day, _sans_ eyes,
+_sans_ teeth, _sans_ hair, _sans_ everything, and _toutes les fins sont
+tristes_.
+
+“Now,” said Madame Chagué when once started and tea had been poured
+(accompanied by cakes you don’t get a chance to serve unless you are
+_délivré_, and you have to be well delivered, or else never in bondage,
+to get the chance to eat them), “the government must proceed with a good
+deal of caution as well as consideration. The Alsatians aren’t like
+anybody but themselves. They mustn’t lay hands on our little ideas and
+ways, ‘_ces Messieurs de l’Administration ont compris cela_’ [with an
+appreciative look at Bernard]. We held on all these years, awaiting the
+day of deliverance. _Enfin_, for two generations we have looked on the
+reconquest of Alsace as the coming of heaven upon earth, as if that once
+come to pass, there would be nothing more to desire.”
+
+She said all these things with an appraising light in her eye; being a
+clever old lady, in the four years since she had been “delivered,” she
+had doubtless found that life is life—even though there is a great choice
+as to whom one wants to live it out with, and how.
+
+About this time the veteran was encouraged to tell a few of his 1870
+experiences, and I felt as my grandchildren, if I ever have any, will
+feel when the veterans of 1918 will tell what they did “single-handed in
+the trenches,” or how, “as the only man left of their regiment,” they had
+held back the invaders, or how they hid in a barn and let them go by and
+then gave the alarm, “and a whole battalion had to surrender,” or what
+know I? Politely, but without eagerness, I listened, the 1870 veterans
+almost “spoiling the war” for me, with their eternal illustration of
+the flatness of not dying on the battlefield. I tried to bring the
+conversation back to 1918—leaving a rather long and not very clear
+account of how he kept his ancient, beloved, red _képi_ under glass, or
+next his heart, or pressed in an album, I rather forget which. I wanted
+to hear the story of the famous entry of the _Pantalons Rouges_ into
+Masevaux on August 7, 1914, where they have been ever since, though now
+changed into this celestial blue, which decorates the earth (as I have
+frequently said, and doubtless will again) as never before has it been
+decorated by any men of any age or any war. Pictures of “_La Guerre en
+Dentelles_,” or gallooned and be-caped and be-frogged officers with
+lances or drawn swords on horseback, charging the enemy in the typical
+poses of Lasalle, or “_La Vieille Garde_,” or Wellington or Blücher at
+Waterloo, or anything else that ever was, are dull beside the strange,
+appealing beauty of the blue battalions of the twentieth century.
+
+I listened to Madame Chagué telling of the glad reception of those who
+entered Masevaux on that 7th of August, houses and hearts flung wide
+open, how everywhere the upper windows were crowded with women and
+children leaning out to see them come over the dark mountains and along
+the bright roads. Many left that same night, as they did from Thann and
+Bitschwiller and Moosch and all the towns about, marching on to Mulhouse,
+which they took only to be driven out, and since then many red-trousered
+ghosts walk the otherwise unmystical, industrial streets of Mulhouse.
+Three weeks later Mulhouse was again entered, and again, with many
+losses, other red pantaloons were driven out, since which the chimneys of
+Mulhouse have smoked a German smoke to a German heaven.
+
+Madame Chagué is very Catholic, too, and bristles at the bare idea of any
+government, even the “Tiger’s,” taking liberties with the ancient faith.
+They want a bishop of their own, an Alsatian shepherd—“_faut pas nous
+bousculer dans nos petites habitudes_”—she kept repeating. I wondered
+what the Tiger and all the imitation tigers would say when they come to
+learn just how they feel here. There’s the most Gordian of knots awaiting
+them, for it appears that the Germans gave three thousand marks a year to
+each curé, and the French government, less enamoured of the ministers of
+God, doesn’t give any. However, that is only one of a series of knots on
+a very long string, and patient and very deft fingers will be needed for
+the untying.
+
+In each of these comfortable houses authentic ancestors look from the
+walls, ancestors who knew the Thirty Years’ War, or the Napoleonic
+campaigns, or 1870, or ancestors-to-be who have seen the World War.
+And all the dwellers of these large-roomed, high-roofed, deep-windowed
+houses, having been delivered, in turn deliver themselves of their
+sensations, thoughts, emotions, acts, on being delivered. One might,
+I dimly foresaw, do to one’s breast what the wedding guest did to his
+when he heard the loud bassoon. That I may not seem unkind, I want to
+say another last word about the veterans, the so often toothless, bent,
+sightless, forgetful veterans. They would be all right in themselves, if
+they weren’t so horribly illustrative. They seem to be saying all the
+time, “If Mortality doesn’t get you one way, it does another,” till you
+think that short agony on the battlefield, and long glory, are greatly
+preferable to decay and no glory. And no veteran will keep this my little
+book on the table by his bed. He would know, too well, that I am right.
+
+Later, as I slipped across the cobbly square to my house, and mounted the
+broad oaken stairway to my room, a feeling of nostalgia possessed me at
+the thought of leaving Alsace, to which but a few short days before I had
+seemed so unrelated. This bit of French history in the making, molded by
+the men of the grave, kind eyes, whose comradery with one another is so
+unfailing and whose courtesy to me is so exquisite, had become dear to
+me, and, too, I was looking on something that would never be again. The
+web was shifting, other figures were to be woven in it. Fate was to pull
+new things as well as old out from its storehouse and proceed with its
+endless combinations. Masevaux, capital of Alsace Reconquered, would be
+overshadowed by Strasbourg, by Metz, by Colmar, by Mulhouse. But it will
+have had again a little day, which is all an individual or a town can
+reasonably ask, standing under the changeless stars.
+
+As I went to the _popote_, low over the houses stretched the Great Bear,
+so vast, so splendid, that it seemed almost alone in a heaven growing
+misty toward its edges, though Alcor, the Starry Horseman, was twinkling
+strangely bright close to Mizar. But the autumnal stars hanging over the
+rich-colored hills of Alsace have not the brilliancy of those that I saw
+above the gray-white Châlons plain, that late, red October of 1917.
+
+After dinner Commandant Poulet drew on my map the boundaries of _Alsace
+Reconquise_, as it is now, this fourth day of November. But as he drew
+I knew he was feeling that it was a fleeting, vanishing thing he was
+recording, for he stopped a moment, as a man might stop following a wind
+or tracing a line in water.
+
+Then as we sat, some half-dozen of us, about the dining-table, under the
+hard light of the Oberforster’s chandelier, the commandant, flicking his
+cigar ash into the Oberforster’s dreadful ash-receiver, told me something
+of the history of the Mission, which is briefly this.
+
+Though French troops entered the valleys of the Doller, the Thur, and
+the Largue on the 7th of August, 1914, the French administration of that
+little triangle of Alsace Reconquered, as I found it, was organized
+only in November of the same year. Its first form was purely military,
+the authorities responsible for the civil population being also in
+command of the military operations, the final word in all that concerned
+Alsace coming from the general in command of the Seventh Army, in whose
+sector it was. These were successively Generals de Maud’huy, Villaret,
+Debeney, and de Boissaudy. The little triangle was first divided into
+two territories only, that of the valley of the Largue, with Dannemarie
+as its capital, that of the valley of the Thur with Thann as capital.
+Masevaux at that time did not form a distinct territory, but was an
+annex, as it were, of Thann, as also was St.-Amarin.
+
+The officers administering the territories were chosen mostly from the
+reserve—men whose former avocations had prepared them for the various
+rôles they were to fill in Alsace. They were members of the _Conseil
+d’Etat_, of the _Cour des Comptes_, magistrates, _Gardes des Forêts et
+des Eaux_, together with many others belonging to technical professions.
+The first _Capitaine Administrateur_ was Captain Heurtel, in civil life
+_Maître des Requêtes au Conseil d’Etat_. Though seriously wounded at the
+very beginning of the war, in December of 1914, he asked to be again
+sent to the front. He met his death at Verdun in 1916. His successor was
+Commandant Poulet, _Conseiller d’Etat_, who took up office on Christmas
+Day, 1914.
+
+In July, 1917, the Mission was detached from the General Headquarters
+and placed under the Ministry of War. Its new name, expressive of
+enlarged activities, was changed to _Mission Militaire Administrative en
+Alsace_ (Military Administrative Mission in Alsace), the central office
+being transferred to Masevaux, which Fate had placed half-way between
+St.-Amarin at one end of the reconquered triangle and Dannemarie at the
+other.
+
+Ever since, in and out of the building of the German _Kommandantur_, once
+the nave of the old Abbey, men clad in horizon-blue have been coming and
+going, busied about affairs after the French way, the ancient town of
+Masevaux entering into the unexpected enjoyment of what might be called
+an Indian summer. Nothing else has happened to it, so far as I can see,
+since the Revolution, when the Chapter was suppressed and the Goddess
+Reason briefly installed in the Abbey. And Masevaux loves and cherishes
+its brief glory as only lovely and transient things are loved and
+cherished.[12]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN RESIDENCE AT ST.-AMARIN.
+SAINT-ODILE
+
+
+_November 5th._—Awakened early, early by the sound of heavy firing.
+Later, looking out of the square, I see the market in full swing. Against
+the inn of Les Lions d’Or, with its comfortable courtyard and two red
+wings, stands a wagon-load of hay with a pale-green cover thrown over it.
+Carts of cabbages and carrots, drawn by white oxen, are pulled up under
+the yellowing trees. The black of the clothes of the women making their
+purchases cuts in very hard. Blue-clad men come and go; several motors
+are standing before the door of the Administration. The shining, diffused
+light of the mist-hidden sun rounds every corner and fills up every space
+with a pleasant softness.
+
+At eleven I start out with the commandant, Captain Sérin, and Lieutenant
+Laferrière to motor to Thann through a world of rust and green and
+gold-colored hills, under the whitest of heavens. So soft and shining
+is the beauty of the lovely earth, and so soon to pass into the winter,
+that I say to the commandant how like the transient beauty of a woman
+of forty-five are these delicate, hazy hills with their cashmere shawls
+still twisted about their shoulders, drawn up over their heads, dropping
+down to their green-valleyed feet. I mean the woman of forty-five who is
+still loved.
+
+Again we stopped on the crest between the valleys of Masevaux and of
+Thann, and again we stopped and peered through the wire-and-pine screen,
+out toward Mulhouse and the Rhine and the Black Forest. The valley was
+blue and shining. Even the windows of the great, white building of the
+_Idioten-Anstalt_, where the Germans are bivouacked, were visible. Beyond
+were the high towers of their potassium-works. As those three men stood
+looking out over the rich plain I thought, “Always will I remember the
+officers of the Mission like that, standing on the heights, shading their
+eyes with their hands as they looked down into the land of Egypt, wherein
+the Lord was to lead them....”
+
+New shell-holes were all about us, and there was a sharp, continual
+reverberation of cannon among the cashmere-shawled hills.
+
+At Thann we stopped for a moment by the fountain near the church (in
+peace-times, the old statue of St.-Théobald that I saw at Sewen surmounts
+the charming column), the commandant having been saluted by a young
+American officer, leading by the hand a little girl of seven or eight, in
+Alsatian costume—huge black bow, black velvet bodice, full white skirts.
+He was quite simply a young man whose parents had gone to America, he
+himself had fought on the Mexican border, got his commission, and was
+proudly—oh, so proudly and so smilingly—walking his native streets of
+Thann with his little niece.
+
+We are _en route_ to lunch with M. and Madame Galland, at Bitschwiller,
+who receive us as agreeable people of the world receive their guests in
+all quarters of the globe. They were of those who could have gone, yet
+remained, during the many bombardments of the town—_noblesse oblige_, and
+have been a blessing to the valley.
+
+[Illustration: THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL]
+
+Madame Galland, with powdered hair, slender, delicate of feature and
+of form, dressing older than she is, might have looked out of a Latour
+pastel. M. Galland, too, is fine-featured, well groomed, agreeable, and
+there was a handsome daughter with a quietly sorrowful expression on her
+young face. It is a house from every one of whose many wide windows one
+saw gold leaves hanging on black branches, behind them warm, rust-colored
+hills, traced with pale-yellow larches and stamped with black patterns
+of pine. Within, the rooms were beautiful with blue-clad men. There was
+an agreeable and suave odor of kindness and unstintingness about the
+house, mingling with that of the ease of people of the world, and the
+surety of those in authority, altogether a _good_ house. Eight or ten
+officers besides ourselves sat down to the usual delicious and abundant
+Alsatian luncheon, the conversation intimate enough to have color,
+general enough not to exclude the stranger within the gates. And it
+ran after this way, beginning with accounts of that last day of July,
+1914, when _Kriegsgefahrzustand_ had been proclaimed in the valley and
+they were completely cut off from the outer world, witnessing only the
+sinister passing and repassing of regiments of dragoons and detachments
+of artillery. M. Galland had procured all the flour and dried vegetables
+possible at Mulhouse to ration the population of Bitschwiller in case of
+need, and collected what money he could. The days passed in suspense,
+till the 6th of August, when they remarked much coming and going of
+troops; on the 7th the German cavalry was seen beating a hasty retreat.
+
+A _Brigadier de Chasseurs_, mounted on a great black horse, is the first
+Frenchman they see, advancing alone, looking slowly about him, his
+revolver in his hands, fearing some snare. Then the _Pantalons Rouges_
+pour into the valley, flowers at every bayonet and in every tunic, and
+the Gallands receive the first French general to enter Alsace since
+1870, General Superbie, commanding the 41st Brigade. At two o’clock,
+after refreshments had been offered from every house, the regiment took
+the road to Mulhouse, where that same night many of them had their
+“rendezvous with death.”
+
+The talk then fell on that mysterious thing called luck, and how the
+soldier must have it, be _chançard_, if he were to come through, and of
+generals who, like General Liautey, wouldn’t have under them any save
+notoriously lucky officers. And there was much heedless joking (with
+the Fates perhaps listening). I, who never say even within myself, “I
+_will_ do thus and so,” without adding “if God will,” remarked at last,
+propitiatingly, that “’twas somewhat difficult to tell _beforehand_ who
+was going to be lucky.”
+
+“But for military purposes,” dryly remarked an officer who had not yet
+spoken, “one needs to be lucky only as long as the war lasts,” which
+being hideously true, we turned to the less elusive subject of the
+rich and easy living of the peasants in this part of the world since
+the war, and how they, even like unto those other tens of thousands of
+“war-workers,” will “miss” it. They had become accustomed to the troops,
+and there was the thrice blessed _popote_ in which they more or less
+shared. And when the Americans came things were still better in a still
+better world. For they were very free with their money (though no one
+could understand a word that they said), and then they went, and the
+French troops came again, and there was something very pleasant about
+their return. Though they didn’t have the money of the Americans, they
+could be conversed with and they would lend a hand in the garden, and
+were always joking with the children, and helped with the crops, and the
+virtues of the Americans, if not their money, were somewhat forgotten.
+They were, in places, even remembered as a nuisance, wanting everything
+cleared up, stupid bores about the dung-heap, “and will you believe it,
+Monsieur,” one of them said to Laferrière, “they even washed their dishes
+with _soap_, and you couldn’t give the dishwater to the pigs!”
+
+After which I related Colonel Burnside’s “best short story,” also
+concerning the peasant point of view. When he was in Lorraine with
+his men, at the well-named watery (not watering) place called
+Demanges-aux-Eaux, a delegation of villagers waited on him, with the
+complaint that the Americans made so much noise at night that the _sheep_
+couldn’t sleep!
+
+And we finished luncheon gaily, to the rather distant sound of German
+guns, with the story of the wife of a (or probably the) French soap
+manufacturer in Tonquin who came to the Gallands’ for convalescence
+after “war-strain.” How she charmed them with her singing, especially
+of children’s songs, delighted them with the reserve and modesty of her
+conduct, and after two months turned out to have been once a well-known,
+café-chantant singer with the proverbial “past and many brilliant
+presents,” enjoying a glimpse of home-life in Alsace.
+
+Coffee was poured by the handsome daughter, who with her firm yet
+delicate profile, and rich, dark hair drawn heavily back, looked like
+some model for a head on a bank-note or medallion. Her mother, saying to
+me, “_Vous êtes femme de cœur_” took me apart and told me her history.
+
+And perhaps because so much had been buried in the great war of youthful
+love and hope, I may record a little of this story; its grief is typical
+in simplicity and purity of many countless thousands in this land of
+France.
+
+For months she had been beloved by a handsome young _chasseur_ stationed
+with his regiment at Bitschwiller, one of many officers to frequent the
+hospitable house of the Gallands. His photograph on a table shows him
+tall, broad-shouldered, straight-eyed, kind-mouthed. On account of the
+uncertainties of his life he did not declare himself while there, but
+immediately afterward, doubtless because of some presentiment, he wrote
+to the mother telling of his love. This was found to be returned and they
+became fiancés.
+
+A few weeks after he was killed in Flanders, in one of the Mont Kemmel
+combats, a ball striking him in the forehead as he leaped from a trench
+to lead a counter-attack.
+
+He was one of ten sons. Six of his brothers had fallen, too. Awed, I
+asked concerning her who had borne them, but she had gone to her grave
+long before the World War; though I knew her not, thinking of the mother
+of the Maccabees, and many like her, I thanked God that those seven
+wounds had been spared a mother’s heart. Then we returned to the young
+girl’s story.
+
+“But never to have looked into each other’s eyes and exchanged the glance
+of love,” I said, “it’s a shadowy and heavy grief for her youth to bear.
+Would it not have been better for them to have been united?”
+
+The mother answered, after a pause, “There was no time.”
+
+“But this can’t be the end for her; she’s only beginning life!” I said,
+and thought of the great, sorrowing hosts of these young widows of the
+heart alone, and of the vexed question in their families, as to whether
+it was better to become a widow or remain a maid.
+
+“She said to me only the other day, ‘I have all that I need for my whole
+life.’”
+
+“She will find that the heart is not like that,” I cried; “it doesn’t
+seem able to content itself even with the sweetest and holiest things of
+memory. It’s forever reaching out.”
+
+For a moment we stood with clasped hands, looking out to the hills whence
+despair had so often come, and Madame Galland added, quite simply,
+“Fifty thousand sleep around about us.”
+
+For one of the many-colored hills, pressing close to the broad windows
+of the salons, separated us from the Molkenrain and the sacramental
+Hartmannswillerkopf.
+
+In the nearest, that rises without any perspective immediately from
+the house, is an old quarry, and it is there that since four years
+the workers in M. Galland’s factory are sheltered during the frequent
+bombardments of the town, for in what once was used for constructing
+spinning-machines eleven million shells have been turned out, all of
+which is quite well known to the enemy.
+
+The pleasant odor of the house followed us to the motor and even as we
+rolled swiftly down the valley of the Thur, past Moosch, against whose
+hill, still like a picture tilted back, lies the military cemetery, cut
+out of the rust and gold-colored hill, with its black splashes of pines.
+Again peace to those who lie there.
+
+Everywhere negro troops, sitting, standing, leaning, lying (a good deal
+of leaning and lying). An occasional forlorn-looking white officer. It is
+the same Fifteenth New York Infantry.
+
+“I am told they were all, before they were drafted, lift-boys and
+newsboys and bootblacks and railway-car porters,” said one of the
+officers.
+
+“You mustn’t class these last with the others. You don’t know the majesty
+and authority of the Pullman-car porter. He’s as final as the Germans
+think the Fourteen Points are,” I answered.
+
+I had felt myself somewhat exotic when I arrived in Masevaux; but I’m
+blotted into the landscape, one with Alsace, compared to these sons of
+Ham, clad in khaki, who fill the blue-and-gold valley of the Thur.
+
+Then we roll into the long street of the village of St.-Amarin, named
+after the saint to whom a saint friend said, upon seeing him about to
+make himself scarce at the approach of assassins, “_If you miss this
+opportunity for martyrdom, you may never get another!_” (It all depends
+on what you want and what your friends can do for you, and it isn’t a bit
+like politics.) But I’ll tell the story of St.-Amarin another time.
+
+The town that bears his name is long and rambling. There is a pink church
+tower surmounted by a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban
+with a point like those on helmets, and there is the fountain bearing
+the date 1830, and on its column is perched the Gallic cock, and it
+is the pride of the long street and vies with the church square as a
+meeting-place.
+
+But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin, as I can see
+by the gentle, almost affectionate way he looks about, shows me first the
+cinematograph, in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of
+warmth and comfort since three years for those coming down from frozen
+mountain-sides. Pictures by George Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and
+fancy is unbridled where the enemy is concerned.
+
+The Crown Prince is represented in a _loge_ with a voluptuous actress
+twice his size, and, furthermore, the artist, not content with mere paint
+and canvas, has given him real wooden legs which dangle from the painted
+sides of the painted _loge_. The Prince of —— said to an officer showing
+him about, “And even so you have flattered my cousin.”
+
+Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled up in another
+_loge_, with another actress, but it didn’t strike me as funny, nor did
+it recall in any way the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with
+the faithful Käthe Schratt.
+
+A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’ club, with books
+and papers, deep chairs and long divans. I dwell a little on the comfort
+of it all, thinking what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men
+coming down from those relentless winter heights.
+
+Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across the way, which had
+been the headquarters of the “Mission Militaire d’Alsace” until it was
+transferred to Masevaux a year ago.
+
+It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house, only _its_ walls
+had been hung by the commandant with ancient souvenirs picked up in the
+valley; old engravings of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre,
+Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of Madame Sans-Gêne as well
+as victorious general of France. And there are some old engravings of the
+portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes, with bombazined
+women and high-collared men. An enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates
+one corner, and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time hang in
+the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant coming and going of men who
+like their work.
+
+More officers are presented, and there is much joking about our Masevaux
+_popote_ and odious comparisons. We tell them proudly of the new
+coffee-pot, but the haughty chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ answers that
+it was needed, and probably we had at last heard what people really
+thought about the coffee at the Masevaux mess. I am to lunch here on
+Thursday and see—or rather, _taste_!
+
+And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even those who now live at
+Masevaux.
+
+Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière. A rising up over
+indigo mountains, blackening at their base, blotted against the strange
+white sky, white even now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley
+of Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things of wisdom and
+valiance done or undone. And the end in sight. Though Laferrière said:
+“I am not sure that they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record
+the dates of their great victories, and their historians will tell of
+their sweeping invasions; one must confess they have had great generals.
+They will doubtless reproach their statesmen with not having made better
+alliances, and decry their _gaffes_. But as for fighting, they will
+feel that men may fight one to two, one to three or to four or even
+five, but that no one can fight the world. _Tenez_, for Napoleon, after
+Waterloo, there was nothing more personally, but his victories remain
+among the great military glories of history.” On the crest as we started
+to drop into the valley, in that pale, pale sky above a blue, blue hill,
+something almost like words was written in delicate gold, in long looping
+characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not what they spelled, but
+I think it was Peace, lovely Peace....
+
+Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain
+me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for
+me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all
+over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the
+whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves
+and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where
+I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little
+bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and
+there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted
+with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk,
+dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it
+had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic,
+remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter
+of 1915.
+
+Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling
+forms. Later the cheerful _popote_.
+
+And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile
+according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13]
+
+At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley,
+Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the
+Merovingian kings.
+
+He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither
+pagan divinities nor the one God.
+
+He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and
+here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter,
+according to the custom of the time.
+
+Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him:
+
+“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be
+true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me
+a son and heir.”
+
+At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in
+spite of Atalric’s impatience.
+
+When at last the holy man arose, he said:
+
+“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a
+daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end
+the dove will vanquish the lion.”
+
+Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged,
+but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the
+accompaniment of his choicest maledictions.
+
+When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her
+lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind
+daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle
+thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded.
+The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor,
+and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own
+hands make away with it.
+
+Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess of the Convent of
+Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To her the child was sent, and the legend
+has it that Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal
+waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to spiritual light in
+the darkness of a barbarian age.
+
+She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however, told her nothing of
+her princely birth, letting her think she was the child of parents killed
+in war, though, as she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a
+princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that it was recorded
+that birds and even deer would eat from her hands as she wandered in
+the forest clearings. Often at night in her cell she had strange and
+beautiful visions. The most frequent was that of an angel of shining
+though severe visage, who would appear presenting her now with roses, now
+with lilies, the perfume enfolding her as if in some heavenly felicity.
+But once as day was about to break she had quite a different vision.
+It was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore, as did the
+Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with a leathern girdle, while
+his golden hair fell freely about his shoulders. His long sword was
+suspended from a strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The purple
+border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a prince, and in his mien
+there was both pride and gentleness.
+
+Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address him when suddenly he
+vanished, and the angel of the austere visage took his place, holding out
+a cross of ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night, and many
+after, the young lord returned. At last he came carrying in his hands
+a crown of gold. Odile was about to grasp it, when the angel, graver
+and sterner than before, stepped between them and presented to Odile a
+jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake of the Saving Host, Odile
+pressed it to her lips. What was her horror when she found it filled
+with blood still hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on
+awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess, who then revealed to her
+the secret of her birth. How her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers
+of the duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn never to look
+upon her face. The image in the dream was that of her young brother,
+Adalbert, born after her, and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess,
+“beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is no longer there
+to defend thee. Stay rather here, for thou art destined at my death to
+become abbess of this convent.”
+
+But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of the glory of her race
+and the promise of fraternal love that she could not resist the desire
+to contemplate with her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so
+enchanted her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in her arms. By
+a faithful servitor she despatched a letter to him, saying in it: “I am
+Odile, thine unknown sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my
+father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute thee tenderly. At
+thought of thee my heart blossoms like a lily in the desert.”
+
+This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking in his youthful heart
+all generous and romantic sentiments. He cried, “Who is this sister whose
+words are sweeter than those of a betrothed?”
+
+A tender desire seized him to make her his companion and coheir and to
+give her back her rank and family estate. He answered, “Trust but in me.
+I will arrange all things for the best.”
+
+Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase, he sent to
+Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn by six richly caparisoned
+horses. With it went a numerous retinue, that Odile might return to her
+father’s house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins the tragedy.
+
+Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay, where his
+birthday is being celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. It is the
+day, too, that he has chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals.
+About the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver dishes,
+his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from great horns of aurochs or
+clanking their burnished hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window,
+espies in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses; banners
+are flying and palms waving. Above it float the ducal colors.
+
+He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?”
+
+Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young and trusting heart,
+“It is thy daughter Odile come to beg thy mercy.”
+
+“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?”
+
+“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast I beg thy grace for
+her.”
+
+“How has she, who desires my death, been able to bewitch you?” cries
+Atalric, pale and stiff with anger.
+
+Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the honor of the family,
+and his own brotherly love, but Atalric, beside himself, commands the
+youth to cast his sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses.
+
+“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly. Upon this the
+duke menaces his son with disinheritance if he does not immediately
+obey. But Adalbert, drawing his sword, lays it at his father’s feet,
+telling him that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his
+heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury that he gives his
+son a great blow upon the temple with the hilt of his sword.
+
+The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground. The vassals
+crowd in fear at one end of the great hall, while Atalric stands alone,
+petrified by the horror of his crime.
+
+At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty, dressed as a bride
+for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall. A single look suffices. She
+gives a great cry and throws herself on her knees by her dying brother.
+She clasps his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that
+single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the whole world
+transpierces her gentle breast. It is the chalice of blood the angel once
+put to her lips. The dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored
+brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a more than fraternal
+bond, turn all her desires to the other world; the first young innocent
+love of family is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in
+that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins.
+
+Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent, did not dare cast
+his daughter out, but he spoke no word to her, harboring always in his
+heart the prediction of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.”
+
+In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly in the great forests
+that surrounded the castle, often climbing to the heights of Altitona.
+Under the shadow of those great trees, high as the nave of some
+cathedral, she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human time.
+All things appeared to her under the guise of eternity. Her beautiful
+brother, her unique love, was dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she
+not in turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as he
+roamed the heavenly fields?
+
+One day, as she was deeply meditating these things, she found herself
+midway up the great hill, when, enveloped in a blinding light, the angel
+of her dreams in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His wings,
+touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his face shone like the
+sun. With an imperious yet protecting gesture he pointed to the top of
+the mountain, where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman camp,
+saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home; there shalt thou dwell
+and gather to thee others whose thoughts are holy and whose wills are
+bent to service.”
+
+Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered her fleshly sight
+the angel was gone, but she had understood. On the heights of Altitona
+she was to build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace, a
+fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation.
+
+Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall to the castle,
+and this added beauty was observed by all.
+
+Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get rid of her,
+conceived the design of marrying her to a great Austrasian lord from
+Metz, then his guest, who had been struck by love for her. He called her
+to him, and told her his intention. She answered gently:
+
+“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou knowest I am vowed to
+Christ alone.”
+
+The duke, enraged at her resistance, but grown somewhat wary by
+experience, sought out a docile monk and commanded him to impress upon
+Odile the wisdom of obedience, by which she might placate him and even
+win his heart. But all was in vain. Then he conceived the black idea of
+delivering his daughter by force into the arms of the Austrasian lord,
+thinking, once she had been embraced by the lover, she would consent to
+marriage. He sent two armed men to seize her in a grotto where she was
+accustomed to pray. Hardened by the fierce design that filled his heart,
+he cried out when she was brought before him, “The Lord of Austrasia
+awaits thee for betrothal; willingly or unwillingly thou shalt be his.”
+
+Odile, knowing the supreme moment had come, answered: “Thou hast already
+killed thy son. Wouldst thou also cause the death of thy daughter? If
+thou bindest me to the arms of this man I will not survive my shame, but
+I will kill myself. Thus thou wilt be the cause not only of the death of
+my body, but of my soul as well, and thou wilt thyself be destined to
+eternal damnation.”
+
+“Little care I for the other world. In this I am and will remain the
+master.”
+
+“That in truth thou art,” she answered, gently, “but listen to me and
+recognize the goodness of my God. Allow me instead to build a sanctuary
+upon the heights of Altitona; thou wilt thus be delivered from me for all
+time. There I, and those gathered with me, will pray for thee. I feel a
+strange power within me.”
+
+Atalric made a violent gesture, but she continued without flinching,
+“Menace me, trample me under-foot, but tremble before this image,” and
+she took from her bosom the ivory Christ hanging from the ebon cross.
+
+In that moment, as father and daughter faced each other, the powers of
+heaven and hell, of spiritual promise and unregenerate will, were arrayed
+in combat. But Atalric did not at first give way. Suddenly, however, the
+countenance of Odile became more terrible than that of a warrior, and her
+whole mien was wrapped in an angelic majesty. In her dilated eyes Atalric
+thought for an instant that he saw the bleeding image of his murdered
+son. An intolerable pain filled his heart, and he cried out under the
+irresistible pressure of the heavenly will: “Thou hast conquered. Do as
+thou wilt, but never let me look upon thy face.”
+
+“Thou wilt see me in the other life,” answered his child.
+
+The legend adds that Atalric, regretting his moment of weakness, did not
+immediately renounce his evil designs. Odile was obliged to flee before
+his increasing wrath and was pursued by him and the Austrasian lord,
+accompanied by many armed men, even beyond the Rhine.
+
+But at the moment when they were about to seize her, at the foot of
+a mountain where there seemed no issue, the rock parted suddenly and
+received her. A few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared
+enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her awestruck pursuers
+that she belonged forever to Christ alone. Then Atalric and the
+Austrasian lord turned silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered
+the lion.
+
+The legend has transformed her father’s momentary conversion to her will
+into the physical image of the suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it
+is all the same, for Odile, _Vierge Candide et Forte_, represents forever
+the victory of the transfigured soul over brute force, the incalculable
+power of faith sealed by sacrifice, the saving breath of the invisible
+world breathed into the visible.
+
+During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of Mount Saint-Odile
+(Odilienberg) performed its works of faith and mansuetude in that
+barbarian and ruthless world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and
+of Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according to the pagan ways,
+were replaced by another, promising eternal felicities to those born
+again in Christ.
+
+From a wall of _grès rose_, this same _grès rose_ that I have found as
+building-stone for temple and home and fountain all over Alsace, Odile,
+needing one day to give instant refreshment to an old man spent with
+fatigue, caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from which
+pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called that of Tears, is a
+deeply indented stone, worn, it is said, by the knees of the saint as
+she knelt there praying for the release of the soul of her father (long
+dead and unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend has it that
+only toward the end of her life was she able to accomplish this, when at
+last the chalice of blood the angel once gave her was transmuted into an
+elixir of eternal life.
+
+The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too, the conversion of
+the Merovingian world to Christianity, and to a new will to give up life
+that it might be found again—and many other things that it is difficult
+to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them.
+
+And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very heart, as it were,
+of Alsace; above its throb being laid, passionately, now a hand from the
+West, now one from the East....
+
+To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights and wander under the
+lindens of the terrace built above the old pagan wall, looking out upon
+the splendid panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance of
+the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of Saint-Odile.
+
+These things I am not able to know of myself, for the Odilienberg is
+still in German hands.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH
+
+
+_Faro come colui che piange._—DANTE
+
+_November 6th._—And to-morrow I am to pass into the sweet, broad valley
+of the Thur and there dwell. I ask neither how nor why, knowing it will
+be vastly pleasant, though a somewhat startled feeling overtakes me at
+the thought of leaving Masevaux, _tout ce qui finit est si court_. For
+a fleeting, nostalgic moment I think, too, “What am I about, binding
+sheaves in this rich corner of the earth that is not mine?”
+
+As we gather for lunch, some one reads the sweeping clauses of the
+conditions of the armistice with Austria-Hungary. Nothing is left save
+hunger and disorder. I wonder if those to whom one of the “first aims of
+the war is the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy” see, in their passion,
+what it will mean to surround the centripetal force of Germany with
+floating, unsteady bits, that inevitably will be drawn to it. Some one
+hazarded the remark, evidently not so trite as we once thought it, that
+“if Austria didn’t exist, she would have to be invented.” Passion seems
+more than ever to be its own blind end, and, looking at those men, I
+thought, have we not fought and died the good death for other and further
+ends?
+
+Then Laferrière began reading the American _communiqué_. We are but
+five miles from the Sedan-Metz line, one of the principal lines of
+communication of the Germans!
+
+As in a dream I listen to the deeds of _my_ soldiers, recited in the most
+beautiful of French, as many deeds of many men have been recited to many
+women through the ages.
+
+    “_Ce matin la Ière Armée a repris son attaque. En dépit d’une
+    résistance désespérée nos troupes [américaines] ont forcé le
+    passage de la Meuse à Brieulles et à Cléry-le-Petit._” ...
+
+    “_Beaumont, nœud de routes important, est tombé devant nos
+    troupes victorieuses qui se sont avancées jusqu’au Bois de
+    l’Hospice à deux milles au nord de Beaumont. Au cours de leur
+    avance elles se sont emparées de Létanne. A Beaumont, nous
+    avons délivré 500 citoyens français qui ont salué nos soldats
+    comme leurs libérateurs...._
+
+    “_L’avance des deux derniers jours a amené en certains points
+    notre ligne à cinq milles de la voie ferrée Sedan-Metz, une des
+    principales lignes de communication des armées allemandes._”[14]
+
+As we sit down the commandant tells me they had been picking all sorts
+of strange things out of the air that morning, the ether stamped with
+unaccustomed names. He had just got a message, not meant for French ears,
+bearing a new signature, Ebert; the day before he had got one bearing
+that of Scheidemann. It is like a further dream of a dream, these things
+that are borne “upon the sightless couriers of the air.”
+
+At two o’clock I started out with Bernard and Laferrière, the latter on
+the errand of rounding up an actor in one of those obscure yet deadly
+village dramas.
+
+“Generally I have little to do; they know they are well off,” he said,
+and we agreed that it was indeed a pity to be pursued by original sin
+even unto these pleasant valleys.
+
+We descend at Rammersmatt, a quite unsinful-looking place, and while he
+is gone Bernard and I visit the old church, beautifully held in the cleft
+of the hill, lying against another hill, looking down on the plain of
+Cernay, toward the German lines. It is this same plain of Cernay, which
+I mentioned before, that was known in the old days as the “_Champ de
+Mensonges_.” There Ariovistus was defeated by Caæsar. There, too, Louis
+le Débonnaire was attacked by his three sons and betrayed by his army,
+and ever since it has been justly known as the “Field of Lies.” Centuries
+later the Swedes vanquished the imperial armies there under a Duke of
+Lorraine. To-day it is that thing known as “No Man’s Land,” brown with
+barbed-wire entanglements and rough with shell-holes—and other things
+besides.
+
+Back of it are the zigzagging German lines. It is, too, the place of
+the century-old legend of the Niedecker’s young Thierry who, wandering
+there one night, saw strange sights. He had not drained a single glass
+of the _Rang de Thann_, nor of the red wine of Turckheim, called “_Sang
+des Turcs_,” but was dreaming, as an adolescent does, of everything and
+nothing, when suddenly the very stones of the valley began to move, and
+great fissures showed in the earth. From them issued thousands upon
+thousands of warriors of bygone times, striking against their shields and
+crying out in strange, hoarse voices, “_Hodeīdah! Hodeīdah!_”
+
+Finally a man taller than all the others, Louis le Débonnaire, son of
+Charlemagne it was, his long, silvery hair surmounted by a gold and
+jeweled crown, jumped on a white horse and called by name, one after the
+other, the chiefs of his cohorts, who answered, “Here.”
+
+Then the king, groaning with great groans, spoke beseechingly the names
+of the sons he had begotten, Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin.
+
+But Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin mocked him and to further wound him caused
+to be brought on the battlefield his nephew, Bernard, he who had taken
+arms against him and whose eyes the king had caused to be put out (and
+for this the king knew little sleep).
+
+Then as the battle begins the sightless Bernard jumps up behind the
+king’s saddle, paralyzing his every movement. But at the very height of
+the combat, above its clash and shoutings, the third hour of morning
+sounds from a church tower, and suddenly the earth receives again the
+ancient host and all is as before. Only Thierry from the Niedeckers lay
+as if dead.
+
+And the Field of Lies, _le Champ de Mensonges_, is said to be the spot
+where the children of earth will be assembled at the Day of Judgment,
+for what crime can equal that of the sons of Louis, who conquered,
+imprisoned, and caused to die of grief a father whose only fault was
+that he loved them too well? It is even said that it is the troops of
+Louis who will sound the brazen trumps to awaken the dead for their last
+accounting.
+
+Now I see it as “No Man’s Land,” rusty and brown with patches of barbed
+wire, rough with great shell-holes, but they say that even in intervals
+of peace it is never so luxuriantly fertile as are the fields that lie
+about it....
+
+A white, very white afternoon heaven stretches above us. Very violent
+cannonading.
+
+“_C’est nous—c’est le Boche_,” Bernard repeats from time to time. Then
+his sharp eye distinguishes a group of German airplanes, and, looking
+where he points, I see five spots black, black in the white sky.
+
+They, too, are immediately fired on. I hear over my head the great
+swish made by the shells from the guns placed on a hill behind us—or so
+sounding. My ear is not quick to distinguish directions in these echoing
+hills.
+
+Little balls of snow-white shrapnel, like beautifully wound balls of
+fleecy wool, gently unloosen themselves about the black spots of the five
+airplanes, which, after a while, disappear to the east.
+
+Though not so overcome as the Niedecker’s Thierry, I feel that my eyes,
+too, have looked on a strange spectacle.
+
+Then Laferrière rejoins us. By the pleased look on his face we guess that
+he hasn’t made the wages of sin too high, and we continue on our way
+under the late, and still very white, afternoon sky. Suddenly the heavily
+plated, thickly enameled rust and gold and black of the hillsides seem to
+disappear and the earth is green again, young and tenderly green, like
+spring, but how and why? It lasted but a few minutes, for on the slopes
+toward Thann there was again the autumnal gleam of gold and rust, and
+spots of fathomless black.
+
+Entering Laimbach, we stopped to get the mayor, who was to conduct us
+to the old Jesuit church, half-way between his village and the village
+of Otzwiller, or rather its site, for Otzwiller disappeared completely
+during the Thirty Years’ War, wherein each lovely Alsatian valley had
+been sacked and burned and destroyed, and friends of yesterday were
+enemies of to-day, and _vice versa_.
+
+The mayor was a voluble, amiable mayor, who had conserved, during those
+many German years, a vast amount of creaking, noisy, unpleasant French.
+
+His village was ancient, high-roofed, many-fountained, and had been much
+shelled. The streets were full of children playing, blue soldiers were
+walking about, girls were leaning out of the windows to give and get a
+greeting, or being pinched as they giggled about the streets, clicking
+their sabots in the mud. As we passed out the white sky darkened suddenly
+and a hard red began to burn in the west. We found ourselves nearing a
+half-demolished fifteenth-century church, placed strangely between the
+battered, living village and the ghostly village of the Thirty Years’
+War. It was of _grès rose_ and had been built on the foundations of an
+even earlier one, and near it was a shell-shot, ancient, high, red-roofed
+presbytery. For generations the church had been a shrine of St.-Blaise,
+and on every 3d of February the mayor told us (but sadly, as one speaking
+of a pleasant past) there had been a great pilgrimage made by those
+suffering from throat maladies.
+
+Now over all was hanging a penetrating atmosphere of bootless desolation,
+and I was suddenly seized with an anxious feeling that I should be about
+the secret lonely business of my soul. Life seemed unbearably sad and
+short, and “where was the place of eternal happiness, the place where the
+Barbarian need be feared no more?” ...[15]
+
+In front of the church had been placed, somewhat indiscreetly, the
+officers thought, a big battery. And the mayor said, too, apologetically,
+“_Evitément z’édait mal joizi par écard à l’éclise_,” for the battery had
+soon been sighted. After the church had received many shells right in her
+pink and lovely bosom, it had been moved some forty meters away, but even
+so it had again been _repérée_, and the church had suffered the usual
+fate of churches near batteries. Some fine old columns were left in the
+apse, of the delicious _grès rose_. For a moment Laferrière and I stood
+scaling off bits of the disfiguring gray plaster and wondering why it had
+ever been put on, it and all the other gray stucco that a certain austere
+century had plastered over gorgeous building-stone everywhere in Europe.
+
+The church, like the village of the Thirty Years’ War, will soon be but
+a name, for its walls are cracked and sagging, and with another winter’s
+frost they will crumble and fall. Through the roofless nave we walked
+over a mass of torn-up old mosaic flooring, and heaps of gaudy modern
+stained glass fallen from the lovely, ancient, pointed windows.
+
+It was getting dark as we passed out into the disorderly cemetery,
+between the church and the battery (and even for a cemetery very
+uninviting, torn up as it was by recent shells). Ends of coffins were
+sticking out, shabby, twisted, bead wreaths and muddy, discolored
+tricolor badges lay about, while in the middle of a once tidy family
+plot, by name Hilz, was a huge new shell-hole of only the day before.
+
+The mayor gave a shudder as he looked at his own familiar graveyard,
+where his parents and his friends had been laid—though not to rest. He
+was out for the first time after grippe and he said, with a determined
+look and in his most creaking French, “If I have to die, all right, but
+I’ve forbidden my daughter to bury me here.” Many, many had also fallen
+in the fields, and everywhere thin earth lay over damp, shallow graves
+marked by shabby, crooked crosses. Meadow mists were beginning to rise
+and the copper-colored edge had hardened in the sky. I felt again an
+inexpressible discouragement. I tried to think of Peace, so near, so
+hotly desired, so redly pursued, but I could only perceive the damp
+meadow, the demolished church, the gun-emplacements, the disorderly,
+shelled cemetery, and the humid odor of death and mold and rotting
+leaves. As yet nothing seemed to have risen incorruptible.
+
+We turned and went again along the dark, damp valley road till we reached
+the village with its consoling hum of life. Through the dusky street
+washed the lovely soft blue of soldiers; a group stood with some girls
+around the beautiful fountain, deeply pink in the half-light, built
+in the fifteenth century by the Jesuits, though the mayor insisted on
+placing the Sons of Loyola in the fourteenth. In fact, the Jesuits and
+the fourteenth century were one in his mind. Then, as far as he was
+concerned, came the war of 1914. He wanted us to come into his house to
+partake of some brand of white liqueur—as I have said the people of these
+valleys distil all and every bright-colored fruit of their earth. It
+would seem that the whole flora of Alsace can be used to this end, and no
+matter which of God’s colors go into their alembics, passing through, it
+comes out pure white, to befuddle the heads and harden the stomachs of
+the populace—and little boys are born with the burden of deafness. Though
+twilight enveloped us, I knew the look that must be on the mayor’s face,
+and something a bit phosphorescent came into his eyes as he spoke of a
+_petite mirabelle_. Fortunately, it was too late to accept.
+
+A few minutes later we found ourselves on the screened road to Masevaux,
+moving slowly, without lights, the road overlooking the Field of Lies,
+where the Germans watched.
+
+Above the hills in front of us was a very thin, very long, very red,
+crescent moon. No one spoke.
+
+Doubtless the officers, like myself, were wondering upon what, when it
+was full and white, its light would shine. Now it was turned to blood.
+
+The roads were crowded with rattling artillery wagons, transporting guns
+and supplies under cover of the deep, blue night. Once or twice on some
+hillside, turned away from the German valley, was the leaping of a flame,
+from the fire of a group of _artilleurs_, who were to wait the morning on
+wooded slopes.
+
+Thoughts of the ghostly village of Otzwiller, now but a name, pursued
+me, and of the Swedish invasion. And the miseries of the Thirty Years’
+War seemed to confound themselves with these of the war I know so well,
+while the night deepened, under the long, thin, red moon, hanging behind
+black-palled hills, in a heaven that still had an edge of copper.
+
+A church bell sounded and something flying swiftly touched me at that
+hour of the evening sacrifice, and I knew then that those who tread the
+olives are rarely anointed with the oil, and I cried out within myself
+suddenly and in despair, a long-unremembered line of the great Italian:
+
+“_Faro come colui che piange._”
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE THUR
+
+
+_November 7th, St.-Amarin._—This morning farewell, perhaps a long
+farewell, to Masevaux, and I now dwell in the broad, sweet valley of
+the Thur. I had felt many pains of parting while putting my things into
+the Japanese straw basket and the little leather valise. This was quite
+a simple act, for I flatter myself that those receptacles contain only
+essentials, though I had long since begun to wish that I had brought
+another dress for evening, feeling a bit dull always buttoned up in my
+uniform, and only a white shirt changed from a blue one to mark the
+difference between morning and evening. One of those 1918 dresses, that
+can be carried in the pocket without making it bulge, would not have
+added perceptibly to the weight of my accoutrement, and would have
+brightened up the _popotes_. The light from the Oberforster’s chandelier
+at Masevaux was as pitiless as that which beats about thrones—and
+presidential chairs (which much resemble them)—and ladies _en mission_
+should come prepared.
+
+Before leaving I went to say good-by to Mère Labonne, who showed me the
+good things in preparation for luncheon and begged me to stay—scrambled
+eggs with truffles, two _poulets_ ready for roasting, a tart _au mocha_
+that she was frosting on a marble table. But the look of one who goes was
+in my eyes, and she ceased to insist.
+
+Return to the Place du Chapitre; many officers and motors under the
+yellowing trees in front of the _Kommandantur_, a general arriving, some
+sort of delegation departing. I say a thousand thanks to the amiable,
+cultivated, agreeable Demoiselles Braun, three of whom wear decorations
+for their war-work in hospitals, for contagious diseases, and one,
+Stéphanie, “_qui n’a pas dit son dernier mot_,” is charming after the way
+of the perceptive, witty women of the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
+Then I find myself getting into the motor of the commandant, who, in
+the meantime, has greeted and sped the general on his way. His face has
+something shining about it as he gives the great news, written on the no
+longer insubstantial air, of the German demand for an armistice. Then
+he reads the _communiqué_ from the Belfort newspaper as we drive out of
+Masevaux, telling us more about the Germans in full retreat, and the
+Americans close behind them at _Sedan_! What a rustling of the pages of
+history! The mind leaps to new things, life normal again, and all forces
+bent to reconstruction.
+
+As we pass over the screened road to Thann, where we are to lunch
+with the military mayor, Captain Saint-Girons, the net of broom and
+pine camouflage, screening the valley where the Germans are, suddenly
+seemed some monument of ancient history; and, unlike the noisy hours of
+yesterday, there was no sound of cannon.
+
+Arrived at Thann, it is we who give the great, the unbelievable, the
+unrealizable news of the demand for an armistice to Captain Saint-Girons,
+who, with several uniformed schoolmasters, is waiting in front of the
+Mairie to receive us. And our “feet are beautiful as the feet of them
+that bring the Gospel of Peace and glad tidings of good things.”
+
+I think for a moment how strange for _me_ to carry it to them, to these
+men, who have fought for it, who have waited for it, watched for it, bled
+for it—but everything is strange in this strangest of all strange worlds.
+
+Going into the house, we find other schoolmasters, with some bright-eyed
+little boys ranging in years from seven to twelve.
+
+Then to lunch. I sit on the commandant’s right, Captain Gasquet,
+_adjoint_ of the mayor, on my other side, the mayor himself opposite, the
+schoolmasters placed prudently and watchfully near that selected flock,
+who enliven the ends of the table. Now these little Alsatian hopefuls are
+very bright of eye, rosy of cheek, and on their good behavior, which, in
+spite of lurking potentialities, persisted during the lunch, even when a
+glow, doubtless not unaccustomed, tinged their cheeks, as they drank the
+wine of their own hillsides.
+
+At dessert I asked Commandant Poulet to drink to Sedan, the _new_ Sedan.
+I thought within myself, “Is it not even now as a temple being cleansed
+and glorified in the chalice of the blood of _my_ people, the blood of
+the khaki-clad youths from over the seas, whom Fate, since all time, had
+decreed to unseal it?” Tears came to my eyes, there was a deep beat in my
+breast.
+
+And it had been forty-eight years and two months and seven days since it
+was torn from a vanquished France.
+
+I scarcely remember what was said of the day’s events; feeling, rather
+than thought, was flooding about the table, and it was in gratitude,
+in wonderment, and rather silently, for a group of Frenchmen, that the
+luncheon proceeded. Each was thinking perhaps of his part of loss and
+grief making up the victory.
+
+Names of Americans who had visited Thann were spoken: Dr. Herbert Adams
+Gibbons, long the friend of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the
+god of the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John Weare; and others
+whom I don’t recall. There had been, too, a fair and fleeting vision of
+Mrs. Bliss one snowy winter day.
+
+Many beautiful words were said of my country, and in that hour I think
+it was, to them of the reconquered triangle, “_dulce et decora_” to have
+even the least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their board,
+that hers should have been among the feet bringing “the glad tidings of
+good things.”
+
+When coffee and _quetsch_ and cigarettes were passed around, the
+schoolmasters made ready to pour some of the heady white liqueur into the
+glasses of even the smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said,
+“No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I would put my hand
+in the fire (knowing I could draw it out unsinged) that it was not the
+first time they had puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his
+with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When he had finished he
+was stood on a chair, from which he recited “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_,” the
+lines concerning the now extremely well-demonstrated “_La raison du plus
+fort est toujours la meilleure_,” being given almost at a breath, one
+word tightly tied to another in quite an ingenious way.
+
+An older one, whose naturally flashing eye was slightly restrained only
+by the solemnity of the occasion, gave us the equally classic, “_Maidre
+corpeau sur un arbre bergé_.” He hadn’t been caught so young, and the old
+Adam in the shape of his German accent was heavy upon him. Then, standing
+in a row, they sang “_Le Chant du Départ_,” that greatest of all the
+wars’ marching songs, and the childish voices cut my heart like a knife,
+and tears were loosened, and through their blur I seemed to see the march
+of the generations of Alsace adown the ages, fulfilling the shifting,
+cruel destinies of border peoples. Ghosts of the Thirty Years’ War, of
+the Napoleonic wars, of 1870, and of 1914, and of the other dateless
+struggles that have ravaged their rich valleys, come before me. I weep
+and weep, and my handkerchief is a microscopic, damp, gray ball. I have
+an idea that pride of sex alone restrained the blue-clad men from tears.
+Peace, lovely Peace, desired like the morning, was arising, but her light
+was to shine on rivers of blood, running through such black ruins that
+her glory and her sweetness, and even her hope, hurt with a great hurt,
+and I thought again on those who, empty-armed, must yet rejoice....
+
+Afterward I strolled along the banks of the pebbly Thur with the
+commandant and Captain Saint-Girons. There is a river-path leading under
+balconied, red-roofed houses, or by gray walls, and there is an old round
+tower having a caplike roof with a point on the top, and against it are
+silhouetted a poplar and a sycamore. Nearly everywhere the lovely gray
+lace spire of the cathedral shows above roof or tree or chimney; and it
+is said that though Strasbourg’s cathedral is higher and Friburg’s is
+wider, Thann’s is the loveliest.[16]
+
+When the Mission had its headquarters at Thann, the commandant and
+Captain Saint-Girons were wont to walk along this path in the afternoon,
+holding a sort of tribunal, receiving petitions, granting favors,
+righting differences that may occur even among the delivered, quite after
+the fashion of Saint-Louis receiving the petitions of his people under
+the great tree.
+
+The river flows through the heart of the lovely old town, badly bombarded
+in spots. To our left as we walked rose the deep-colored hills in the
+full afternoon burnishing of their deep rusty reds and pale gilts.
+As we pass up the steep winding road we meet the Duc de Trévise,
+under-lieutenant, with a sketch in his hand of a shell-shot historic
+corner of Thann, the commandant wishing to save at least a memorial
+wherever he can. Furthermore, Thann was black-spotted with our negro
+troops. Sometimes I stopped and spoke, sometimes I waved as I passed,
+just to see the full, white-toothed smile against the exotic background.
+
+[Illustration: THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR]
+
+The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the old Château de
+Marsilly, beautifully situated in the cleft of its own hill and restored
+not too cruelly. Close above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose
+castle was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war in the valley.
+Part of it lies like a great ring, and is called the “Eye of the Witch.”
+To our right as we mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the
+Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides, on which lie in
+lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of _l’heureuse Alsace féconde en
+vignobles_.
+
+A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable by twenty years,
+dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose manners could not have been surpassed
+for ease by any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for the
+thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual life gives. I have
+seen in peasant cottages the rooms wherein they were born, these women
+of restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in conversation,
+of finished courtesy, and realize again that something invisible,
+imponderable, yet all-powerful, shapes the coarse block, polishes the
+rough surface, till there is no resemblance to that out of which it was
+hewn.
+
+As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking again through the
+V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue plain held by the enemy.
+
+“How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a silence, “it has
+seemed to me like the Promised Land, and how often during these four
+interminable years have I longed to look at these hills _from_ the plain.”
+
+“Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered.
+
+The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was fixed on the wide
+horizon.
+
+Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant place, as cemeteries
+go, with many trees, and fallen, rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming
+flowers. Many sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”;
+others had been but lately laid away. The two officers stood for a moment
+with uncovered heads by the graves of four comrades of the Mission,
+killed by a bomb in front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch.
+Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never as in this war has
+“death been made so proud with pure and princely beauty.” How can we so
+soon be engaged in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of
+these dead?
+
+Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly loved by those who
+dwell therein, inclosed by purple and dark-amber hills, but inclosed
+easily, widely, leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of
+being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight.
+
+As we enter St.-Amarin, the long, central street is like a pale-blue
+ribbon, for through it a battalion of some Marseilles regiment is
+passing. As my eye received it I knew the lovely picture for some
+bleaching daguerreotype, its color and lineaments to fade in the bright
+light of peace. We stop a moment at the Administration building and see
+again M. de Maroussem, to whom, on meeting him first at Madame Galland’s,
+I had said, “You are an Englishman?” And to those who have frequented
+international worlds I don’t need to say how he looks. To others I would
+say that he is tall, blond, athletic, wearing easily a well-cut, not too
+new uniform, and having a perceptive blue eye (which, however, is really
+a very French eye when one takes a second look). One would have known
+that he hunted in England and had polo-ponies in France. In civil life he
+is a banker.
+
+Now among other things he is chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ and tells
+me dinner is at 7.45 “tapant.” The hour is near wherein I am to be shown
+how far superior the St.-Amarin _popote_ is to that of Masevaux.
+
+Then the commandant accompanies me to the house of M. Helmer, the
+well-known Alsatian lawyer who is counsel for the Mission. Also it was
+he who defended Hansi when he was brought before the German courts and
+condemned for _lèse-majesté_.[17]
+
+From the great bowed window of Madame Helmer’s drawing-room I could look
+down the suddenly mystical-seeming valley, discerned by the spirit rather
+than the eye at 4.30 of a November afternoon. It was but a stretch of
+white filmy substance between violet hills, under a gray-green heaven,
+with something warm and precious at its western edge. Such a passing of
+the day as the saints of old would have loved.
+
+Hung along the wall opposite the great window are engravings of the
+Mantegna frieze from Hampton Court, and there were many books.
+
+After tea the commandant took his leave and Madame Helmer showed me to
+my comfortable room where I had thirty saving minutes, horizontal and in
+the dark, fully conscious, but completely resting, thought consecutive
+but not active, flowing in a smooth way between banks of quiet nerves in
+quiet flesh.
+
+“Seven forty-five tapant” finds me again at the Administration building,
+whither M. Helmer accompanied me, and it is very pleasant as I enter.
+Commandant Poulet is sitting at a huge desk signing papers, more
+blue-clad officers and two _infirmières_ are presented, after which we
+pass into the dining-room, whose doors are flung open in classic style by
+a well-trained orderly. In Masevaux we simply gathered and sat down. Now
+the mess-table of St.-Amarin has a decided touch of elegance, too, in the
+way of pink-shaded candles, and in the middle there was an arrangement
+of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. Instead of a Mère Labonne they have
+a _cordon bleu_ who performs his rites very suitably in the dark-blue
+uniform of the chasseurs. We sit down to a dinner that might have been
+served with pride at Voisin’s or the Café de Paris, where all except
+the chairs is extra and getting back a cane or hat costs the remaining
+eye (if one remains) of the head. I am indeed impressed, as I was meant
+to be, and M. de Maroussem might have said, “Didn’t I tell you so?” in
+his pure and pleasant English. I sat between the commandant and Captain
+Perdrizet, chief of the Forestry Service of the Thann district, and
+to the sound of cannon, which in spite of peace prospects was heavily
+firing over the Hartmannswillerkopf, we consumed _carpes à la Flamande_,
+a course of game elaborately presented with all its feathers, finishing
+with _poires Bordaloue_, the whole perpetuated on a charming menu card
+decorated with the classic Alsatian stork by Andrieux, one of the
+officers of the mess.
+
+As I sat down I saw in front of me a sign over the door leading into
+the pantry, a somewhat Y.M.C.A.-ish sign, “_Sois sobre et tu vivras
+longtemps_” (“Be sober and you will live long”), and de Maroussem’s
+feelings were almost hurt when I asked if perhaps behind me there was one
+that said, “_Mange peu et tu seras invité souvent_” (“Eat little and you
+will be invited often”). And when it came time for coffee and cigarettes
+and some especially old _quetsch_ he brought out the book, “The Friends
+of France,” that I had first seen at Harry Sleeper’s in Gloucester Bay, a
+thousand years ago, it seemed, and we turned to the death and citation of
+Norman Hall, Commandant Poulet recalling again that he had begun his work
+in Alsace on the 25th of December, 1914, and on the 26th he had stood by
+Norman Hall’s open grave.
+
+Then a radio, just received, concerning the Parlementaries, is discussed;
+among them is slated von Hintze, leading to talk of the days when I had
+known him in Mexico. Count Oberndorf, too, husband of a dear and charming
+friend of Dutch and American birth, was on the list, and we spoke of
+Vienna as it had been—and was no more. _Sic transit_ ... though I thought
+within myself, as I looked, for a flashing moment, down the vista of
+history, many things return.
+
+It was late when two officers accompanied me to my dwelling, to the
+sucking sound of boots in mud, and under a starless sky hanging dark
+and heavy over a black, black earth. At last I could draw literally the
+drapery of my couch about me and lie down to dreams of _my_ men in blood
+and glory before Sedan.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE
+
+
+_November 8th, St.-Amarin, Night._—Fancy and feeling too quickened for
+sleep. If there is anything I did not see or anything I did not feel, in
+and about St.-Amarin, I challenge some one of the Mission to produce it.
+
+This was my day, or rather half of it. At 8.45 Lieutenant Fress,
+Inspector of Schools, came to fetch me, and not knowing how to be late
+(alack!), I am on the stairs as he rings the bell. We pass out into a
+white, rather flat November world toward the schoolhouses, everywhere the
+clean odor of freshly hewn wood and sawdust hanging on the November air.
+
+Now the re-Gallicizing of Alsace is one of the most interesting political
+operations I have ever seen, and Heaven knows I’ve seen many in many
+lands. But this washing out and marking in of history on the clean slate
+of childhood is different from anything else, though easier than most
+things, the eye of youth glancing easily from earth to heaven and from
+heaven to earth—and soft and eager the slate of its mind.
+
+The St.-Amarin schoolhouse is a large, solid building, its walls hung
+everywhere with huge war-posters, all of those one sees in Paris and many
+besides.
+
+The classes for the smaller children, in accordance with the traditions
+of the valley, here also are in the hands of the Sisters of “The Divine
+Providence,” who, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century,
+opened in St.-Amarin the first school for girls. The other classes are
+taught by carefully selected Alsatian teachers or by mobilized French
+schoolmasters. Formerly French was the language of honor, for the
+well-to-do only, but now this article, once “of luxury,” is for all the
+language of their country and their heart, and pride mixes with the zeal
+with which the peasants pursue _la belle langue_—not always successfully.
+For in these border regions the tongue has an un-Gallic thickness; the
+voice is placed far back in the throat, with a strong accent on the
+tonic, nothing of the light flinging from the lips that makes the beauty
+of the French language and its conquest so difficult.
+
+We begin with a class of small children, where a smiling, almost
+exuberantly happy nun is teaching a group of little delivered darlings to
+sing, “_il y avait une bergère et ron, ron, ron, petit pat à pon_”—to my
+surprise, in the latest manner of Jacques Dalcroze. They evidently mean
+to keep abreast of the times here in Alsace.
+
+While they recited I looked about. The room was large, light, and
+superheated by a small, black, iron stove fiercely burning. On the wall
+were maps of the Old World, and, I had almost said, of the world to come,
+for new divisions of countries were indicated. Among the many posters and
+in the place of honor was a big colored text, which I afterward saw in
+every room, with the head-line, “_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une
+paix fondée sur la parole de l’Allemagne_” (“Why one cannot make a peace
+founded on the word of Germany”).
+
+The children were literally as good as gold. No scuffling of feet nor
+restless rubbing about on the seats. I remarked this as we left the room
+after listening to “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_” recited in those shrill, thin
+voices, and Lieutenant Fress said, with a smile:
+
+“What remains of the Boche discipline makes them docile and attentive
+scholars; they are often several hours in class without needing to be
+reprimanded for chattering or lack of attention.”
+
+Later I delicately inquired about ink-throwing or “spitballs,” but it
+appeared they’re unknown.
+
+We then betook ourselves upstairs to a class of older girls, from ten
+to thirteen or thereabouts, to whom Lieutenant Fress, with the greatest
+confidence, put the most difficult questions. It was a class of French
+history, and he began boldly with the Druids and finished with the war of
+1914. He has a gift for teaching, and was so easy with those children,
+whom I should have been embarrassed, not to say terrified, to approach,
+that the answers came pleasantly and quickly. When at a certain moment,
+however, there was a delay, I got anxious, thinking to myself, suppose
+the Sister or Lieutenant Fress were to say to the class:
+
+“You don’t know? Then we must ask this _aimable_ lady who has come across
+the ocean to visit you. _She_ will tell us.” And of Charles the Fat,
+then engaging our attention, I only remembered vaguely that he had had
+a saintly wife of whom he grew tired. There were other questions, too,
+about Louis of Aquitaine, which awakened only the faintest echoes in
+memory, but which to my relief were answered to complete satisfaction by
+a determined, dark-eyed, round-faced girl of twelve or thereabouts.
+
+Lieutenant Fress then asked who could recite “_La Laitière et le Pot au
+Lait_.” All hands shot up, and the recitation proceeded with much _brio_.
+
+“What does this teach us?” he boldly asked at the end.
+
+At this a heavy-jawed, but very bright, near-together-eyed girl raised
+her hand without a second’s hesitation, and equally without a second’s
+hesitation answered:
+
+“To think only of the present.” As is elegantly expressed in the enemies’
+tongue, that girl wasn’t one of whom it would be said she would be “left
+hanging,” except of course as regards the imponderabilities.
+
+Lieutenant Fress: “But is it well to think only of the present? What of
+imagination, and things that may happen in the future?”
+
+A small, undersized girl with a deep-blue eye somewhat nervously answered:
+
+“In imagination one builds castles in Spain.”
+
+This was encouraging, but what she called _châteaux d’Espagne_ seemed
+not, however, to find great favor, for a silence fell on that bright-eyed
+class.
+
+“But isn’t that all right?” continued Lieutenant Fress, giving a fillip.
+“Must we think only of the things we can see and touch?”
+
+At the mention of seeing and touching, hands again shot up. He indicated
+a thick-haired, heavy-browed girl.
+
+“In thinking of the things she doesn’t see, the good housewife would
+forget to cook the dinner, _et cela serait tommage_,” was the answer
+coming from the deepest depths of her consciousness.
+
+On which we leave the schoolroom, with its extremely practical
+atmosphere, the argument being unanswerable, even by Lieutenant Fress.
+I could but think on that long line of peasants who have wrestled with
+realities, begotten, brought forth, tilled the soil, baked the bread,
+struggling all the time with their border-destiny, nature and history,
+even more than their own wills, having made them what they are. It
+struck me as reasonable that they should be a canny set, those little
+girls. Something alert, perceptive of realities, was forming them, they
+could not be over-given to dreams, for which one is both sorry and glad,
+according to the way one happens to feel about human things at the
+moment—and not necessarily the way they are. Even Marcus Aurelius tells
+us that “if a thing displease us” (I suppose he only forgot to add,
+“or if a thing please us”) “it is not that thing, but our view of that
+thing.” And certainly a lot of perfectly good things are spoiled by the
+point of view.
+
+In the next room they were having a lesson in American history, quite in
+the note everywhere these days, and I know the Sister saw the hand of God
+as I entered at that special moment (she was a quiet-eyed, not very young
+Sister, who had trod further paths than those of learning). Then and
+there I heard the tale of the Boston Tea-party, and its consequences, of
+the War of the Rebellion, and the name of Lincoln, pronounced “Lancone,”
+who “wanted all men to be free and equal,” sounded through the room. No
+one, of course, expressed a doubt, nor ever will in schoolrooms, that men
+aren’t free, neither are they equal. As for myself, I thank God nearly
+every morning that some men always will be better than others, realizing
+that there is more difference between man and man than between man and
+beast, which truth was recalled to me but shortly by an equalitarian
+friend of the New Republic—but it’s not for schools, like many other
+truths. Even Saint Paul can do nothing except cry out, “Shall not the
+potter have power to shape the vessel as he will, some to honor, some
+to dishonor?” which again recognizes the fact of inequality without
+explaining it. However, there’s no use going into that now.
+
+I soon found myself in a class of boys of twelve to fifteen years of age.
+They were having a lesson in German, and were reading a “piece” called
+“_Der arme Sepp_,” the history of whose misfortunes (he was a stable-boy,
+and the horse ran away and the wagon was broken, and he was received by
+his master with blows) didn’t seem to stick; for after it had been read
+out no boy, in answer to Lieutenant Fress’s questions, could recount the
+short and simple annals of poor Sepp.
+
+They weren’t nearly so bright as the girls. Dull-eyed, pimply-faced,
+squeaky-voiced, they were wrestling with something that was for the time
+stronger than books—the eternal _Frühlings Erwachen_, that has always
+occupied philosophers and scientists—though not so much parents, who are
+apt to avoid the issues involved.
+
+We passed finally into a class where young women were dissecting _Les
+Obsèques de la Lionne_, under the guidance of a brown-bearded, one-armed
+teacher in uniform. It was a small room, and you could have cut the
+air with a knife. And for the mist I could scarcely see the placard
+“_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une paix fondée sur la parole
+d’Allemagne_” and the portraits of Clémenceau and Poincaré.
+
+About this time I began to understand that La Fontaine is the pillar of
+the French educational system; and there is no doubt that he _did_ clear
+up a lot of doubtful things, in the most liquid use of the clearest of
+all languages.
+
+We listened here to dissertations on the falseness of courts and
+courtiers, the charms of which were not touched on. How those who
+frequented them learned disastrous habits of dissimulation, not to
+say lying, and how ’twas better to live in obscurity (which for some
+reason is always supposed to be cheerful and where nobody ever lies
+perhaps because it isn’t worth while). Courts are not in favor anywhere
+just now, but everybody will admit they’ve had a glorious past; and as
+for democracy’s future, which the Bolsheviki and the New Freedom are
+decidedly handicapping, they _may_ run it a close second. This class
+was not so interesting, however, as were the children’s—discussions of
+intellectual propositions by people who aren’t intellectual being an
+awful bore at any time.
+
+Toward the end there was a horrid moment, Lieutenant Fress bearing up
+with equanimity, when the over-bold teacher, interrupting the reading,
+asked the meaning of the word “_apothéose_.” Dead silence.
+
+“_Continuez_,” he finally said, though a young woman with an immense
+amount of corn-colored hair waved low about some spectacled blue eyes,
+and wearing a large silver pin with the word “_Adieu_” on it, showed
+signs of being about to bring forth the answer.
+
+They finished the fable in unison in their strong border-accent, which
+seemed to get thicker and thicker as we got farther up the flights of
+learning.
+
+    _Amusez les rois par tes songes,_
+    _Flattez-les, payez les d’agréables mensonges._
+    _Quelque intignation dont leur cœur soit rembli,_
+    _Ils goberont l’abbât, vous serez leur ami._
+
+But methought it isn’t anything like what the “people” will have to
+“swallow,” when everybody is free and nobody is equal. And I wondered
+again at those who think to change the destinies of nations from without,
+by formulas or commands, when each evolves mysteriously, mystically,
+inevitably from within, out of its own particular shape and substance
+and strength. Even one from over the seas, clad in the supremest power a
+great nation has ever lent a mortal, though he pull the earth to pieces
+in the attempt, cannot change this law of nature. “_Que direz-vous, races
+futures?_”
+
+And time respects nothing that is done without it.
+
+As we came out into the square, little boys were bringing in armfuls of
+wood for their schoolroom stoves, others were already noisily scampering
+home for dinner in the crisp, sawdusty air; straight columns of smoke
+from many chimneys evoked women standing about noonday fires; there was a
+homely, human feeling about it all....
+
+As I went through the school it seemed to me that the types of the
+children were modified in two ways, inclining now toward the elongated
+head, with pointed chin, dark hair, dark eyes, and mantling color, now
+toward the round-headed, square-jawed, blond type, with full, dreamy,
+blue eyes. But under these modifications one felt that there was a
+persistent something that was their own, neither German nor French nor
+anything else, for all the mingling; the Alsatian root and stem, with an
+inalienable, peculiar life mounting in it, its very own, its race-gift.
+
+And this essential gift, this rich, diverse inheritance, had been
+received from each point of the compass. From the south, through the
+defiles of the Alps, the great Latin traditions had infiltered. From the
+north and east had come Germanic thought, with its mystical reactions,
+its metaphysical inclinations, its marvelous legends, and its romantic
+chronicles of gods and half-gods. From the west, from Gaul, came grace
+and courtesy and the deathless wish for liberty. Was ever a people more
+richly endowed? Yet, how shall even such a seed grow if it never lie
+quiet in the warm darkness of the earth?...
+
+Then I turned from the paths of learning, and went over to the very
+well-kept ambulance, in charge, since several years, of the ladies from
+Mulhouse, whom I had met at dinner the night before.
+
+And I stood by the bed of a dying negro of the Fifteenth New York
+Infantry, his eyes already glazed, and thought how he was to leave the
+broad valley of the Thur for that other wider Valley of the Soul, where,
+it is said, we are all of one color. And I am inclined to believe it, for
+the further I go, even in this life, the less real difference I find in
+people; even the white, unfortunately, are extraordinarily alike about
+most things; and one can but wonder why the few high differences, rather
+than the low and easy likenesses, are discouraged by so many good men.
+
+Then I sought out the church of pink stone, passing a pink fountain
+in the chestnut-planted square it fronts on, where blue-clad soldiers
+were coming and going, busy about their midday meal. And, entering the
+church, I thought, after commending the soul of the negro to its Maker,
+of St.-Amarin, who has given his name to the broad, sweet valley and its
+pleasant town.
+
+The chronicles have it that he erected an oratory hereabouts with his
+own hands. Later when St.-Prix, the holy bishop of Auvergne, was passing
+by, on his way to the court of Childeric to obtain permission to build
+a church, he stopped at the oratory to rest and found its builder lying
+ill of a fever. St.-Prix making the sign of the cross upon his breast,
+immediately the fever falls, and Amarin finds himself bathed in a gentle
+sweat. He arises, gives thanks to God, and in gratitude offers to
+accompany St.-Prix to the king’s court.
+
+Now, some time before, St.-Prix had run afoul of a vicious, thick-souled
+man named Hector, Count of Marseille. The matter being brought to court,
+in the final judgment the holy bishop had been acquitted, and the wicked
+Hector convicted and put to death.
+
+But the family of Hector was proud and vengeful and powerful (in our days
+we’ve seen such), and learning that St.-Prix had set out on the journey,
+sent a squad of archers and other soldiery to make away with him _en
+route_.
+
+These came upon him, accompanied by St.-Amarin, in a village known as
+Volvic. Now when Amarin saw the assassins stretching their bows, the
+first thought of the natural man was to get out of harm’s way. But
+St.-Prix, further advanced in sanctity and therefore more perceptive
+of the invisibilities, seizing him by the arm, said to him the words,
+alas! so incomprehensible to us, children of the age: “If you lose this
+opportunity for martyrdom, you will perhaps never find it again!”
+
+At this Amarin stood his ground, though one has a feeling from the little
+one knows of him that he had a natural love for life. He was the first to
+be massacred, “his soul leaving his body in the company of angels.”
+
+The assassins, thinking their work well done, were about to depart, when
+St.-Prix called to them, saying: “But I am he whom you seek. Do with me
+what you will.” Whereupon one of the evil men, Radebert by name, gave him
+a sword-thrust through the breast. And as he cried out the words each one
+of us should ever have ready on his tongue (Heaven knows they are needed
+often enough), “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do,” another
+thrust caused his brains to spurt from his head. Whereupon angels were
+seen again descending, and the murderers, appalled by a great light that
+filled the valley, took their flight.
+
+Sitting quietly in the pink church of St.-Amarin (its interior is noble
+of breadth and length, though not high), I thought how sweet is the
+mystical gift, and that one but stingily endowed in other ways, without
+houses or lands, or even learning or beauty or grace, if he have but the
+inner light, draws many unto him.
+
+So alluring are such that kings in anguish call for them; even the
+wasters of life, they know not why, sometimes seek them out; others have
+been known to forget their money-making, or stop their spending, and
+render themselves physically uncomfortable, trying to get at the strange
+and secret gift they offer.
+
+For the permanent interest of life is the unseen, and neither visible
+joys nor visible griefs can compete with it, nor any of the ways of the
+flesh, however pleasant or however straight.
+
+And who would not sometimes dwell on these inner stages of the
+life-journey? With joy on the first period, which is that of innocence,
+passing with a sigh to the second, which is that of deviation; with
+a moistening of the dry heart to the third, that of reconciliation.
+Finally in humility to the fourth and last, which is that of pilgrimage,
+where the soul, accepting the two great natural abhorrences, old age and
+dissolution, hopeth for redemption and renewal....
+
+And then I found the clock was striking twelve and I left the inner
+world (alas! rarely is my stay in it long, even if no clock strikes) and
+hurried to the _popote_.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF
+
+
+“_Now thou art come upon a feast of death_”
+
+Very pleasant luncheon, after the accounting of the flesh, though not
+dallied over, as Captain Perdrizet, a man (Heaven reward him; I never
+can) of much _élan_ and quite a little perception of values, suggested
+changing my afternoon program, which was that of calling on various
+members of the high and comfortable bourgeoisie, whose “fleeting
+mansions” are known to me in many lands. When I found that, instead of
+basking in the comforts of this same bourgeoisie, eating their sweet and
+pleasant cakes, sitting in their deep armchairs, looking at the portraits
+of their ancestors, fingering their bric-à-brac and looking out at their
+view, I might, if the special commander of the special sector so willed
+it, make a pilgrimage to the sacramental Hartmannswillerkopf, where
+fifty thousand sleep—and where others even then as we spoke were laying
+themselves down, my heart was greatly quickened and my soul, after its
+manner, began to burn.
+
+The sun was coming out between heavy showers as Captain Perdrizet and I
+departed hastily for Wesserling, where the permission was to be got. Now
+Wesserling rather deserves a page of its own, for many reasons, though,
+having a single thought—that of the pilgrimage—I gave but a glance
+at the very interesting little war-museum, stamped hastily on memory
+the quite delicious emplacement of the old château, now divided into
+various large and comfortable dwellings of the people on whom I was to
+call, and commanding the lovely valley to the west. Captain Perdrizet,
+who proved at every step to be a man of sequence as well as enthusiasm,
+took me straight to Commandant de Saint-Denis. After some conversation,
+which I politely didn’t catch, but which terminated by: “_Oui, si c’est
+comme ça_” (I looked perhaps more reasonable than I felt with that heat
+about my heart), “but I must telephone to the commandant of the sector
+at Camp Wagram, and from there you must proceed with an armed escort.”
+Gratefully, but with exceeding celerity, we shook the dust of the
+_Kommandantur_ from our feet, and returned through the valley as far as
+Willer, when we began to rise in a world of mist and breaking light, from
+time to time deluged by a diamond-like shower. Up, up through hills that
+one can no longer call changeless, for they are hills with their heads
+nicked off, neither branch nor leaf left on the stumps that outline their
+notched and shabby crests. Past batteries and gun-emplacements, embedded
+in wet foliage, many of them made by American troops last summer. Deep
+through a world of rusty beeches, with pine forests splashed like ink
+on near hills, here and there the torch of a larch—_mélèze_, it is
+called—and it is the only one of its family that grows yellow in autumn
+and sheds its foliage, and doubtless kind heaven made it so, that it
+might be a lamp in dark forests. There was the sound of rushing waters;
+and everywhere that beauty of moving, blue, helmeted figures afoot, on
+horseback, or on muleback was woven into highway and forest path, and to
+mind came immortal verses, of which I changed two words:
+
+    Know’st thou the mountain-bridge that hangs on cloud?
+    _Blue men_ in mist grope o’er the torrent loud.
+    In caves lie coiled the dragon’s ancient brood.
+
+For do not everywhere “in caves” great guns “lie coiled” whose “ancient
+brood” are these munition-heaps spawned upon the mountain-side?
+
+[Illustration: AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY]
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE
+BASTILE, JULY 14TH]
+
+Up, still up, past a long convoy of munitions and food mounting slowly
+and heavily to the sacrificial Hartmannswillerkopf, which seems like
+a great altar under whose stone lie many saints—and the number of its
+cemeteries is one hundred and thirteen, while God alone knows the
+unnamed, unnumbered graves, and those yet to be dug. I find that rarely
+do the bones of soldiers travel far, and so it should be, for what spot,
+even of a father’s inheritance, is so truly his as that where he has
+fallen? No litigation of man can despoil him of it, and even when he and
+his deeds are forgotten it is still his. So let him lie.
+
+Everywhere from the forest came strong, damp odors of things fugitive
+and deciduous. The violently released sap of shell-splintered and broken
+trees mingled its odors with that other natural smell of falling leaf.
+Lush mosses exuding still deeper, earthier odors were folded about the
+broken shafts in soft, green velvet swathings. And some of these forest
+wounds were new, some old and almost healed, like the human griefs of the
+war.
+
+At a sharp turn in the road we leave the motor, passing on foot many
+camouflaged dugouts, and, somewhat breathless, reach the collection of
+low wooden huts known as “Camp Wagram.” Each little building has layers
+of fresh pine branches on its roof, and its sides are painted in piebald
+or zebra-like patterns.
+
+We were shown into the dugout of the commandant, commanding the 363d
+Infantry, whom we found writing at a little pine table. He received us
+smiling, and not surprised, our visit having been announced by telephone.
+A smallish man with very attentive eyes, whose quiet exterior and strong
+Burgundy accent cover, I am told, a heart of gold, together with quick
+judgment and complete fearlessness.
+
+He gives me a military cape to replace my heavy fur coat, and we start
+out to Camp Meudon, farther up, where we are presented to another
+commandant who is frankly, though politely, surprised to see a woman
+where no woman has been.
+
+A few harmless jokes about being at Meudon, yet, alas! so far from
+Paris, are exchanged, after which, followed by the armed escort, we
+mount through the wet, shabby forest to the very top of the Molkenrain.
+There crouching in some bushes we peer out through them to the
+Hartmannswillerkopf, that culminating, coveted point of the great
+plateau, where men have wrestled unto death these four years past. Brown,
+withered, not a tree on it left, its form is traversed only by a long
+black line—the German trenches.
+
+Behind and on each side of “Le Hartmann,” as it is called “for short,” is
+a great, misty, German plain; toward the left, in the extreme background,
+is the three-crested hill of the “Hohkoenigsberg”; great flamelike
+patches of cloud lay upon it, transmuting its stones and mortar into
+something gorgeous and unsubstantial. To our right and beyond stretched
+another great German plain, in front of which curtains of sun-shot cloud
+were falling and rising. One moment villages and fields and white ribbons
+of road shone, the next they would be blotted out by pillars of mist, and
+others came into view.
+
+“If they see us, they will fire,” warned the commandant as I made an
+involuntary movement to rise, when another quick diamond-like shower beat
+about us.
+
+“But isn’t it too dark?” I asked; that world of the Hartmann sector
+seemed so indistinct in shifting light and rain.
+
+“They’ve seen us when it was darker than this,” he answered, rather
+grimly, with the expression of one remembering lost men.
+
+Passing to another vantage-ground of the Molkenrain, whence we could see
+the Sudel, now entirely in French hands, we met a group of blue men,
+emerging beautifully out of the colored mist under the silver heaven.
+They were carrying hot soup to other blue men in the brown trenches of
+the Hartmann.
+
+Standing for no uncompleted emotions as far as the Hartmann is concerned,
+Captain Perdrizet stopped a glowing-eyed, red-cheeked, black-haired
+Meridional stripling and told him to let me have a taste from the can he
+was carrying. I drank, thinking “there are many ways of winning the war,”
+from a dipper for which a trusty, much-camouflaged hand had first to hunt
+in its steaming depths. As I thanked him I wondered within myself should
+I wish him a quick young death or a long life and a toothless old age? As
+will be seen I’m obsessed by the veterans.
+
+About this time Commandant Moreteaux said: “But Madame will only have
+seen the Hartmann in mist and rain. Why not come a second time and lunch
+with me to-morrow?”
+
+I looked at Captain Perdrizet, he at me, and both being, as I have
+said, mortals of “first movement,” and knowing holy enthusiasm, we
+accept—though I bethink me somewhat late of our chief, the commandant of
+the Military Mission, who marks the shining course of my Alsatian hours,
+and who might have other plans. It was “to see.”
+
+As we came down in the gathering gloom, over the shell-ravaged sides of
+the mountain, I was conscious of a deep, in some way sweet, feeling that
+I might be going to see, to _feel_, it all again. And, too, as is the way
+of the heart, it seemed then somewhat to belong to me.
+
+I was not as one who never more will pass.
+
+Everywhere in the brown, wet forest pale-blue forms stood aside to make
+way for us. As we reached Camp Wagram, where I re-exchanged the long,
+blue military cape for my coat, great shots began to echo through the
+hills, and the flare of guns illuminated the thin, dark, scraggly crests.
+It was still war. Near, so near, men were breathing out their souls, to
+be “scattered by winds and high, tempestuous gusts.”
+
+As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought to Commandant
+Moreteaux, and we heard then and there that Foch had received the German
+Parlementaries, and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock
+of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.” Nobody spoke when he
+ceased reading. It seemed suddenly like the world’s end.
+
+And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news, there in the
+Hartmannswillerkopf sector!
+
+Then we said another and quite hasty _au revoir_, fearing night would
+descend upon the valley before we could, for the motor had to go without
+lights, and there was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding
+chance at fate.
+
+The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the sound of rushing
+waters, the rattle of munition-wagons, the stamp of hoofs, and voices of
+dimly outlined men whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The
+odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was chilled in body and
+soul, for were not they also there, those other tens of thousands, whose
+beds were dug in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the living?
+How close the two worlds are I never knew until this war, where death is
+ever near, and sometimes sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper
+with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and strong, a bugle
+in his hand.
+
+As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked again, again the
+night sky was illumined. The unnatural shapes of trees fallen one
+against the other at sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the
+road was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And who would see
+the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine? This damp, gray, afternoon robe
+of consecration, clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz,
+amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true garb. And the
+wide mantle of the November night was folding close over all its beauty
+and its grief.
+
+At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer. She knows irremediable
+grief and bears it with a noble courage. One of her sons fell far from
+her in Champagne; the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was
+brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and lies forever in
+the sweet, broad valley of the Thur, claiming so little of his vast
+inheritance....
+
+To the _popote_ at eight. Six Protestant pastors had been announced to
+dine with us, two of mine in the act of being convoyed through Alsace
+by four of theirs. The Americans were “looking over the ground,” they
+delicately informed me. I didn’t ask “what ground”; with my name it might
+have sounded argumentative, which I never, never am.
+
+Now during these days of my Alsatian visit I had thought, at intervals,
+that it might very possibly be a nuisance to have a woman always tagging
+at some polite heel or other, but when I saw that six pastors could
+happen to them all at once, I then and there ceased forever feeling
+apologetic. I even fell to thinking that they hadn’t done so badly when
+they got me.
+
+I can’t say that, at dinner, all went as merry as a marriage feast,
+because the Americans didn’t speak French, nor the officers English,
+except de Maroussem, who could but didn’t, even seeming but remotely
+interested in watching them consume the plenteous repast. And as for
+myself, I was too dull with fatigue and too spent with the emotions of
+the Hartmann to be able to do any “paying in person.” For a time, too,
+those men of my race were the strangers to me, not the blue-clad men of
+the Mission.
+
+Suddenly, as we were unsuspectingly taking our coffee, one of the
+shepherds began saying prayers over us with a drop in his voice after
+each sentence, thanking God for their being there, for our being there,
+for Alsace being there, and I don’t remember what else, save that it was
+fairly comprehensive. After which everybody signed everybody’s menu, and
+then as they were on the run through the garden of Alsace, lingering
+nowhere, though scattering possibly seedless blessings everywhere,
+they said good-by and went out forever into the rain. And they ought
+to have thanked God for the dinner, which was a triumph, with vintage
+wines served by two orderlies, under Monsieur de Maroussem’s chic though
+somewhat detached eye.
+
+As the door closed we fell to talking as people would when six clergymen
+who came all at once leave all at once, though unexpectedly one came back
+for his umbrella—producing a momentary hush.
+
+One of mine had generously given me several boxes of cigarettes, produced
+from deep, sagging pockets, and we stopped to have an “evangelical
+puff” as some one called it, while I tried to explain what “nervous
+prostration” is to those Frenchmen—and to explain why the largest of the
+American clergymen, very nice, and looking like a lion-tamer, as some
+one remarked, could have had it, and been in bed with it, for a year.
+“_Chacun a sa petite misère_,” one of them said, “_mais c’est étrange,
+tout de même._”
+
+One of the officers of the St.-Amarin _popote_, Debrix, is the image
+of the famous Coligny, and so called by his comrades, but he is, it
+appears, an excellent Papist, while Perdrizet, who, if he had on a suit
+of mail, might have borne the banner of the Virgin, following Godefroy
+de Bouillon into Jerusalem, is an equally excellent Protestant, his
+family having fled to Montbéliard after the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes, and these two are continually being joked about their natural—or
+unnatural—camouflage. But in these days nobody really cares, alack!
+alack! what anybody believes, scarcely, alack! what anybody does,
+especially if they are quiet about it and it doesn’t interfere with the
+other person’s plans. And that’s why the war will be forgotten just as
+soon as the newspapers stop talking about it and business looks up and
+the women get new clothes, which they need. However, as the dead soldiers
+will mostly be in heaven, their smiles won’t be too unkind, though their
+language!—if it’s anything like what I’ve discovered they use on earth!
+
+I was finally convoyed home by a largish contingent of the sons of Mars.
+As soon as we stepped from the door we were in ankle-deep mud; the sky,
+black and flat and close, had a vaultlike heaviness, and the fog was
+so clinging that I was as if wrapped in some soft, wet stuff. Monsieur
+and Madame Helmer were kindly waiting up for me, but mercifully let
+our good-night be short. And here I am with no more thought of sleep
+than a meadow-lark at dawn, though that’s my only resemblance to the
+meadow-lark, for I am tired, dead-tired, and my hair is still wet with
+the mists of the Hartmann.
+
+And how shall one sleep who has so lately touched the fringe of the
+mountain-couch where many soldiers lie?
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+“LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN AND ITS PHANTOMS
+
+
+_November 9th._—This morning at eight-thirty we started out, Captain
+Perdrizet, Lieutenant Debrix, and I, for the famous trip along the crest
+of the mountains that, on one side, hang over the valley of the Thur, and
+on the other fall toward the Germanies. Having beheld with my eyes the
+first and second line defenses of these crests and of the “Hartmann,” I
+have come to some slight realization of how men have lived (and died)
+four winters through on these weather- and shell-swept heights.
+
+We had to go to the very end of the shining valley before beginning the
+ascent to the crests, passing Wesserling, situated so charmingly on its
+eminence in the ancient moraine, commanding the valley from both ways.
+Once upon a time the Château of Wesserling belonged to Prince Löwenstein,
+Abbot of Murbach, the history of the great Abbey of Murbach being closely
+bound up with that of these valleys, for Charlemagne gave to the first
+abbot, St.-Pyrmin, the whole country of the Thur, with St.-Amarin and
+Thann and all the lesser towns. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was
+converted into a noble Chapter with residence, and a big new church, at
+Guebwiller, now in German hands. But the Chapter had a short life there,
+and probably not a gay one, and during the Revolution it was suppressed.
+
+The vineyards round about have been renowned since time immemorial, and
+on Guebwiller’s southern slopes there is a wine celebrated even among
+the most celebrated of Alsace, which enlivens without making noisy, and
+inspires without depressing (evidently what the juice of the grape was
+meant to do when the vine grew on the first hillsides of the world). It
+is called “_Kitterle brisemollets_” (“Kitterle break your calves”), those
+whom it delights evidently not journeying far, except in fancy.
+
+A great book could be written about the wines of Alsace, the soft,
+gleaming, light-colored wines of this land of sunny slopes, which may
+become even as a Mecca for pilgrims arriving “dry” from over the seas. In
+fact, quite a delightful perspective opens itself out.
+
+From Wolxheim comes a wine, once the favorite of Napoleon, which was
+always found on the imperial table. There are the wines of Rouffach,
+“home town” of the husband of Madame Sans-Gêne; of Kaisersberg, known
+fashionably and pertinently as “Montlibre” for a short space during the
+Revolution, and by the “Rang” of Thann; Alsatians once swore, “_Que
+le Rang te heurte!_” (“May the Rang strike you!”) There is, too, an
+exceptional, ancient, red vintage called “_Sang des Turcs_,” whose name
+recalls the twilight days of Turkish invasions and Soliman the Great.
+
+But the Alsatian wines are mostly made from compact bunches of little,
+white, sweet grapes, with irislike colors shading them richly. The
+inhabitants, holding their _pinard_ in great veneration, feel it a
+sacred duty to see that it is _good_. It is called colloquially “_thé
+d’Octobre_” (“October tea”) one of the officers told me, after the manner
+of the famous “_purée septembrale_” (“September purée”) of Rabelais,
+who, it appears, greatly appreciated the wines of these hillsides. But
+they are pitiless concerning poor wines, which they call “fiddlers’
+wines,” or “_Sans-le-Sou_,” or “_gratte-gosier_” (“throat-scratcher”),
+and “_grimpe-muraille_” (“wall-climber”), as he who drinks them is apt
+to try that and other useless feats, instead of sitting and dreaming or
+joking and being happy. These bad wines are also known collectively and
+disdainfully as _vins des trois hommes_ (wines of three men) because
+it appears it takes three men to accomplish the feat of drinking a
+single glass—the man who supports the drinker, the man who forces the
+treacherous liquid down his throat, and the third the unhappy victim.
+Now the once rich soil of the ancient mellow vineyards has got thin and
+stony; for the men who have grown them have been occupied with killing
+these past four years, and neglect for even a season can spoil the best
+and oldest vines.
+
+In times of peace there are many textile manufactories in these valleys,
+too. After the Napoleonic wars _la main d’œuvre_ (labor) was scarce, just
+as it will be after our war, workmen being brought even from India, and
+to this day in the midst of modern machinery here, in the valley, there
+are places where they still keep to the ancient block system of stamping
+cloth, with the ritual hammer-stroke, this process giving more fadeless
+and beautiful colors than any machine-stamped, aniline-dyed stuffs that
+ever were. Such cloths are still called “_Indiennes_.”
+
+And all around here the Swedes did as tidy a bit of work as was ever
+done by invading armies, the seventeenth century being for the valley a
+century of ravage and desolation. In one of the books[18] Mr. Helmer gave
+me last night I read that the cantons were so reduced during the Thirty
+Years’ War that places like Bitschwiller could register but four adults
+and eleven children, Moosch eleven adults and twenty-three children,
+St.-Amarin thirteen adults and forty-four children, and so on, the chief
+of their diet being acorns and roots and mice and other classic nutriment
+of epochs of destruction. There were moments when the Imperials, the
+Swedes, the French, and the Lorrains disputed the territory, and various
+troops camped on the Hartmannswiller and descended to the valley—and
+the _Roi Très Catholique_ was the ally of the Swedes, and the Abbey
+and its territories were under the Holy German Empire. But whoever was
+momentarily in possession, it was always disastrous for the inhabitants
+of the valley—and of what the children suffered these fatal figures I
+have quoted evoke some dull perception.
+
+As we pass the pleasant villages of Fellering and Odern and Krüt, all
+shining in the radiance of a strong though intermittent sun, with here
+and there scarfs of rainbow-like mists draped about them, we foolishly
+mocked the weather wisdom of Mr. Helmer, who, on being asked as we
+started out, if the weather would hold, had regretfully said, “No.”
+
+At Krüt we start to ascend the Wildenstein. Gorgeous matutinal effects
+continued their prismatic play everywhere on soft and fathomless black
+hills, the yellow lights on the _mélèze_ almost outshining the sun. On
+one mountain-side they made a line as would some procession of pilgrims
+bearing torches, and one almost thought one saw cowled heads and heard
+the chanting of a “_Pilgerchor_.”
+
+The air we were breathing was strong yet tenuous, and I felt a great
+refreshment and exhilaration.
+
+In these wide days of bending the hills, of folding the valleys, there
+has been, as it were, some unpacking of my mind, some shaking out of my
+soul, things long hidden have come to light, and the patched lining of
+memory has been freshened. Almost every event has appeared, accompanied
+by its secret meanings, in its relationship to secondary, generally
+unapparent, significances. I have had, too, a quickened sensitiveness to
+the beauty of the natural world. And can a journey do more for one than
+this?
+
+It was a stiff mount to Huss in a sort of distilled pine fragrance,
+with a continual looking back, where the billowing lightsome pink and
+yellow scarfs, woven of sun and mist, were flinging themselves more and
+more wastefully about the shining valleys. Near the top our motor’s
+_bougies_ got clogged with oil, and a thin, white fog, now opaque, now
+sun-shot, began to close in on us. We arranged the _bougies_, but there
+was nothing for human hands to do about that white fog, and we found
+ourselves suddenly, at a turn in the road, tightly inclosed by it, and
+were seemingly alone on the heights, where the only thing that appeared
+to grow and thrive were the stretches of wire entanglements, like great
+patches of dried heather. Everywhere were groupings of black crosses,
+with their tricolor badges, above wind-swept, fog-enveloped, sun-bathed
+graves, dug on these treeless heights.
+
+But there, in that thin, high air, I suddenly became conscious of the
+volatilization of the spirit, and knew those graves indeed for empty....
+
+One last time, as we passed Camp Boussat, named after the colonel who
+fell here, and looking like a mining-camp, the mist shifted, showing the
+jeweled, gossamer-clad valley, and then we were again fog-locked, and
+I saw its beauty no more—only brown seas of wire entanglements losing
+themselves in those shrouds of cottony white, which lifted here and there
+to show some detail of the strange life on the bleak crests. There were
+dugouts everywhere, and very low buildings camouflaged in wood-colors and
+crisscross designs. In them were men washing, men cooking, men smoking,
+all in astonishment, which sometimes gave place to grins, and doubtless
+pleasantries in the best Gallic manner, at the appearance of the weaker
+sex on their grim, bare mountain-tops.
+
+We passed endless gun-emplacements, and cemented munition-depots, barely
+visible through thick layers of pine branches, and near them heads would
+be sticking out of what seemed mere holes in the earth.
+
+About this time Captain Perdrizet, whose ardent spirit had been
+considerably dampened by the closing in of that thick, cold fog, began
+also to fear we should be late for _déjeuner_ at Camp Wagram, from which,
+it appeared, we were separated by several valleys and a few hills of the
+eternal sort. The motor’s _bougies_ got clogged again (what part of its
+being they are I know not); the chauffeur got moody, Captain Perdrizet
+more visibly vexed, Debrix quieter and more philosophic (he is a
+_littérateur_ when there’s no war, and has written a beautiful poem about
+Thann); as for myself, knowing strange and enkindling things were behind
+me, others doubtless before me, and that whatever happened would be
+interesting, I felt myself sweetly detached from time and circumstances,
+which for one of deadly punctuality is saying much.
+
+A peculiarity of the motor’s ailment was that it couldn’t go down as
+fast as it could go up, so, a-limp, a-crawl, a-hump, we descended into
+a valley packed extravagantly with that thick, unspun cotton-like
+atmosphere, leaving the dead and living alike to their bare heights. At a
+certain village whose name I forget (I can hear the reader saying, “Thank
+God she has forgotten it, and we can perhaps get on to Camp Wagram for
+lunch”)—at a certain village, however, I repeat, two ravens went across
+our path, going to the left of the motor. Said Perdrizet, on taking in
+the dire occurrence, his color like to the white fog and his hair and
+mustache like to the raven’s, “We’ll never get there!”
+
+Now I am superstitious, too, and glory in it, for, though it gives me a
+good deal of otherwise avoidable worry, it colors life. From time to time
+friends and circumstances load me with a new one, and I go staggering
+on. Two ravens crossing the road to the left _was_ a novelty, and I see
+anxious days to come when motoring for engagements where one must be in
+time—or one thinks one must. And superstition has nothing to do with
+the processes of the brain, rather lodges itself elusively anywhere and
+everywhere in one’s being.
+
+The two officers consulted their timepieces again, finding a trifling
+and consoling difference of twenty minutes (looked at from one way). The
+chauffeur’s watch didn’t go, and I never carry one. As the motor stopped
+again, Perdrizet began to fidget extremely much, and to say that if it
+weren’t for me he’d kill the chauffeur, and decided that we couldn’t take
+in the village of Goldbach, almost entirely destroyed in this war, where
+Madame Sans-Gêne first saw the light of day, and later the duke.
+
+However, in spite of the two ravens and the _Erdwible_,[19] or other
+spirits of those forest-hills, we at last found ourselves twisting up
+the road to Camp Wagram, an hour late, and we began to sound noisily
+the horn of arrival. The commandant and his young captain had been long
+awaiting us on their hillside. With many apologies on our part because
+of the delay, and on theirs because of the fog, we went into the little,
+low mess-room built of rough boards, with its heavy camouflage of fresh
+pine branches on its low roof, its windows of oiled paper, and its sides
+painted like a green-and-yellow tiger.
+
+The commandant did something to his watch as we sat down, and then
+gallantly yet unblushingly remarked that it was just 12.30, but that
+even _had_ we been late it would have only meant a longer anticipation
+of something pleasant. My companions both gave smiles of satisfaction
+for that, on the Hartmann, where men are almost entirely concerned with
+killing or being killed, the commandant was living up to the French
+reputation in more ways than one. I thought, too, that it was a very
+happy beginning, looking well, so to speak, among the _hors d’œuvre_.
+Captain Perdrizet had told me the day before that if the commandant
+had to requisition every man and mule in the sector there would be an
+excellent lunch. Now the very good food was accompanied by a delicious,
+warm Burgundy from the commandant’s own part of the world, and at dessert
+a bottle of Pommery & Greno, very cold, a souvenir of his service in
+Champagne, was poured. All drank sparingly of both, after the manner
+of Latins. Some asked delicately, even humbly, as one really wanting
+information, concerning the rumor that the United States were “going
+dry,” and wondered why it was to be. I rather wondered myself, up there
+on the Hartmann, forgetful for a moment of the unpleasant things I know
+about distilled liquors in the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave.
+
+Said the commandant, puzzled, looking at his not large glass of ruby
+liquid, “_Un peu de vin en mangeant, tout de même?_ ...” (“But a little
+wine at one’s meals?...”)
+
+Said another officer, with a quickly restrained gesture of distaste:
+“_Est-ce vrai qu’il faut boire seul et debout et entre les repas en
+Amérique?_” (“Is it true that one must drink alone and standing up and
+between meals in America?”)
+
+I was saved an answer to this question, which was a fairly near picture
+of some of the national customs, by the shaking, deafening sound
+of an exploding shell. Those paper windows didn’t seem to mind it,
+though everything on the table rattled. The commandant looked at the
+captain, who disappeared, returning almost immediately to say that an
+artilleryman with his horses had been killed—and the doctor, who had
+started to the door, sat down again.
+
+A few minutes later, as we were beginning the _tournedos grillés, maître
+d’hôtel_, the telephone rang, and a radio was brought in hot and given to
+me for a souvenir. It was one sent by the German parlementaries saying
+that as they were unable to get back to Germany by road on account of
+broken bridges, they would be obliged to proceed by air, and that their
+’plane would be marked by two white flames—_zwei weisse Flammen_.
+
+“It sounds safe, but all the same I don’t envy the officer detailed to
+accompany them,” said somebody; and they all smiled and seemed glad they
+weren’t in the airplane. I’ve noticed in the past two or three days that
+military men are beginning to prize life again.
+
+I was sitting opposite the commandant, on my right was Doctor Lantieri
+with four stripes on his sleeve, and on my left was young Captain de
+Santis, who had met us. Curiously enough, both were of Corsican descent,
+and showed it so distinctly that when some one mentioned the great
+Italian bag of Austrian prisoners after the cessation of hostilities, and
+how the “Tiger” had said you simply couldn’t hold them back, I got a bit
+worried, though nobody else seemed to mind.
+
+The young captain took from his pocket a couple of proclamations dropped
+by German aviators on the Hartmann yesterday—and furthermore presented me
+with a large panoramic view of the Champagne sector, where he had fought.
+I thought it was something rightly belonging to his family, but there was
+that in his proud, Corsican gesture which forbade refusal.
+
+                 =The German People Offers Peace.=
+
+    The new German democratic government has this programme:
+
+          =“The will of the people is the highest law.”=
+
+    The German people wants quickly to end the slaughter.
+
+    The new German popular government therefore has offered an
+
+                            =Armistice=
+
+    and has declared itself ready for
+
+                              =Peace=
+
+    on the basis of justice and reconciliation of nations.
+
+    It is the will of the German people that it should live in
+    peace with all peoples, honestly and loyally.
+
+    What has the new German popular government done so far to put
+    into practice the will of the people and to prove its good and
+    upright intentions?
+
+      a) The new German government has appealed to President
+         Wilson to bring about peace.
+
+      =It has recognized and accepted all the principles which
+         President Wilson proclaimed as a basis for a general
+         lasting peace of justice among the nations.=
+
+      b) The new German government has solemnly declared its
+         readiness to evacuate =Belgium= and to restore it.
+
+      c) The new German government is ready to come to an honest
+         understanding with France about
+
+                        =Alsace-Lorraine.=
+
+      d) The new German government has restricted the =U-boat War=.
+
+               =No passengers steamers not carrying troops
+              or war material will be attacked in future.=
+
+      e) The new German government has declared that it will
+         withdraw all German troops back over the German frontier.
+
+      f)—The new German government has asked the Allied
+         Governments to name commissioners to agree upon the
+         practical measures of the evacuation of Belgium and France.
+
+    These are the deeds of the new German popular government. Can
+    these be called mere words, or bluff, or propaganda?
+
+    Who is to blame, if an armistice is not called now?
+
+    Who is to blame if daily thousands of brave soldiers needlessly
+    have to shed their blood and die?
+
+    Who is to blame, if the hitherto undestroyed towns and villages
+    of France and Belgium sink in ashes?
+
+    Who is to blame, if hundreds of thousands of unhappy women and
+    children are driven from their homes to hunger and freeze?
+
+          =The German people offers its hand for peace.=
+
+After which, being the only woman who had ever lunched in the H.W.K.
+sector, I was photographed by the doctor with the four stripes. Then in a
+fog thickly enfolding us, as well as the mountains, we started out with
+gas-masks, compasses and pistols, plus an armed escort, toward the German
+lines, for they wanted to show me the ruins of the Castle of Freundstein,
+now an observation post, directly overhanging the great plain I had seen
+yesterday. Much banter between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet,
+their eyes very alert, as to the right road, the one that wouldn’t lead
+us into the enemies’ hands. Suddenly a firing of French guns began right
+over our befogged heads, with a near swish and crack, and answering
+duller German guns. In the thick fog, even those men accustomed to
+sensations seemed quite keyed up, and the commandant had become like some
+woodsman, looking closely at the trunks of battered trees, some with old
+scars, some with new, and other indications, invisible to me, along the
+path. Finally, at a certain crossroad, he stopped, saying: “_That_ would
+lead us straight to them. Even now a pointed casque might appear, though,
+with the probable armistice in sight, they will be less venturesome.”
+
+I: “What would they do?”
+
+He: “Throw hand-grenades first and then”—he looked at the others—“there’d
+be a scuffle.”
+
+It didn’t sound attractive, I must say, the potentialities of the fog
+seeming even quite horrid, and I was entirely ready to hunt in the
+opposite direction for the path to the Freundstein, which, according to
+the compass, lay pleasantly due west. Dreadful, unexploded things, too,
+were lying about, in new and ancient shell-holes, and there was much
+careful stepping among broken tree-trunks and half-demolished barbed
+wire, and I got a horrid rip in the last of my American boots.
+
+Here and there was a black cross, and the possibility of being underneath
+one, instead of above one, if we _did_ meet a German patrol, came before
+me. With all one’s poetizing or philosophizing, there _is_ a difference,
+and one’s a long time dead—as I know Lieutenant Lavallée would agree.
+
+Suddenly the path began to rise, the commandant giving an exclamation of
+relief as he saw a steep ladder almost in front of us, apparently leaning
+against a wall of fog. Captain Perdrizet’s eyes began to shine again;
+he’d been quite subdued, not to say cast down.
+
+“It’s like a scene of opera, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. And then he
+proceeded up the ladder, tipped, it seemed, at an angle of forty-five
+degrees the wrong way, I wondering how on earth I was to get down,
+unless I fell. Then we descend from a ledge over heaps of century-old,
+moss-grown mortar deep into the tower, and, passing through a long,
+subterranean passage, find ourselves in a tiny, closet-like room of
+ageless masonry. Stationed at an opening are two men with telephones
+over their ears, binoculars, compass, and charts lying on the sill of
+the opening in the masonry, which is shaped like this ⌓ and looks to
+the northeast, toward the Hartmann and the Sudel, and other consecrated
+heights, as well as the great, covered German plain—whose contours were
+more impenetrably veiled than its future. I had had a feeling, crouching
+in the wet bushes the day before, gazing out on its wide splendors in
+shifting sun and shower, that I would look no more upon it, nor upon the
+little, worn, brown crest of the Hartmann, cut by the black line of the
+German trenches, running through the naked wilderness of branchless
+trees—though I had not known why.
+
+When we had blithely retraced our steps to the highroad, cracking many
+uncomplicated jokes, pleasing largely because we felt that kindness
+toward the universe so distinctive of the front, when no actual killing
+is going on, we suddenly encountered, almost bumping into them, two
+swearing, sweating, heavily laden _poilus_, who had got lost in the
+fog looking for their detachment. On seeing us they threw down their
+accoutrement on a wet bank and expressions strong and classic began to
+cut the air. A sergeant, risen up from somewhere at the unmistakable
+sounds, ran toward them, calling and gesticulating wildly. But, wiping
+their brows, they continued. They had taken the last step they were
+going to on that so-and-so and so-and-so mountain, and if they found
+their detachment or not they _enfiché’d_ themselves, only they didn’t
+use this elegant word to express their sentiments. The sergeant got more
+excited, and cried, “_Espèces de types_” and.... At this the commandant,
+foreseeing that the artillery exchange might get too loud for feminine
+ears, said to the biggest one (both were enormous), seeing his number:
+“You are looking for Camp Meudon, _mon ami_. It’s farther up; in an hour
+you are there. Follow the path up and always to the right.”
+
+On which, like lambs, they who had sworn not to move from that spot till
+the hill crumbled shouldered their accoutrement, thanked Perdrizet in
+the best French manner for the cigarettes he gave them, and disappeared
+quickly, the strains of “Madelon” being loudly borne back to us on the
+fog.
+
+“_Ce sont des enfants_” (“They are children”), said the commandant, with
+his kind smile, “and _good_ children.”
+
+And that was the last word I heard concerning the war and “_les enfants
+de la Patrie_” on the Hartmann, for the hour of farewells had come.
+
+And how deep was the mutual well-wishing enfolding that moment those who
+have seen peace breaking over the graves of the Hartmann, as I and they
+saw it, alone can know.
+
+As we parted, they taking a higher path, disappearing almost immediately
+in the fog, and we the lower road back to the motor, I suddenly
+understood, too, the new look one sees in all men’s faces. Everywhere it
+is the same. It is that of men who have been ready to die, to “separate
+from the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of living,” but who
+suddenly know they need not die, at least not now—nor _that_ way.
+
+Coming down the heavily shrouded mountain-slope as quickly as possible,
+to be in time for my adieux to St.-Amarin before hastening over to
+Masevaux that same evening, Captain Perdrizet told me the legend of
+the “Phantoms of Freundstein.” I was then at a point of fatigue where
+present emotions were no longer possible, and time works such wonders
+that the most tragic tale of Freundstein, the Rock of Friends, was even
+as a poultice. And I could still be interested in hearing that to this
+very day there is a proverb, “_Er isch vom Freundstein_” (“He is from
+Freundstein”), which, said of a man, means so hospitable is he that his
+house belongs to his friends. And the legend runs after this fashion:
+
+The last of the lords of Freundstein, Count Jerome, had a beautiful
+daughter, Christine by name, whom he adored, and whom he took with him
+everywhere, even to the chase, for which purpose a gorgeous litter had
+been made wherein she might rest. The Lord of Geroldseck, passing by one
+day, saw her as she lay asleep. Struck by her loveliness, he swore then
+and there that he would make her his.
+
+Soon after he proceeded to Freundstein to ask her hand in marriage, but
+she answered that it was useless, as her heart already belonged to a
+certain very noble cavalier of Thann. Her father gave the same answer.
+One night a great noise was heard before the gates of Freundstein; it was
+the Lord of Geroldseck come with his vassals to take the castle and its
+lovely young châtelaine by assault. Freundstein resisted for three days.
+Then, seeing it was in vain, Christine and her father took final refuge
+in the high tower whose ruins rise above the chamber where we found the
+men with the telephones strapped to their ears. There had once been a
+sloping stairway in the tower, so broad that a horseman might ascend it.
+Up this road the Lord of Geroldseck pursued them. Arrived at the top,
+he was about to seize the girl, but her father, taking her in his arms,
+leaped with her into space. The gesture that Geroldseck made to retain
+her whom he loved caused him to lose his own balance, and he, too, fell
+and was killed. And their ghosts forever haunt the spot, and the echo,
+no matter what words are cried to the hills, always gives back the last,
+despairing call of Geroldseck:
+
+    “_Je t’aurai, je t’aurai, je t’aurai._”[20]
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+RETURN TO MASEVAUX
+
+
+_November 9th._—I was received so warmly by the amiable Demoiselles
+Braun, who had my room ready for me; so kindly by Captain Bernard, who
+came a moment afterward to tell me he would call for me at seven-fifteen;
+so dearly by Laferrière, who also called for me, that I felt I had
+indeed got “home.” As we were walking along to the _popote_ Captain
+Tirman joined us in the darkness and told us that Bavaria had proclaimed
+itself a republic, and that there was news (military news by radio) of
+the abdication of the Kaiser. Somebody cried, “_Demain, de quoi demain
+sera-t-il fait?_” as we entered the house where the little cat, the
+forgetful, unabashed little cat, who but three short days before had done
+such well-nigh disastrous things to my fur coat, also awaited me.
+
+Again a charming dinner, conversation about that first August of the
+war, the retreat from Mons, of Charleroi, and many, many other places;
+of forced marches and aching feet; of fatigue and hunger and thirst,
+now packed away gloriously in memory, though sometimes the strange look
+appeared on their faces as they talked. Stories were told of those who
+had gone to “_faire un bridge à Limoges_”[21] and remained there, and
+of others, like Mangin, who had come back, Mangin, the booty of whose
+glorious Tenth Army now overflows the Place de la Concorde. And of Foch
+who had _nearly_ gone there. And of the immense glory hanging over each
+and every battlefield, for, though black crosses were evoked, each was
+entwined with colors too bright for human eyes. And then we turned our
+thoughts from _tempus lachrymarum_ to the New Day, in whose sun, though
+not like to the brightness of those fallen, we all shine. The _long_
+destiny is heavy and dark beside the light, bright way of heroes, and
+never did one realize till now how truly the gods love those whom they
+snatch young. We, after all, as one of the officers remarked, will die in
+our beds or by accident—and is it so desirable?
+
+Then Sérin told his oft-repeated, but now dearly loved, story of “_Bravo,
+Capitano_,” of the _Capitano_ who thanked the Madonna for the thirteen
+trenches and the sea of barbed wire between himself and the enemy, but
+which I won’t tell. And Captain Antoni told the story of the wounded
+Boche who was given the _Croix de Guerre_, and how the French general
+said, as he entered the hospital ward:
+
+“Are these the brave men who so valiantly held their position on
+the twenty-fourth? With inexpressible pleasure I give each one his
+well-merited _Croix de Guerre_,” and then proceeded down the line of
+beds. On Number 33 was lying a man with closely bandaged head, only one
+gleaming eye visible, and the _Croix de Guerre_ was pinned also on his
+valiant breast, and if it was removed by the Angel of Death or by orders
+of the colonel I forget. Neither is it recorded if the German smiled.
+
+And I told of the swift passing of the autos, mine and the commandant’s,
+on the dark hills of the Route Joffre, when I was coming back from
+St.-Amarin and he going there. How sadly I had seen its kind lights
+rise along the heights and disappear, and there had been no friendly
+handclasp on the hills, nor words of thanks from me in the dim light of
+the blurred Pleiades and the young, half-veiled, white moon.
+
+After dinner some one hazarded the word “bridge,” but there must have
+been that in my eye making for solitude rather than companionship, for
+the next thing I heard from some Frenchman, perceptive as to woman’s
+looks, was:
+
+“_Madame est sans doute bien fatiguée et nous jouerons demain._”
+
+And soon I was stumbling home on one or two or three blue-sleeved arms,
+in the inky darkness of a starless and moonless Masevaux.
+
+I had found St.-Amarin charming, and I left with deep regret, but at
+Masevaux I was experiencing the sensation, very agreeable, I must say, of
+one who, having wandered, returns to his or her first love; and any one
+who has done it will know exactly how I felt, and I don’t have to tell
+them. As for those who have never returned, they wouldn’t understand if I
+did explain.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE
+
+
+“_The Star is fall’n and Time is at his period_”
+
+_November 11th, 1 A.M._—At ten-thirty Captain Tirman came back to the
+_popote_ where we were playing bridge—Sérin, Laferrière, Toussaint, and
+I. He was very pale, but there was something shining about his face.
+
+“_Ça y est, l’armistice._”
+
+Dead silence; we don’t even drop our cards. In his excitement a very
+naughty soldier’s word escapes him. He turns away in consternation,
+and the others, somewhat appalled, too, at last drop their cards. I
+try not to smile. General recovery; they hope I didn’t catch it. It
+was sufficient, however, to break that strange feeling of _absence_ of
+feeling that each one of us was experiencing.
+
+“_Alors c’est fini, la guerre_,” some one finally said in a dazed way,
+and with the words the cruel thing seemed to drop heavily from us, as
+would some hideous, exhausting burden.
+
+Toussaint, with his far look of one who loves forests, very strongly
+marked, said, “To think that it has found us like this playing bridge at
+the _popote_!”
+
+Sérin: “I’ll not go to bed to-night.”
+
+I: “Oh, my friends!” and then nothing more—my knees suddenly as if broken.
+
+Laferrière (very quietly, after a pause): “I cannot but think of those
+who are not here.” And his words evoked great shining bands of the
+dear young, pressed closely, one against the other, out of their flesh,
+crowding the heavens.
+
+Then Sérin, again with his _bon sourire d’enfant_, “_Il faut boire_.”
+
+A bottle of _Asti spumante_ is produced by Laferrière, who in a dreamy
+way remembers that he is _chef de popote_. The stock of champagne is
+exhausted. Nearly every day, and sometimes twice a day for the past week,
+have not the radios, plucked out of the air by the commandant, plus the
+beauteous _communiqués_, necessitated the opening of bottles even unto
+the last?
+
+Sérin, as we drink, all of us paralyzed by the sudden cessation of the
+world-horror, tells how one of his gendarmes would keep referring to the
+armistice as “_la Mistie_,” in two words, and we drink to _la Mistie_.
+But in spite of the too, too simple joke, how still, yet stern was each
+one’s heart!
+
+About this time Toussaint seizes from the stove the marble “hunk” (it’s
+the only word for it), “_Amor condusse noi_,” and makes as if to throw it
+at the dead and gone Oberforster’s clock, stopped, as I said, some four
+years ago at 12.25.
+
+Sérin again, with his most childlike expression: “_La Paix a éclaté!_
+Peace has broken out, and I will break out worse than peace if I don’t do
+something!”
+
+As I have said, Masevaux at that hour—it had got to be eleven o’clock—was
+as lustrous as an ink-pot, and all being still the prey of a strange
+paralysis of feeling, nobody suggested anything.
+
+Peace, lovely, precious peace, dreamed of, desired through years of
+anguish, so _redly_ bought in money of the heart’s blood, was ours! Those
+crowding hosts gone out into the “dateless night” seemed suddenly to
+return, the only moving things on a stunned earth. They had not renounced
+in vain the dear clothing of the flesh.
+
+But how could we understand in one moment the immensity of what had
+happened? Never have I felt myself so small, so almost non-existent—an
+insect that had fortuitously _not_ been crushed. But the soul’s great
+converging point _was_ reached. The war was done and won. Men need no
+longer kill each other by the tens of thousands, nor need women by the
+millions, because of it, weep.
+
+We touched glasses again, but quietly, oh so quietly!
+
+Some one sighs and no one speaks. After a while Toussaint, standing by
+the stove, again fingers “_Amor noi condusse_,” but it is taken out of
+his hands by one of the officers. Then Sérin suggests waking up the
+curé, getting the keys of the church, and ringing the bells. Tirman,
+in authority in the absence of the commandant, still at St.-Amarin, is
+gripped by that conservatism known to each and every one in command at
+great moments, and becomes cautious, even suspicious.
+
+“_Mais non, c’est peut-être tout de même une blague. Attendons jusqu’à
+demain._” (He has quite recovered from his naughty word.)
+
+Some one insists, “But Headquarters wouldn’t joke about a thing like
+that.”
+
+Tirman, however, sits down at the piano, breaks out into the “Beautiful
+Blue Danube” and refuses to have the bells rung.
+
+Sérin: “But what can one do here at Masevaux, black as the ace of spades
+and everybody snoring! _A Paris, il y aurait moyen de fêter même si c’est
+une blague!_”
+
+I: “You are ready for anything.”
+
+He: “_Et comment!_” With a light in his straightforward _good_ soldier’s
+eye, and somewhat as a child longing for the impossible, “Just think of
+them in Paris, the restaurants full, _et des femmes sentant bon_!”[22]
+
+Then four dazed officers accompanied by a dazed lady proceeded to awaken
+the postmaster from his slumbers. That heroic expression of rejoicing
+accomplished, we groped our way to the Place du Chapitre. In one of
+the _chanoinesse_ houses Captain Bernard also dwells. Sometimes he has
+headaches on account of his wound, and to-night he had left us early to
+go home. On his not answering, some one hazarded the remark, “Perhaps
+he isn’t there” (Heaven knows there’s nowhere else to be but where one
+belongs, at Masevaux!), and it proved, indeed, to be pure defamation, for
+after a while he appeared at his window, or rather one heard him saying:
+“What’s the matter? I was sleeping the sleep of the just.”
+
+“_Ça y est, l’armistice_,” some one cried out.
+
+Then that man, who had been through every campaign and would forever wear
+“Verdun” stamped on his brow, made no answer.
+
+And the night was dark, dark, the lovely moon too young to wait up, even
+for peace. We stumbled across the roughly paved square to my dwelling,
+and there we clasped hands with a strange, new clasp, and I, the woman
+and the American, wanted to say something, anything, but I had only
+begun, “_Mes chers amis_,” when I felt my voice break. I turned quickly
+and went in. What need to speak? Hearts lay open that night.
+
+_2 A.M._—Have been reading to quiet the heavily throbbing nerves. Picked
+out of the bookcase an hour ago _L’Histoire des Elèves de St.-Clément,
+Metz_, 1871. The names Gravelotte, St.-Privat, Malmaison, Sedan, confuse
+themselves in my mind with Ypres, Verdun, with Belleau Woods, with
+St.-Mihiel, Suippes, Eparges. I remember being told that in a terraced
+cemetery at St.-Mihiel three thousand Germans sleep. Though friend or
+foe, this night I see them all arisen, standing each one by his grave,
+clad in horizon-blue, khaki—or field-gray, all those who at some word
+of command had left the “pleasant habit of living, the sweet fable of
+existence,” and I whispered in great need of consolation, “I know that my
+Redeemer liveth and at the last day we shall rise.”
+
+_3 A.M._—And how shall sleep come, lovely sleep, desired like the
+morning? I slept not that night of the 3d of August which held the whole
+war in its darkness, and now with the youth of the world lying in “the
+grave’s quiet consummation,” shall I sleep?
+
+Then slowly I became conscious of emanations from a giant, near people
+in defeat, not knowing what new thing to will, casting off the old
+fidelities, which once had given them the horn of human plenty. Thrones
+were shaking; “when _peoples_ rage, _kings_ must weep”; a world was to be
+remade out of empty places and blood.... I remembered how a poet[23] had
+cried out, as a prophet, after that other war:
+
+    _Ton peuple vivra,_
+    _Mais ton empire penche, Allemagne!..._
+
+And then I fell to thinking on love, I know not why, unless it was for
+the millions of lovers taken so suddenly from the world, or because of
+those yet left. How shall I say? But I knew that there were three things,
+not two—the lover, the beloved, and love. And of this last and separate
+thing one can have, in extremely sensitive states, impersonal cognizance,
+when for some reason (again what know I?) fancy has been set free,
+imagination stirred, and they go flinging themselves, not so much about
+the personal as about the common destiny. For a moment, so brief that it
+was gone even as it came, my soul caught the light that hangs over dear,
+persistent, far, illusory hills of fancy and inclination, and felt the
+mysterious break of feeling on the dim, shadowy lake of the heart. Vague,
+beaming forms passed along its shores, dissolving, lambent outlines,
+awakening desire for all the beauty of the wide earth, for things not in
+my personal destiny, and which, if they were to be, would be no better
+than that which is, not even so good. It was the greed of the human
+heart....
+
+And I cried out from my many-times-turned pillow, “O Life, O Love, O
+Death, O too, too fragile illusion of existence!”
+
+_4 A.M._—A soft, rich-toned bell is striking. A cold breath comes in at
+the window, a cock crows. There is the first sound of the click of sabots
+across the square; the Day of Peace is about to break over the world.
+But here in the bed of the young deserter from the German ranks, dead in
+Champagne, the war still has me in its arms and presses me close to its
+cold, oozing breast. The familiar odor of drying blood comes to me. Old
+groans strike on my ear. Those who, dying, are not dead crowd about me,
+and the “blue-black cloud” envelops me. I am weary unto dissolution. And
+Sleep, darling Sleep—not even a brush of your wings against me!
+
+In this early morning, in the “little hour before dawn,” the grief of the
+world sits tight about my heart—the icy hurt for things dead and gone,
+and the heaviness of those who awaken to a world empty of what was once
+the heart’s concern and desire.
+
+Old distastes, too, press on me, old distastes, I say, not hates. How
+hate any one like unto myself, hurrying along the night-path to the
+grave, mutual, frightened possessors of a shadowy, urgent immortality?
+
+For these last few years I have entered, as it were, into some knowledge
+of charity, not that I like everybody, but I have come to realize that
+the distaste is often in myself and not due to some fault or lesser
+excellence in others. Truly in this whole journey I have encountered but
+two whom in an idle, hazy way I did not like; one was of an amorphic
+species and the other had judgments too violent, and at the same time too
+conventional and platitudinous, to permit interest. But even of these I
+shall ultimately think with indulgence.
+
+_5 A.M._—Closed the book recording the deeds of those young, long, long
+fallen of St.-Clément’s school, and I pass to thinking how the word now
+on the lips of the world is freedom.
+
+But is not the deepest wish of the human heart for love which is never
+free, but always in bond to that which is its hope and its desire? And I
+cried out concerning freedom what once in the world’s greatest hour was
+cried out concerning truth, “What is it?” and begged that it might show
+its true form and aspect, above all to one who, invested with incredible
+power by a great people, would seem to hold even the lightnings in his
+hand.
+
+More sabots click across the square, and a pale light sifts in at the top
+of the curtains. It’s the eighth day of Creation. Innumerable men have
+stood (and so near me) their last night through in the trenches....
+
+Yesterday with its happenings seems a thousand years ago. I had motored
+with Laferrière to lunch at Dannemarie across a rich plain, through
+Morzwiller, where Alan Seeger spent a week with the Foreign Legion, and
+spun who knows which of his young and gorgeous fancies?
+
+Now, as then, the long street of Morzwiller was crowded with a highly
+colored, exotic regiment, and we were stopped a moment by a detachment
+passing. In front of the red-roofed, cream-colored inn, with its
+yellowing grapevine clinging close and flat, a young officer in the
+strong, mustard-tinted khaki and red _checchia_ of the Moroccans was
+getting off his horse, a blooded, white, long-tailed beast of Araby; on
+his breast was a blaze of decorations and there was something implacable
+in his young glance as he looked about, and something very straight in
+his mien—a man who had been at his enemy’s very throat, or drawn the
+sucking bayonet out all red. Two or three men of his regiment, wearing
+also their crimson _checchias_, were sitting at a table drinking a
+light-yellow wine. A woman came out, emptied a pail, called to a cat. A
+very young girl behind her made a slight sign to one of the men sitting
+at the table. In another minute we had passed on.
+
+Everywhere in the rich fields were great brown stretches of barbed-wire
+entanglements, repeating the rusty tones of the beech forests which
+fringe them. I asked Laferrière what would become of those thousands upon
+thousands of kilometers of barbed wire. He answered indifferently, as one
+does of things past, “Little by little the peasants will use the poles
+for their kitchen fires and the wire for their hedges.”
+
+And we continue through that flat yellow and green and brown world to
+Dannemarie, one of the “territories” of the reconquered triangle, drawing
+up before some sort of government building, known to German and to French
+administrators, in and out of which American soldiers are now passing.
+I ask one of them where their officers are quartered, thinking to pay
+my respects after lunch. There is a vagueness as he asks of a passing
+comrade, “Say, ’ain’t we got a major somewhere here?” The flooding
+Americanism of my soul is for a moment stemmed; then we go over to the
+_popote_, where we are to lunch with Lieutenant Ditandy, in charge at
+Dannemarie. Laferrière, always ready to praise his comrades, tells me
+that he is possessed of much energy, good sense, and decision (rather in
+our American way, I found later) and the “territory” has flourished under
+him.
+
+Pleasant lunch, enlivened by some last German salvos, which shook the
+windows and caused the glasses on the table to ring. Much and easy
+conversation—as we ate the classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut, boiled
+potatoes, and pork, and the equally classic pancakes—mostly about
+the irrealizable and irreconcilable dreams of small and penniless
+nations, springing up like poor and unthrifty relations at the day of
+inheritance. And how amusing, even, the adjustments might become, once
+the blood-letting had ceased, though everybody felt more or less of a
+pricking in the thumbs at the thought of _l’après-guerre_. One could not
+then foresee that the movement of the Peace Conference would be about
+as rapid as that of the notoriously timeless glacier. Nor was it given
+to prophets to foretell the exceeding glitter of its generalities, nor
+how those same small nations, without a cent in their pockets, some
+even without pockets, like the Zulus and Hottentots, would multiply a
+hundredfold in its dewy shade. The metaphors are mixed, though not more
+so than the theme, and unfortunately it _won’t_ “be all the same in a
+hundred years,” everything having been taken into account except the
+future.
+
+After lunch we start out in the motor driven by the swift yet careful
+chauffeur, accompanied by a doctor _à deux galons_, who speaks English
+very well, but doesn’t understand a word I say—and my English is
+generally intelligible, though perhaps one wouldn’t know right away if I
+came from England or the United States.
+
+We passed the high, broken, pink viaduct of the railway, looking, against
+the near Swiss hills, like a bit of aqueduct in the Roman Campagna,
+though without any beauty of light. It had been destroyed the first days
+of the war, rebuilt, again destroyed, and then abandoned.
+
+We were running straight toward the trenches, through that green and gold
+and brown autumn world, the road screened by wire netting interwoven with
+pine branches and broom, and there were kilometers of cloth screening,
+too, torn and flapping. The lines are but a few yards distant, and
+everywhere between us and them are the brown lakes of barbed wire.
+
+At St.-Léger an infantry band is playing the terrible, the gentle, the
+dolorous, the gorgeous, the human, the superhuman “_Sambre et Meuse_,”
+which will forever evoke those seventeen hundred thousand sons of France
+who to its beat marched to their death. We stop to listen. A veteran
+of 1870 (no village seems to be complete without one or more) comes
+out, his green-and-yellow ribbon in his rusty buttonhole, and gives
+Lieutenant Ditandy a toothless, palsied salute. Black-clad women are
+grouped about the blue-clad band, under a great yellow chestnut tree. The
+mustard-tinted khaki and red _checchias_ of a passing Moroccan regiment
+give a last deep accent to the color of the scene. And for a long way our
+road runs like this:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We continue swiftly through villages shot to bits and deserted save for
+the troops, _Quatrième Zouaves mixtes_, they mostly are, quartered within
+their crumbling walls. There are tattered cloth screens for camouflage
+hung across the streets, as electioneering signs would be hung, or the
+banners of festivities and welcome. Open-mouthed, the soldiers see the
+auto pass where for two years no wheeled thing has rolled. If men went
+there they slipped silently behind the screens and under cover of night,
+with food and munitions or carrying wounded men.
+
+As for me, I begin to feel like a cross between Joan of Arc and Madame
+Poincaré.
+
+Lieutenant Ditandy points out “_le Bec de Canard_,” the duck’s bill, a
+long tongue of Swiss territory that juts in comfortingly between the
+French and German lines, and is greatly beloved by everybody.
+
+On the outskirts of the battered village of Seppois we pause; a few more
+turns of the wheel and we would be in full sight of the German lines. I
+make good my woman’s reputation for lack of sense of responsibility and
+beg to proceed. Lieutenant Ditandy, however, caps daring by a somewhat
+belated prudence (there is something bold and hard in his eye when it’s
+turned toward the enemy), saying:
+
+“We ought not to be here; as it is, our safe return depends on whether a
+German officer sees us and, seeing us, thinks he might as well turn the
+mitrailleuses on. The first man to be killed in the war was killed near
+here—it would be too stupid to be the last.”
+
+Laferrière: “Not to speak of the incident it would create, and if the
+colonel sees us—well, the prison at Seppois isn’t inviting.” So we turned
+toward the Swiss frontier instead, and I thought deeply, sweetly on her
+so dear, so near, as I looked toward these hills enfolding her, the best
+loved of my heart.
+
+Then we turned another way, passing again through Seppois. Arab troops
+are quartered there, and we were held up by the sentinel, who wanted
+to see our papers. He was dark of color, delicate of hand, straight of
+nose, and wore his military coat buttoned by one of its top buttons in
+such a way that it fell with an effect of burnous. He couldn’t read
+French characters, so he called to another thin, small-handed, straight,
+coffee-colored man, who might have been his twin, who couldn’t read them,
+either, and finally they both threw up their slender hands, resembling
+those of some antique bronze of an adolescent, after which we passed
+on. And I told Sérin’s story of the Arab guard who held him up one dark
+night, in the trenches, but generously gave him the countersign, saying
+to him, “_Si tu ne dis pas tire-lire, tu ne passes pas!_” (“You can’t
+pass unless you say tire-lire!”)
+
+They’re cold, these Arabs, they’re gray with cold, and they don’t know
+why they fight, nor whom, but they follow their officer to the death,
+and, if he falls, lose heart under these gray skies with which Allah
+seems only remotely connected.
+
+And then we turned back and went through young woods where countless
+thousands, no, millions of shells were piled on shelflike receptacles,
+as one would pile bottles of wine on cellar shelves. Everywhere were the
+words “_Route interdite_,” “_Défense de passer_,” and we passed, until
+we came to Faverois, with its old, old church on the top of a tiny hill,
+over which the town spilled. The broad, low steps of the church were
+made of ancient tomb slabs, and, stooping, I saw, on one of them, half
+obliterated, “_in pace_,” and “16—.”
+
+There was much that was unspoiled, or more likely forgotten, in the
+interior. A suave-expressioned St.-Sebastian, with dimpled limbs, so
+evidently unfit for the arrows that transfixed them, and something
+yearning and earthly about his eyes, was above the Louis XV altar; quite
+unmistakably he was of the gay century. In another niche was an unknown
+saint, dressed like a personage of opera; three plumes were on his head
+and he wore a golden shirt of mail and high, fringed boots. At the
+side-altars were charming, very pure models of angels, and bow-knots and
+shells (I mean, for once, _sea_-shells). As we came out we noticed that
+the roof of the church was painted a silver-white and that of the old
+house nearby, with the round tower, was painted the same way, and other
+houses, too, and when we asked why they told us it shone like crystal at
+night and was to warn airplanes of their nearness to the Swiss frontier.
+
+A blue group of _poilus_ was standing on the crest of the street, looking
+at a newspaper. One cried out in a loud voice, “_Guillaume a ——_,” only
+one can’t write the word. And going up we saw the news of the Kaiser’s
+abdication in letters quite American in size.
+
+Then in a very understandable zeal that I should miss nothing, the doctor
+_à deux galons_, espying a khaki figure, said, “There comes an American,”
+and I saw approaching a blond, round-faced young man with spectacles.
+Something leaped within me as I turned to him. But he answered me in the
+stiffest German accent possible, “Ja, pig news”; and when I said, “Yes,
+we’ve won the war!” he answered, “Well, I do t’ink we god ’um shust now.”
+Unreasonably, the thing that had leaped within me lay down. I said,
+“Good-by.” He said, “So long.” And so much for American meeting American
+on the hill of the village of Faverois.
+
+Laferrière had marched all through this country, _sac-au-dos_, and in one
+place he buried a comrade, and in another he knew hunger and thirst, and
+in another he had watched the day break after a night battle. There is a
+history to Faverois, too, but I don’t know it, and it’s just as well,
+for I would be sure to tell it in this long vigil, and I _must_ finish
+with the war.
+
+Back to Dannemarie, the chauffeur driving like the wind, and Lieutenant
+Ditandy finds out where the American officers have their headquarters.
+There is a battalion[24] attached to the Seventh French Army. I am
+conducted over a muddy street, past two classic dung-heaps, the kind so
+evidently handed down from father to son, and go up some dark backstairs,
+and there Colonel Wing and Major Griffiths are rung up by an orderly.
+I give my name, and they all know of me. In a moment appear, young and
+slim and untried and eager, the colonel and the major, glad to see an
+American woman in Dannemarie. And then they took me to their more than
+simple quarters out through another door and another court, where there
+was the usual mud, but only the scent of a vanished dung-heap. How many
+good American dollars they had “planked down” for this priceless compound
+I know not. After a while we walked back to the motor waiting in the
+square, and I presented them to the French officers. One of them said he
+had been at Plattsburg with my husband that first historic summer, and
+spoke of General Wood, whose aide he had then been, saying, with a flush,
+“He is the greatest man in the United States, as well as the greatest
+general,” and there in the square of Dannemarie I thought, “_Magna est
+veritas_,” and then, “Too late, too late.”
+
+On our way home, not far out of the town, we come across a group of
+Americans and French colonials standing by the road. Lying on the
+embankment was a young man with a fractured skull, his face deathly pale,
+except for the contusions, already swollen and blue. His hair was matted
+with blood and his red _checchia_ lay in the ditch. The stern young
+officer of the many decorations (there were three rows of them) that I
+had seen descending at the inn at Morzwiller, was there, on his beautiful
+mare, and he held the halter of another very good beast, the one that
+had just unhorsed his rider. We got out and the young man was placed
+carefully in our motor to be taken to the hospital at Dannemarie, after
+which we started to walk back to Masevaux—about thirty kilometers. In
+war-time you don’t wonder “can you do it,” you just start out; sometimes
+you get there alive, sometimes you don’t. This turned out all right, for
+shortly after our motor, which had met an ambulance, came back for us.
+
+[Illustration: AMERICA AND ALSACE]
+
+And then we found ourselves passing through a sunset-world, cut by a
+bar of level light, so strangely thick where it touched the golden
+earth that it was almost like a ledge or a wall over which we looked
+into wind-still, purple forests, and above us, like the tarnished gilt
+ceiling of a temple, was the pale, amber sky. We talked somewhat of hope,
+somewhat of life, from which the red thing had so suddenly gone, as
+they alone can talk who have laid their heads close against the cruel,
+beautiful, full breast of war.
+
+As we drove into the Place du Chapitre a delicate white moon, seen
+through the nearly bare lindens, was hanging in a deepening sky, close
+above the soft, dark roofs of the houses of the _chanoinesses_. There was
+no breath of wind. No cannon sounded. One’s heart, too, I found, was very
+still. Millions of men waited face to face in dark lines, and that same
+moon touched their bayonets, their helmets, and their drinking-cups. The
+sun had set upon the last day of the World War....
+
+The maid who brings my breakfast as I lie half dead, but not asleep,
+after the burning, consuming night, opens my blinds.
+
+French and American flags are flying from many windows. Something wets
+my eyes. Then—if in my flesh or out of it I know not—I see a strange
+brightness filling the Place du Chapitre, and a further glory bathes my
+being in such sweet and cooling waters that I again am strong to pass,
+with the Sons of Victory, into the New Day.
+
+In the old house are sounds of feet running to and fro. From our windows
+also blue and white and red flags are being hung. In the street are
+heard, “_Ça y est_,” and “_L’armistice est signé_.”
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+DIES GLORIÆ
+
+
+“_O Eastern Star! Peace, peace!_”
+
+And I arose and went to the church where there was a great ceremony, for
+it was the feast of St.-Martin, patron of Masevaux, as well as the end of
+the war....
+
+Afterward I stood outside on the wide rose-gray steps, under a sky of
+matchless silver-blue, among groups of villagers, soldiers, and officers.
+A blue infantry band, grouped under that blue vault against the pink
+church, played the “Marseillaise” and “_Sambre et Meuse_,” with a great
+blare of trumpets, quickening the heart-beats, then “The Star-Spangled
+Banner,” and many eyes were wet with tears of hope and loneliness.
+
+Amid the throng I noticed some new silhouettes, always in groups. They
+were those of husky young men in civilian holiday garb; flat, black
+hats, short, black jackets coming only to the waist, long, tight, black
+trousers, pink vests, and high, white collars. These young men, who
+looked no one straight in the eye, were strange-souled ones who had
+burned with no fever of combat; the lamp of no cause had shone before
+their faces; they had known no country for whom ’twas sweet and fitting
+to die. Free not to serve in the French army, out of reach of the German
+authorities, they had passed from adolescence to manhood during the
+World War unsplashed by blood. And they will be a generation apart.
+Even as they appeared on the day of victory in groups, apart. Later, in
+tribulation of maturity, in weakness of old age and fear of death, they
+may sigh that they were not among those who “dying are not dead,” and
+would exchange the worn drapery of their couches for the “blue-black
+cloud.” And those who have not known a hot youth will know a cold old age.
+
+A motor was standing under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre and by
+it a black-bearded, giant chauffeur who might have been among the hosts
+of Louis le Débonnaire on the Field of Lies. I got in with Laferrière
+and he took me up on a hillside, and from the height showed me a last
+time the kingdoms and principalities into which his race had come. The
+plain shone in a blue and exceeding beauty; we ourselves were caught
+in a glistening web of air shot with color by the low-arching November
+sun. Marking the course of the great river was a line of mist shimmering
+in the same warm-tinted sun of Indian summer. “_L’été de St.-Martin_”
+indeed. Here and there villages shone brighter than day, and the hills
+were deep-colored, yet soft and unsubstantial. Victory, like a shining,
+soft-rolled ball whose tangles were hidden, was in our hands—or like to a
+crystal sphere as yet undarkened by events.
+
+The grass of our hillside was dew-wet in the sun, white and frosty in the
+shade. Each fallen, rust-colored beech leaf, each scarlet cherry leaf,
+was set with something glittering. All, all was a-shine. Even the heart,
+too, after the dark years.
+
+I cried within myself, though I might have said it aloud, “O beauty of
+life, why art thou so often hidden?” And I had in mind the eternal years,
+though the newborn hour of victory was so passing sweet upon the hillside.
+
+And looking at the splendid river whose course was marked by the shining
+band of mist, I thought how deep the Lorelei was hidden in its timeless
+waters, though ’tis said she betrays but once those listening to her
+song. And long since, for the noise of battle, the hypnotic chanting of
+the Rhine-maidens lulling their nation to dreams of boundless might had
+not been heard. I thought, too, how the blood of the world’s armies had
+put out the circle of fire about Brünnhilde, though whence it was first
+kindled it may be again rekindled; and for all our dead—and theirs—in
+the middle of Europe there are, I know not how many, tens of millions
+to whom the fire-music is their light and heat, the river the symbol of
+their strength; and what to do with it all? Walhalla has been destroyed
+in the greatest roar of sound mortal ears have ever heard, but that
+which wrought its pillars and its walls is still there, and in other
+wide-doored mansions Wotan’s warriors may drink again deep cups of
+hydromel.
+
+Siegfried lies dead upon his bier, but Brünnhilde’s candle throws a
+light upon his face, and though Loge seems no longer at his post, it
+is believed he waits somewhere unseen, protecting, as best he may, the
+Walkyries’ unquiet sleep, until they wake and ride again, crying, “_Je
+ho, je te ho!_” inciting to battle and to sacrifice.
+
+And as nations always have the governments their mystical qualities
+create, in spite of the great defeat in the West and the solvent forces
+in the East, I thought, “Is anything really changed in Germany of that
+which makes each nation like only unto itself?” Old things may take new
+names, but, the blood-madness past, they will walk again the banks of
+their great river—listen once again to the Rhine-maidens, and Lorelei,
+combing her hair, will sing once more for them, while the wonder-working
+music that has so scorched us will draw again its circle. And the German
+people may be more portentous in defeat than when their armies were
+spilling over Europe—only, one who says this too soon will be stoned and
+one who thinks it not at all be deceived.
+
+Then from some distant church tower softly sounded the first noontide of
+peace, and, turning, I left the Germanies to their predestined fate. “He
+beheld and melted the nations,” and truly of them may be said “_Glück und
+Unglück wird Gesang_.”
+
+For to each one his own, and the power of rhythmic sound over the world’s
+will can no more be separated from that nation’s destinies than can
+certain inborn qualities of the French be separated from theirs. That
+pervading sense of style, that illuminating, stimulating art, their
+conversation, that incomparable arrangement of words, their prose; or,
+in the mystical realm, that bright and singular thing they denominate
+“_la Gloire_,” which one of my countrywomen[25] has written of in golden
+words, and that other peculiar and essential translation into habit and
+custom of the word “_honneur_,” and many more deathless qualities that
+make France what she is and not something else....
+
+Then I found myself following Laferrière over another diamond-set path
+of rustling autumn leaves, and we got into the motor and went down the
+hill into the beflagged and crowded town, drawn so brightly, yet so
+transiently, out of its antique obscurity.
+
+At the _popote_ many guests were assembled, among them three men of the
+Anglo-Saxon race, come to eat in Masevaux the first-fruits of victory,
+and later, not so very much later, perhaps that very night, they were to
+tell of it to the world, each seeming to have, as it were, the end of a
+telegraph wire cuddled in his pocket by his stylographic pen.
+
+Many, I knew not who they were, came in after lunch to salute the
+commandant, whose house and heart were wide open that day. Black-robed,
+tremulous women, youngish officers with very lined faces on which,
+over night-loss and night-grief, was written something at once soft
+and shining and eager; but, with all the coming and going, a strange
+new quiet pervaded everything. Noise had, for a time, gone from the
+border-world.
+
+Afterward we were taken up to see the room once lived in by Anna,
+the wife, or rather widow, of the Oberforster. In it was the most
+extraordinary piece of furniture, designed to occupy two sides of a
+corner, that I have ever seen. It was a divan, a narrow, hard divan, at
+right angles with itself and upholstered in mauve rep. Above the narrow
+seat and reaching nearly to the ceiling was a series of mirrors set in
+woodwork like many panes of glass, the mirror parts too high to see
+oneself in. On the floor near it was a hard, tasseled cushion of old-gold
+satin on which I am sure no foot had ever rested, for it seemed rather
+to belong to the dread family of bric-à-brac. On the divan was a small,
+woolen-lace cushion bearing the words “_nur ein Viertelstündchen_” in
+shaded silks.
+
+Voluptuous the divan was not, neither was it respectable, nor
+comfortable, nor practical, nor anything natural to a divan, but it
+doubtless represented some dim longing of the soul of her who bought and
+installed it, some formless inclination toward beauty, out of the daily
+round of the good housewife; perhaps even a “soul storm,” after the Ibsen
+manner, had so externalized itself. Who knows, or ever will know, or
+cares?
+
+The wide bed was of the newest and horridest of _art nouveau_, and over
+it was a spread of many pieces of coffee-colored machine-made lace put
+together with colored wools. There was a writing-table near the window
+at which you couldn’t write, for all the writing space was taken up with
+little drawers or tiny jutting-out shelves, and an imitation bronze
+vase, holding some faded artificial roses, was built into it, where
+the hand would naturally slip along when writing. Over it, between the
+windows, hung an illuminated verse, “_Allein soll ich denn reisen? die
+Heimat ist so schön._” From the Oberforster’s album some one took and
+presented to me a photograph of Anna, which I couldn’t connect with
+that room, a rather sharp-nosed, mild-eyed woman whose head was leaning
+against her husband’s head. And the husband is one among millions
+of husbands who lie in their graves, for whom the pleasant habit of
+existence is no more.
+
+Downstairs on their upright piano, in the corner of the dining-room, are
+those high piles of music of the masters, and much of it is arranged for
+four hands.
+
+In the afternoon a great weariness came upon me, and the light of victory
+seemed to pale, but I knew that it was only within myself, because of the
+long vigil in which I had burned both oil and wick. I stood listening
+for a while to the military bands in the Halle aux Blés and the Place du
+Marché, but the gorgeous fanfare of the trumpets reached me only dully,
+as from a great distance.
+
+Then many little boys, after the eternal manner of little boys, began to
+set off firecrackers, and the sudden noises hurt my ears.
+
+I went to my room, but was too wearied to compose myself to rest, and
+soon came out, chilly and wandering. The sun had set upon the square and
+something cold had began to come up from the earth; I seemed to have
+finished both joy and mourning. I thought that perhaps forever I would be
+alone, unable to partake of the world’s gladness.
+
+I could not remember, in that afternoon ebb of vitality, that with
+the evening hours would come rushing in the tide of nervous strength,
+bringing again warmth to my heart, light to my spirit, and that
+buoyantly I would be treading the _Via Triumphalis_ of this borderland.
+
+A little later in a blue twilight, bluer close to the earth where those
+many Sons of Victory pressed, I walked out with Laferrière past the
+ancient, evocative Ringelstein, along the Doller, and we called on a very
+charming woman who had also seen the war of 1870—Madame Caillaux. She
+gave us a perfect cup of tea and was flanked by no veteran, and she, the
+portion of whose youth and age had been war, was calm with the pleasant
+calm of those who harmoniously have sewed together the ends of life.
+
+When we came out a pale white moon had arisen over some black cedars
+planted near the door, and as we walked slowly back, saluted by blue-clad
+men, or standing aside to let munition-wagons rattle by, Laferrière told
+me of some of the glorious deeds of his comrades of the _popote_, though
+no word of himself.
+
+In the Place du Chapitre the populace was already gathered about the
+fountain of the stone flame. It was like looking at an old print,
+recording old victories and old rejoicings, together with the eternal
+hope of the people that new victories, unlike the old, may mean new
+things for them.
+
+I felt through my single being the surge of the generations, and against
+my hand the beat of the changeless human heart, forever quickened or
+retarded by the same things. Loving, hating, desiring, forgetting, and
+finally relinquishing its beat, because it must. Though I remembered that
+in all times there are men who prefer something else to life....
+
+In the evening Madame Mény gave a great dinner for the officers of the
+Mission, to which I was also bidden. Madame Mény is the daughter of
+Madame Chagué and lives next door to her mother in an ancestral home
+with high, sloping roof and deep windows, giving on the Place du Marché,
+overlooking the fountain, which I can’t see from my window. The officers
+wore all their decorations and even gloves, and I felt as a wren might
+feel among the birds of paradise, and I wished again that I had brought
+a good dress and something sparkling for my breast. When dinner was half
+through came Captain Bacquart from Paris, belated on that Belfort train,
+still at its old tricks. He was slightly condescending, as one might be
+coming from the City of Light to the dusky provinces, but everything
+he had to tell, even the things he had heard in the greatest solemnity
+from Ministers of State, had been grabbed by the Mission out of the air
+before he left Paris, and in addition everybody knew a lot of things
+he didn’t know, that had happened while he was on the way. But we did
+smile at the story of the routing out of a station-master, whose trust
+was train-schedules and lost articles rather than events, to be asked
+whether he knew if the armistice had been signed, by the species every
+station-master hates even in peace-times—that is to say, travelers—and
+“_Saperlotte!_” and “_Nom de Dieu!_” rose to the station vault when he
+found that _that_ was what they wanted him for!
+
+After dinner there was music and for a last time I heard Lavallée sing of
+“_la douce Annette_.” Then another officer whom I had not seen before,
+Lieutenant Ruchez, sang in a veiled but flooding voice many of Schumann’s
+songs. It began by the commandant asking for the “Two Grenadiers,” and
+for a time the old wounds ceased to burn, even though we thought of those
+many whose prayer had been “Bury me in the earth of France.” On that
+night of victory he sang, too, in his musician’s voice, “_Du meine Seele,
+du mein Herz_,” and “_Ich grölle nicht wenn auch das Herz mir bricht_,”
+and nobody found it strange. They knew how for all time lovers will
+tremble at the words, “_Ewig verlor’ nes Lieb_,” or in ecstasy cry out,
+“_Du meine Seele, du mein Herz_,” to the impulse of the immortal music.
+
+Afterward we sang the “Marseillaise” with further and deeper thought of
+those hosts who to its sound had gone up to a death of glory.
+
+Then M. Mény opened more champagne and each one drained a last time the
+red-gold hanap of victory.
+
+And many, many shades haunt these borderlands, the clash of spear on
+armor mingling with the roar of 75’s and 420’s.
+
+When we came out midnight was striking. The ancient square was dark and
+still where all the evening distorted forms had gesticulated in the flare
+of torches, crying of victory and, too, of freedom, the word I scarcely
+dare breathe, so strange and terrible may be its meaning.... Though what
+shall more deeply move us than the hope that the unborn inclination of
+our soul toward love in freedom shall find its being and its breath?...
+
+The commandant and his staff accompanied me a last time across the
+starless, moonless square to my dwelling, where there was a close
+handclasping of friends in victory, for had I not been caught up in the
+apotheosis of the Mission? I felt for a moment, as I stood on the broad
+steps, like a figure in the background of some great allegorical painting.
+
+For these men, as for me, the “moving finger having writ, was moving on.”
+Soon they would go from the hillside to the plain they had so long looked
+down upon. And the scroll of their history there is tightly rolled, nor
+can any man say what is written on it.
+
+But this they knew, and with a point of sadness, that their work of
+intimate companionship, of trust, of hope and dolor shared in the valleys
+of St.-Amarin, Masevaux, and Dannemarie was already in the past. And all
+endings are sad, even those of victory.
+
+The next morning, in a pale, chill, shifting fog, through which I had
+glimpses of _camions_ full of shivering, velvet-bodiced, black-bowed
+children _en route_ for the Belfort train to Paris, and huddled veterans
+bound the same way, I passed forever from Masevaux, as a wind that goeth
+and returneth not.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] Permission.
+
+[2] “We’ll get them,” and “we’ve got them.”
+
+[3] _Prisonnier de Guerre_ (Prisoner of War).
+
+[4] NOTE.—As far back as the end of the sixteenth century, there is, in
+the annals of Masevaux, mention of the tanneries of the Braun family.
+
+[5] Officers’ mess.
+
+[6]
+
+    And the forgetful trooper
+    Who lets the hour pass
+    And dallies too long, alas!
+    Will be punished by his under-officer.
+
+[7] The word “ballon” comes from the patois, _bolong_, _bois long_, which
+took its name from the great forest, “La Selva Vosagus,” once covering
+the Alsatian plain and its mountains.
+
+[8]
+
+    Like to the hawk
+    That on auroral clouds
+    Doth rest his velvet wings,
+    Looking for prey,
+    So hovers my song.
+
+[9] Hilaire Belloc, _The Road to Rome_.
+
+[10] A letter from Laferrière of November 20th, recounting national
+events, and the breaking up of the little group, says also: “_La
+cafetière, la fameuse cafetière a une large felure qui fait craindre sa
+fin prochaine. Ce serait un symbole?_”
+
+[11] In spite of the Tower (Turenne was a La Tour d’Auvergne) the Roses
+will bloom.
+
+[12] After the signing of the armistice and the French occupation of the
+two provinces in their entirety, another reorganization became necessary.
+To each of the three divisions of Alsace-Lorraine was sent a _Commissaire
+de la République_—the Commandant (I had almost said my Commandant)
+Poulet was given charge of Upper Alsace with residence in the ancient
+and comely town of Colmar. To Lower Alsace with residence at Strasbourg
+was appointed M. le Conseiller d’Etat Maringer with the title of High
+Commissioner, and to M. Mirman, the celebrated Mayor of Nancy, was given
+Lorraine with residence at Metz.
+
+[13] Edouard Schuré, _L’Alsace Française, Rêves et Combats_.
+
+[14] AMERICAN COMMUNIQUÉS
+
+                                                        _Tuesday morning._
+
+This morning the First Army resumed the attack. In spite of desperate
+opposition our troops have forced a crossing of the Meuse at Brieulles
+and at Cléry-le-Petit. They are now developing a new line in the heavily
+wooded and very difficult terrain on the heights east of the river
+between these two points.
+
+On the entire front the enemy is opposing our advance with heavy
+artillery and machine-gun fire, notwithstanding which we are making
+excellent progress. The west bank of the Meuse, as far north as opposite
+Pouilly, lies in our hands.
+
+In the course of several successful raids in the Voivre, detachments
+of the Second Army have penetrated the enemy’s trenches, destroying
+material, dugouts, and emplacements, and capturing prisoners.
+
+                                                        _Tuesday evening._
+
+The First Army under Lieut.-Gen. Liggett has continued its success.
+Crossing the river south of Dun-sur-Meuse under a heavy artillery fire
+which frequently wrecked the new constructed bridges, the troops of
+Maj.-Gen. Hines’s Corps fought their way up the slopes of the east bank.
+
+Breaking the enemy’s strong resistance, they captured Hills 292, 260,
+Liny-devant-Dun, and drove him from the Bois de Châtillon.
+
+During the afternoon our gains in this sector were extended northward;
+Dun-sur-Meuse was captured and our line pushed forward a mile beyond
+that town, as far as the village of Nièlly. The troops of Maj.-Gen.
+Sunmerall’s Corps reached the river at Cesse and Luzy and mopped up the
+forest of Jaulnay.
+
+The important road center of Beaumont fell before our victorious forces,
+who pushed on to the Bois de l’Hospice, two miles north of that town,
+capturing in their advance the village of Létanne.
+
+At Beaumont we liberated five hundred French citizens, who welcomed our
+soldiers as deliverers.
+
+The advance of the past two days has carried our line to points within
+five miles of the Sedan-Metz railroad, the main line of communications of
+the German armies. Between Beaumont and Bar Maj.-Gen. Dickman’s Corps,
+in close liaison with the French Fourth Army on its left, pushed forward
+under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire through the rugged forest
+areas beyond Stonne.
+
+The villages of Yoncq, La Basace, and Stonne were taken.
+
+We have taken to-day west of the Meuse 51 additional guns, making a total
+of more than 150 since November 1st.
+
+Thirty of our bombing planes executed a successful raid on Mouzon
+and Raucourt this morning, dropping over two tons of bombs with good
+effect. Reconnaissance and pursuit squadrons carried out many successful
+missions, machine-gunning enemy troops and greatly assisting the advance
+of our troops.
+
+Seventeen enemy planes were shot down and two enemy balloons burned.
+Seven of our planes are missing.
+
+[15] And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet,
+the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where
+the Barbarian may be feared no more.—ST. AUGUSTINE, _Upon the Barbarian
+Persecution_.
+
+[16] “S’Strassburger Münster isch s’höschet, s’Friburgers’ dickscht, aver
+S’Thanner s’fienecht.”
+
+[17] Some of the jokes that were Hansi’s undoing were exceedingly
+harmless, as, for instance, the domestic revelations of Frau Professor
+Kugelberg, who answers to the correspondence column the following: “No,
+I never throw away the old trousers of my husband. I have had great
+success with cutting them skilfully and employing the least worn parts,
+in constructing for my young daughters charming and dainty corset-covers,
+which have the merit also of being very inexpensive. Trimmed with white
+ribbons, these corset-covers have quite a virginal air, but also with
+apple-green and cherry-red bows they can be made most attractive.” As for
+“Professor Knatschke” he is now a classic. The Alsatians have, in a very
+marked degree, what one might call the wit of border peoples, the tongue
+often being the only weapon left them.
+
+[18] Gilles Sifferlen, _La Vallée de St.-Amarin_, 1908.
+
+[19] Fairies: kindred to the “green people” of Ireland.
+
+[20] “I will have thee, I will have thee, I will have thee.”
+
+[21] “To play bridge at Limoges” means that an officer is temporarily—or
+permanently—retired before the age limit. “_Être limogé_,” to be limoged,
+is another familiar form.
+
+[22] The next morning I learned that Sérin, who had been “ready for
+anything, _et comment_,” had gathered together, being chief of the
+Gendarme Service, those of his men who were watching over the slumbers of
+Masevaux and quite simply “opened wine” for them, drinking solemnly again
+to “_la Mistie_,” while they as solemnly drank to the health of their
+respected chief. So do great hours fulfil themselves in little ways.
+
+[23] Victor Hugo, _Alsace et Lorraine_, 1872.
+
+    Thy people will live,
+    But thine empire topples, Germany!...
+
+[24] Battery B, 42d Artillery C.A.C.
+
+[25] Edith Wharton.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 ***
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+    margin: auto 5%;
+}
+
+/* Illustration classes */
+.illowp100 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp48 {width: 48%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp48 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp56 {width: 56%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp56 {width: 100%;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 ***</div>
+
+<h1>ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD</h1>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="deco1" style="max-width: 2.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/deco1.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Books by</span><br>
+EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="max-width: 20em;">
+
+<ul class="allsmcap">
+<li>ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD</li>
+<li>MY LORRAINE JOURNAL</li>
+<li>DIPLOMATIC DAYS</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, NEW YORK<br>
+[<span class="smcap">Established 1817</span>]</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus01" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THE RIVER DOLLER AT MASEVAUX</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">ALSACE<br>
+<span class="smaller">IN RUST AND GOLD</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><i>by</i><br>
+EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY<br>
+<span class="smaller allsmcap">[MRS. NELSON O’SHAUGHNESSY]</span><br>
+<span class="smaller"><span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF</span><br>
+<i>“A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico”<br>
+“My Lorraine Journal” Etc.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter titlepage illowp56" id="deco2" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/deco2.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="titlepage">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br>
+<span class="smaller">NEW YORK AND LONDON</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Alsace in Rust and Gold</span></p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">Copyright 1920, by Harper &amp; Brothers<br>
+Printed in the United States of America<br>
+Published March, 1920<br>
+B U</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr smaller">CHAP.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PREFACE">ix</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The journey there</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">All Saints’ Day, November, 1918</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Fête des Morts, November, 1918</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III">23</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thann and old Thann</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV">34</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Ballon d’Alsace</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V">43</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">La popote</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI">55</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The houses of the chanoinesses</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII">65</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Luncheon at Bitschwiller. The mission in
+    residence at St.-Amarin. Saint-Odile</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VIII">81</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The “Field of Lies” and Laimbach</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IX">100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">X.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The valley of the Thur</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#X">110</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The re-Gallicizing of Alsace</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XI">120</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Hartmannswillerkopf</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XII">131</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“Les Crêtes.” “Déjeuner” at Camp Wagram. The
+    Freundstein and its phantoms</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XIII">140</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Return to Masevaux</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XIV">156</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The vigil of the armistice</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XV">159</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XVI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Dies gloriæ</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XVI">175</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The River Doller at Masevaux</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg" colspan="2"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Fourth of July, 1918, in Alsace</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc"><i>Facing page</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02">14</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Place du Marché, Masevaux, July 14, 1918</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">14</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thann and Its Vineyards</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">34</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Commandant Poulet</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">56</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thann. The Cathedral Portal</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thann. La Vieille Tour</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">114</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">American Troops at Masevaux Celebrating the
+    Fourth of July</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">132</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">French Troops at Masevaux Celebrating the
+    Fall of the Bastile, July 14th</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">132</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">America and Alsace</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">172</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Strangely caught up out of the rut and routine of
+Paris war-work, not even choosing my direction (the
+Fates did that), contributing, however, the eternal readiness
+of my soul, which the poet says is all, I was conveyed,
+as on a magic carpet, to the blue valleys and the
+rust and gold and jasper hills of Alsace, where the color
+is laid on thick, thick. There I was one, during many
+historic days, of the delightful group of blue-clad,
+scarred, decorated officers forming the French Military
+Mission, which since the autumn of 1914 had administered
+the little reconquered triangle of Alsace and
+planted in it the seed for the re-Gallicizing of Alsace-Lorraine.
+It was a bit of French history in the making,
+which detached itself quite peculiarly free from the mass
+of war happenings, somewhat as a medallion from that
+against which it is placed.</p>
+
+<p>My little book shows how humanly and simply the
+men of the French Military Mission, accustomed to
+supreme events, together with a woman from over the
+seas, lived through those thirteen historic days preceding
+the armistice. It will perhaps be worth the reader’s
+while—I mean the nice, bright, perceptive reader’s
+while—for mostly the throbbing, high-colored beauty of
+Alsace is veiled by dusty, argumentative, statistical
+pamphlets, so many of which are printed, so few of
+which are read. I once saw a great building full of such,
+and dozens of them were presented me for my sins,
+though I had never thought to read another book on
+Alsace, much less to write one. I see once again how
+foolish is the man or woman who says to the fountain,
+“I will never more drink of thy water.”</p>
+
+<p>In this record there are no polemics and no statistics.
+I have added nothing to each day’s happenings, which
+run along as life is apt to run along, even in supreme
+moments, and, Heaven help me, I have concealed nothing.
+It is because of all this that perhaps those who,
+like myself, have wept much and laughed much in their
+lives, will not ungladly accompany me to a corner on the
+sorrowful and glorious chart of the autumn of 1918.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Edith O’Shaughnessy.</span></p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Paris, 33 rue de l’Université</span>,<br>
+<i>February, 1919</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE JOURNEY THERE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And this is what a woman was thinking, as she
+walked the platform of the Gare de l’Est at seven
+o’clock on a foggy October morning of 1918, waiting to
+take the train to the front.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, when trials and tribulations await us in every
+land, when every dearest affection is accompanied by its
+related grief and every achievement by the phantom of
+its early hope—why this illimitable ardor of the soul,
+pressing us forward into new combinations?” ...</p>
+
+<p>A few days before I had learned that Masevaux, the
+capital of that small triangle of Alsace, reconquered
+since the August of 1914, would be my journey’s term.
+Looking in the guide-book, I found Masevaux at the
+very end—on page four hundred and ninety, to be precise,
+and the book has but four hundred and ninety-nine
+pages in all—and it had seemed far, far, and the
+world an immensity, with few corners for the heart. I
+have realized since that it was only the chill of the unknown
+into which I was to venture, drawn inevitably as
+steel to the magnet or the needle to the north, by that
+very ardor of the soul....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span></p>
+
+<p>I had not slept at all the night before—I never do
+when I am to take an early train to pass out into new
+ways—and the somewhat dispiriting influences of “that
+little hour before dawn” were still with me as I stepped
+into my compartment and took my seat, while a captain
+of dragoons lifted my small leather valise and my not
+large Japanese straw basket to the rack. Settling myself,
+a bit chilly, into the depths of my fur coat, slipped
+on over my uniform, I looked out upon the throng of
+officers and soldiers, as many Americans as French,
+perhaps even more.</p>
+
+<p>Standing near my window was a blue-clad colonel,
+with many decorations and a black band on his arm.
+He was carrying a small bouquet of what seemed like
+wild-flowers, and he embraced in farewell a woman
+in deepest black who would bear no more children....</p>
+
+<p>Then a very young, crape-clad mother, carrying
+several pasteboard boxes, with three small children
+clinging to her skirts, hurried down the platform to get
+into a third-class compartment.</p>
+
+<p>But with it all I was conscious that the blue and khaki
+war was receding, its strange deeds, which had seemed
+cut in such high relief, were even then blurred against
+the red background, the background itself fading.
+“Eyes look your last, arms take your last embrace”
+of the world horror, the world beauty, where sorrow
+has so often been above sorrow and where many “chariots
+have been burned to smoke.” ...</p>
+
+<p>In the compartment are five French officers with dark
+rings under their eyes. I don’t know whether it is
+wounds or the effects of the <i>perm</i>.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Anyway, they
+almost immediately take attitudes inviting slumber. A
+young woman all in purple, whether third or fourth
+mourning I know not (it’s well done, though it couldn’t
+pass unnoticed), sits by one of the windows and waggles<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+a short-vamped, very-high-heeled, bronze-shoed foot and
+rattles a gold vanity-box. From the neighboring compartment
+came classic expressions: “Can you beat it?”
+and “Search me.” My heart salutes the Stars and
+Stripes. The whistle blows, and the train starts for the
+very end of the guide-book.</p>
+
+<p><i>8.30.</i>—Read the masterly editorial of Jacques Bainville
+in <i>L’Action Française</i>, “Où est le piège?” (“Where
+is the snare?”) while going through the ugliest suburbs
+in the world, inclosing the most beautiful city in the
+world. And more beautiful than ever is Paris in uniform.
+Her delicate gray streets are mosaicked in horizon-blue,
+burnished with khaki, aglitter with decorations.
+(Oh, those men of the alert, expectant step, or
+those other broken ones dragging themselves along on
+canes and crutches!) Who has not seen Paris in uniform
+knows not her beauty, bright and terrible as an
+army in array; enchantment for the eye, bitter-sweet
+wine for the soul. And again, who has not seen her
+violet-nighted, black-girdled by the river, wearing for
+gems a rare emerald or ruby or sapphire light, and
+silent in her dark, enfolding beauty, knows her not.
+So lovers will remember her, and those whose sons are
+gone.</p>
+
+<p><i>9.30.</i>—Looking out of the window on fields and
+forests and groves. White-stemmed, yellow-leaved
+birches burn like torches in a pale, thin mist. The
+plowed fields are black with crows; it would seem to
+be a good year for them. We are due at Belfort at
+3.35, but a large-paunched, very loquacious man blocking
+the corridor—his voice has not ceased since we
+started—tells a fellow-passenger that, with the delays
+caused by the shifting of troops and material, we’ll be
+lucky if we get there by seven.</p>
+
+<p><i>10.30.</i>—Rampillon with its beautiful old church, having
+two rows of Gothic windows and several medieval<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+towers, seen from a foreground of smooth tilled fields.
+Over the green and yellow and brown world stretches
+a silver heaven, tarnished with yellowish-gray clouds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Longueville.</i>—Interminable trains of French and
+American troops cross one another. The French train
+has various barometrical indications of war-weather
+in chalk. <i>Guillaume, O là là, là là</i>; and the favorite
+and unrepeatable word —— mingles with <i>Le plaisir
+d’aller à Paris</i>, <i>O les belles filles</i>, <i>Adieu à jamais, Boches</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The cars containing American troops are inarticulate.
+They haven’t been at it long enough to express
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The handsome young officer next me opens conversation
+by asking me for my <i>L’Action Française</i>. Having
+previously torn out the article of Jacques Bainville,
+and wiped the windows with the rest, I pass it over to
+him with a smile. It wasn’t tempting.</p>
+
+<p>A group of Americans are standing in the corridor.
+I hear, “I’d like to burn the Rhine.” And the answer:
+“I don’t care what you burn, but I don’t ever want
+to see the Statue of Liberty from <i>this</i> side again. Me
+for home. There’s more in it in one week in the clinic
+in little old Chicago than here in a month, in spite of
+the hunks of material. Leaving some to die or bandaging
+men in a hurry that you’ll never see again, and
+dead tired all the time. No, siree! No war thrills for
+me.” And then, all being devotees of Esculapius, they
+fall to talking about diseases, civil as well as military.</p>
+
+<p>The loquacious party (he hasn’t stopped even to
+take breath) says to his companion that he’s going to
+surprise his wife, who thinks he’s in Paris. Whatever
+else she’s enjoying, she must be enjoying the silence,
+and I do hope he’ll make a lot of noise when he opens
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>The young French officer next me with the <i>Légion
+d’Honneur</i>, <i>Croix de Guerre</i>, four palms and two stars,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>
+tells me he is with the Americans at Langres, which is
+<i>camouflé</i> these war-days as A.P.O. 714, the ancient
+hill-town of the Haute-Marne being the setting for the
+celebrated “University” of the A.E.F.</p>
+
+<p><i>11 o’clock, Romilly.</i>—Near here, in the old Abbey of
+Scellières, was buried Voltaire, <i>l’enfant gâté du monde
+qu’il gâta</i> (“spoiled child of the world that he spoiled”),
+having been refused ecclesiastical burial in Paris. And
+from here he journeyed in his dust to the Panthéon.</p>
+
+<p>At St.-Mesmin the sun came out, and the dull,
+plowed fields were suddenly spread with great covers,
+as of old-gold velvet, tucked in about the slender feet
+of pine forests.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this pleasant soil of France has many histories,
+and St.-Mesmin is where the priest Maximin
+(you see whence the name) was sent by the Bishop of
+Troyes to implore the mercy of Attila in favor of the
+great city. For answer the terrible king of the Huns
+put him to death. Against the sky is the tower of a
+twelfth-century church. A collection of objects in a
+field that I thought were plows turned out to be
+cannon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Troyes.</i>—Not a glimpse of the cathedral. Immeasurably
+long troop-train fills the station on one side of
+us. On the other a gorgeous (it’s the only word for it)
+American Red Cross train. Pressed against the windows,
+lying or sitting, were pale men of my race. I
+waved and smiled, and languid hands went up in
+answer. The box cars on the other side were filled
+with blue-clad men. Over the doors were green
+boughs, on the sides chalked portraits of the Kaiser,
+<i>Dur à croquer</i>, <i>Mort à Guillaume</i>, etc. And everywhere
+the once so familiar <i>On les aura</i> is converted into <i>Nous
+les avons</i>.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Through the slits in the top of the cars
+were faces of <i>poilus</i> looking out, just as one sees cattle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+looking out; then a long line of other box cars with
+American, khaki-capped heads also looking out of the
+slits in the top, while the side doors too were crowded
+with sitting, standing, leaning doughboys. Again I
+waved from my window, and every cap was lifted.</p>
+
+<p>There was a young man standing at the door of some
+sort of a refrigerator car, and he wore a wonderful goat-skin
+coat. Being so near my window I spoke to him,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a fine coat you are wearing.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you in the spring,” was the prompt answer.
+“They’ve just given them out to us. You try living next
+to the cold storage.” He then proceeded to blow into
+some mottled fingers, after which he pulled a long tuft
+of hair from his coat. “I’m molting,” he added, as
+he held it up, “and winter’s coming.”</p>
+
+<p>And he didn’t know whence he had come nor whither
+he was going. Then either his train moved or mine did—I
+couldn’t tell which—and I saw him no more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vandœuvres-sur-Barse.</i>—Wood, wood, piled high on
+every kind of wheeled thing. Forests from which it
+had been cut showing sharp and thin, fringing the gold-brown
+fields under the luminous noonday heaven. And
+here for a moment the green was so delicate and the yellow
+so tender, that I had a fleeting illusion of spring as
+I looked out.</p>
+
+<p>Then I fell to talking with some young officers of the
+131st Artillery from Texas, but nothing that I remember.
+They had made no impression on France, neither did
+France seem to have made any impression on them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bar-sur-Aube.</i>—Old houses, old walls, blue hills, a
+white road leading over one of them. Strange church
+tower, with a round, many-windowed top, and in each
+window hangs an old bell. A great trainload of American
+infantry “going up,” the station, too, flooded with
+khaki, and another train passed crowded with <i>poilus</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+evidently <i>en permission</i>, making rather fundamental
+toilets.</p>
+
+<p>And around about Bar, as we slipped out, was a silver-vaulted
+world of terra-cotta and purple hills, green and
+brown fields, silver hayricks, silver sheep grazing near,
+and warm, brindled cattle, many green-painted bee-hives,
+and fruit trees trained against pink walls. Gentle
+slopes, later to become the Alps, appeared, and beech
+forests, like very worn India shawls, clung to them, and
+a row of nearby poplars had each its nimbus of yellow
+light.</p>
+
+<p>About this time, having had a hasty cup of tea at
+six, I began to be so hungry that the luster went from the
+landscape and my eyes received nothing more. I didn’t
+care whether the talkative man gave his wife a surprise
+or not, and the two Americans of the Texan Artillery
+section had long since also ceased to interest me, when I
+heard a “nosy” voice saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Gosh! I tell you, boys, there’s big money to be made
+over here after the war. All you have to do is to hang
+out the sign, ‘American Dentist,’ and your waiting-room’ll
+burst.” I sat down and nearly slept by the side
+of the six-foot dozing handsome officer, with the beautiful
+blue uniform, and yellow pipings on his trousers
+and cap, and five service and three wound stripes, and
+the number 414 on his collar, besides a lot of decorations
+on his breast.</p>
+
+<p><i>1.30, Chaumont.</i>—Sitting in the dining-car, finishing
+an excellent lunch. Of course, in common with the
+rest of the world, I’ve heard a good deal about Chaumont,
+but I can say that on the word of honor of an
+honest woman the only thing I saw in khaki in that
+famous station of the A.E.F. Headquarters was an
+emaciated Y.M.C.A. man about five feet four inches
+high, with an umbrella and a straw basket.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I’m familiar with the phrases, “Chaumont<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+has put its foot down,” “Chaumont won’t have it,”
+“Everything will be decided at Chaumont”; and once,
+entering a Paris restaurant, I heard the words, “It’s
+all Chaumont’s fault.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the fog closed in, a thick, impenetrable fog, and
+that’s all I know or ever will know of Chaumont, as I’m
+going back to Paris <i>via</i> Nancy. So be it.</p>
+
+<p>On a nearby new railroad embankment, the figure of
+a <i>poilu</i>—the classic figure—the coat pinned back from
+his knees, bayoneted rifle over his shoulder, loomed up
+immeasurably large in the fog, while he watched the
+labors of a lusty, husky set of German prisoners, the
+familiar “P.G.”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> stamped on their backs. A little
+farther along was another laughing, rosy-faced group
+of four of the same, watched over by one of their own
+under-officers. I could only see his field-gray back
+stamped with his P.G., but as his men were so unrestrainedly
+hilarious, there is no reason to suppose that
+<i>he</i> was frowning.</p>
+
+<p><i>4 o’clock, Culmont-Chalindrey.</i>—Already three hours
+late. Fog-enveloped train of box cars filled with slightly
+wounded doughboys peering through the narrow slit
+at the top, bandaged eyes, noses, the same kind of
+groups looking out of the door. Suddenly everything
+seems dreary. I am tired, and wonder why, oh! why I
+came, and if the war is going to last forever and forever,
+and it is the hour of the day when those who have not
+slept the night before know profound discouragement and
+the noonday devil has ceased to walk, flicking his whip.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vitrey.</i>—Station full of Americans and wood—wood—wood,
+as if every tree in France had been cut. “Wood
+by the pound is how you buy it over here, all the same,”
+disdainfully remarked the Minnesotan artilleryman
+serving in the Texan regiment, as we stood looking out
+of the window.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span></p>
+
+<p>And if the journey down seems long, remember that
+life, too, is made up of wearisome and long things—that
+it is indeed but a pilgrimage, and mostly through
+a land more desert than this of Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>And in the end this book may justify itself, though
+of that I know as little as you.</p>
+
+<p>At Vitrey there is a detachment of mustard-tinted,
+khaki-clad, red-<i>checchiaed</i> Moroccan <i>tirailleurs</i>, exceedingly
+exotic-appearing, sitting on their accoutrement or
+leaning against the bare scaffolding of a new addition
+to the station. There came into my mind what an
+unwed friend told me of a conversation with a dying
+<i>tirailleur</i>, to whom she was giving a <i>tisane</i> in a long,
+dim, hospital room at two o’clock in the morning. He
+looked at her and said suddenly in his strange French:
+“Woman, I know thy look; thou and many like thee
+have not been embraced in love. In my village thou
+wouldst be a grandmother” (I had never thought of
+her as old, but the <i>tirailleur</i> knew that, as the men
+of his race rated women, she was old—old, and no one
+would have followed her to the well.) He continued:
+“If no man is to enfold thee, why not be as those of the
+great white coifs, who have given themselves to Allah?
+They have not thy look.” Then he went into delirium
+and cried out in his own tongue and picked at his sheet,
+and when she came that way again he was dead.</p>
+
+<p><i>6 P.M., Vesoul Station.</i>—Writing by the light that
+comes in from the gas-jet. Dim American forms silhouetted
+in the great station. Partake of the loneliness
+that possesses the soul of American youth in France
+on a foggy autumn night. One of them said to me to-day,
+with a curious, dulled look in his eye, a brooding,
+neurasthenic eye, “I’m the kind that gets killed the last
+day of the war.”</p>
+
+<p>Then a presence apparent only by the light of his
+cigarette, a being with an accent not immediately placeable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+half cockney, half Middle-West, calls out, “Say,
+does anybody know when we pull into Belfort?”</p>
+
+<p>It had, all the same, something of confidence-inspiring,
+so I briskly chirped up:</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, in an hour or two or three.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I took the eight-o’clock train from Paris last
+night.”</p>
+
+<p>Chorus: “You mean this morning?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean last night, and going ever since.”</p>
+
+<p>“What have you been doing in between times?”</p>
+
+<p>“Going, going,” he answered, casually, “and as you
+see, going still!”</p>
+
+<p>“How did you manage to get on this train?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know. There I was and here I am, and God
+knows where my kit is. I’m a flier, and I’ve got to have
+my things,” he ended, rather irritably, and then there
+was another conversation about “burning the Rhine.”</p>
+
+<p>After interminable hours—two of them—we came to
+Lure, and everybody seemed to be getting out, even the
+woman in purple, and there was a fumbling with pocket-lamps
+and the voice of my country crying, “Where’s
+that d—— door, anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man who started last night came into my
+compartment as the train jerked out of the station, and
+he was a Canadian aviator <i>en route</i> for the big camp of
+the Royal Independent Air Corps at Chatenoir. Before
+the war he had been a chartered accountant. “But,”
+he said, “once in the air, never again can I sit at a desk,
+crushed in by four walls.” And he told stories of hair-breadth
+escapes of himself and his comrades, and of
+combats in the air—once he had had his knee broken—and
+then he suddenly cried out in a sharp voice: “God!
+I’m tired! Somebody let me know if we ever get there,”
+and flung himself in a corner, and went to sleep, I hope.</p>
+
+<p>A young American officer standing smoking in the
+corridor, with whom I had sat at lunch, turned on his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+pocket-lamp for an instant during the ensuing silence,
+and said, “Do you mind if I come in?” Then, in the
+pitch darkness, lighting one cigarette from the other,
+and very lonely, I think, he almost immediately began
+to talk about himself, and his story might be called the
+story of the young man who was and wasn’t married.</p>
+
+<p>Stripped of non-essentials, it was this: He had become
+engaged at a “co-ed.” school, as he called it, some
+years before, and when he was drafted, in the possible
+event of his being ordered abroad, the twain decided
+to get married instead of waiting a few more years.
+One Sunday morning in November they hunted up a
+clergyman and the knot was tied. They then had lunch
+at the station and she took her train and he went back
+to his camp. She was an army nurse and he was in the
+Engineers.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as inclination alone could have caused them to
+unite (there wasn’t the ghost of another reason apparent;
+they hadn’t even mentioned the matter to their families),
+the sequel of the story becomes somewhat interesting;
+in fact, quite incomprehensible, let us say, to the Latin;
+even I myself was a bit muddled as to the whereforeness
+of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Well, to continue. The next time they meet is when
+Fate, not quite unmindful of them, sends him as instructor
+to a camp in the Middle West on the outskirts
+of the very town where her people live, and she goes to
+spend a three days’ leave with them.</p>
+
+<p>The not-too-eager and certainly not-over-inventive
+bridegroom (whatever combinations may have been
+in his mind, neither he nor history records) gets a few
+hours’ leave and goes to spend Sunday at the home of
+his bride.</p>
+
+<p>I begin to breathe. But not at all. Her people,
+innocent as the new moon of the marriage, ask a few
+neighbors in for lunch—to make it pleasant for them.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+The bride was to return that very same afternoon to her
+hospital. They did walk to the station (under the same
+umbrella, I hope) and there they said good-by.</p>
+
+<p>“It was what you might call a quiet wedding,” I
+hazarded at this stage, and it was too dark to see if he
+caught the point. Please bear in mind that this was a
+marriage of inclination; no other explanation, I repeat,
+being possible. And the luncheon took place the end
+of January.</p>
+
+<p>The next time the situation seems about to clear up
+is in the golden month of August, she having been
+transferred to the military hospital near the camp to
+which he, in the meantime, had been transferred as
+instructor. It seemed providential and again I breathe,
+thinking, “Love will find a way.” Not at all. The bride
+rings him up the Sabbath morning after his arrival
+(Sunday is evidently a bad day for that young man)
+and tells him her orders take her to Camp Sill that night.
+The next day he gets orders to report for overseas duty,
+and here we sit in the dark, on the outskirts of Belfort!
+He breaks the silence later, with a certain eagerness in
+his voice (not, however, for his distant bride, who, I
+also gather, still bears her maiden name): “I do hope if
+we beat them I get a chance to go into Germany with
+the troops. I’ve wandered all my life [he’s between
+twenty-five and thirty] and sometimes I wonder how
+I’ll take to living in one place and bringing up a family.”</p>
+
+<p>In the dark I wondered, too.</p>
+
+<p><i>Later, much later.</i>—To-morrow, All Saints’ Day, there
+will be some crowding of the heavens, and the day
+after, the Feast of the Dead, all France will be a-hurrying
+to her graves.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II<br>
+<span class="smaller">ALL SAINTS’ DAY, NOVEMBER, 1918</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Evening.</i>—Masevaux, a town of old fountains and
+old inns with charming old signs hanging out, the
+pebbly Doller running through it under ancient, balconied
+houses, and over all hanging faint odors of its
+century-old tanneries. A long day, but not too long.</p>
+
+<p>Punctually at eight-thirty I had descended the flashy
+stairway of the “Tonneau d’Or” at Belfort to find the
+officer sent to meet me finishing his coffee and reading
+the morning papers, always comforting these days.</p>
+
+<p>In a thin fog, we start out of town, passing under the
+antique high wall of the castle against the rock of which
+“The Lion” has been carved. Now all has been done
+that it is humanly possible to do with granite and a
+lion, but of that more another time—perhaps. I can’t
+stop now except to say that the hand that fashioned it
+fashioned also the Statue of Liberty in New York
+harbor.</p>
+
+<p>We meet, just out of Belfort, a funeral procession—three
+coffins, two draped with the Tricolor, one with
+the Stars and Stripes. Making the sign of the cross, I
+commended three souls to Heaven. I always remember,
+accompanying a beloved one of my blood to his narrow
+dwelling, how sweet, how very sweet, it was to see the
+gesture of that sign, and the lifted hats of those we met,
+saluting him on his last journey. Though I do not care
+inordinately how or when or where I lose my flesh, that
+much I would like done to me—in passing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span></p>
+
+<p>Nestled in the corner of a broad, sloping field was a
+cemetery, a new cemetery, with French and American
+flags flying from its crowded graves, and many men were
+busy digging, and we heard the crunch of shovels in
+cold, gravelly earth as we passed, and yet I thought how
+well, how very well, the soldier sleeps!...</p>
+
+<p>We were on the flat road that leads to Cernay, where
+the Germans have lain intrenched since the beginning
+of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Shifting masses of horizon-blue, velvety in the thin
+mist, appear, disappear down white roads, between fields
+of barbed wire and against horizons of rusty beeches.
+In the villages black-robed women and children and old
+men are coming out of rose-colored churches or standing
+by elaborate, very decorative rose-colored fountains.
+There is the distant sound of cannon. It is again the
+front.</p>
+
+<p>At Masevaux, I find myself drawing up under some
+yellowing lindens in front of the building of the Military
+Mission—once the German <i>Kommandantur</i>, in turn
+once the nave of the old church of the Abbey of Masevaux.
+I walk over a rich carpet of rustling leaves to
+the door, and am shown up the broad, stone stairway
+of an immaculately kept building.</p>
+
+<p>Commandant Poulet having been called that morning
+to St.-Amarin, I am taken into a charming corner room
+hung with a wall-paper that might have been designed
+by Hansi, where a young, light-haired man with dark
+rings under his eyes, who knows both battles and desks,
+was sitting at a big table.</p>
+
+<p>We looked at each other, I must confess, with some
+curiosity, though of the politest. I, to see what the
+Military Mission might be going to offer, but prepared
+to be very easily and very much pleased, he, doubtless,
+to see what had been “wished on” them for the next
+week. It <i>might</i> so easily have been awful, instead of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+a niceish lady who has both wept and laughed, and known
+many lands and many men. He asks me what I would
+like to do that morning. Not having the ghost of an
+idea what there is to do, I answer, “Everything is interesting,”
+and give a somewhat free Gallicization of
+“beauty lieth in the eye of the beholder.” This was received
+approvingly, even hopefully, and he tells me that
+in the afternoon I am to attend a ceremony in the
+military cemetery at Moosch, in another valley.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus02" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1918, IN ALSACE</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus03" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>PLACE DU MARCHÉ, MASEVAUX, JULY 14, 1918</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>About this time I begin to remember that it is “La
+Toussaint,” and I say that if possible I should like to
+go to church. This, too, is encouragingly easy and I am
+turned over to an officer whose wife and two children
+have been in Brussels for four years, he himself a deserter
+from the German army.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached the church, built of <i>grès rose</i>,
+evidently and happily, from its abundance, the building
+stone of this colorful corner of the world, and which can
+take on the loveliest of <i>patines</i> in even a generation or
+two, I find it overflowing with the faithful, many blue
+men standing on its pink steps. The curé, followed, I
+hope, by his flock, was off on a longish sermon, and for
+a good half-hour I was washed and blown about on a
+sea of mixed metaphor, though it did not seem too long,
+for mind and imagination were flinging themselves about
+reconquered lands and border peoples, and I only really
+“came to,” so to speak, when a great and splendid
+organ sounded and a deep, harmonious choir of men’s
+voices joined it. Then I knew I was indeed on the
+frontier, where music lingers, and amorously it would
+seem, near the last of the mad, Romantic peoples.</p>
+
+<p>When we passed out there was the noise of guns and
+everybody was looking up at little white balls of shrapnel
+unrolling themselves about some black specks in the blue,
+blue sky. It was the familiar firing on German airplanes.</p>
+
+<p>Then I was led to this charming old house, which is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+one of six placed at right angles, on two sides of the
+Place du Chapitre. It proved to be part of the old
+convent, done over by Kléber when he cultivated the
+arts of peace rather than those of war. It belongs to
+four agreeable sisters, the Demoiselles Braun, whose
+brother, also a deserter from the German ranks, was
+killed in Champagne. They were rehanging the portraits
+of their ancestors.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Whereby hangs the tale of
+two American nurses who, quartered there some weeks
+before, had left the water running in the tub one night,
+after which the drawing-room ceiling fell in and the paper
+peeled in hall and vestibule. Hence the rehanging of the
+ancestors, at their own, I mean the sisters’, expense.</p>
+
+<p>They take me up a beautiful, but very worn, stairway,
+with a time-polished oaken balustrade, and I find myself in
+a paneled room, looking out on the square shaped like this:</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="plan1" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/plan1.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p>
+
+<p>Many motors are drawn up in front of the Mission
+under the yellowing lindens. The old red inn of “Les
+Lions d’Or” is directly opposite, and on the left of the
+square at right angles with me are the four other houses
+once dwelt in by the <i>chanoinesses</i> when it was decided
+that each should have her own establishment. The
+square is roughly, anciently paved, with grass growing
+in between the cobblestones, and Mademoiselle Braun,
+who showed me to my room, told me the steps of the
+old stairway were so uneven because after the Revolution
+(during which the Chapter had been dispersed)
+the house was long used as a school and they had been
+worn by generations of young feet running up and down.</p>
+
+<p><i>At 12.15</i>—I am conveyed to <i>la popote</i><a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> for luncheon.
+More officers inspect me—I them also—and then we
+proceed to the consuming of an excellent meal, to the
+very exhilarating accompaniment of the news of the
+capitulation of Turkey, and a light, easy touching on
+other prospective and pleasant changes.</p>
+
+<p>Now as, owing to circumstances too long to enter
+into, I hadn’t eaten since noon the day before, passing
+by Chaumont, I did full justice to a rabbit white as
+snow, garnished with noodles of the same hue, flooded
+by a delicious golden sauce. I only fleetingly remembered
+that I ordinarily avoid the little beast as food; for dessert
+we had a great cake filled with chocolate and
+whipped cream, such a one as I had not seen for many a
+month and year. A bottle of champagne was opened in
+joy at the Turkish news. And we drank to everything
+and to everybody—even to the health of the “Sick
+Man of Europe,” not, however, sicker than several
+others at that moment, as some one cheerfully added.
+It was all very pleasant, and I felt that everything was
+for the best in the best of war worlds.</p>
+
+<p>At 2.30 I start out with Captain Tirman over a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+smooth road, <i>camouflé</i>, kilometer after kilometer, with
+screens of wire netting interwoven with broom and
+pine branches, for the road runs along the side of hills
+which slope down to the valley where the Germans
+lie intrenched. Everywhere are shell-holes, new and
+old. We stopped on a high place and, getting out,
+peered through a hole in the screen. Spread out before
+my eyes was the rich plain of Alsace, one of the world’s
+gardens. Something crystal and shimmering half veiled
+its loveliness, but its beauty and richness I knew for
+the beauty and the richness of a thousand years of blood,
+and many men had found it fair and panted for its
+beauty and died for it.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance, very white and shining, were the
+chimneys of Mulhouse, and a pale-blue line against the
+horizon was the Black Forest. All the time there was
+the sound of cannon, ours and theirs, reverberating
+through the hills. I was greatly moved, and started
+to go higher up in the field, but Captain Tirman stopped
+me, saying: “It will be better for you to get away
+with your souvenirs than to take them unrecorded with
+you to the grave. The Boches shell anything they see;
+and we haven’t got our masks, either, in case they send
+a gas-bomb.”</p>
+
+<p>The roadsides were planted with cherry trees, scarlet-leaved,
+the <i>kirschbaum</i> of Alsace. The hills had
+great patches of velvety, rust-colored beeches; dark
+pines traced black patterns through them, yellow larches
+shone here and there like torches; a soft sun was dispersing
+the last of the delicate, noonday mists.</p>
+
+<p>Then we slipped into the valley of the Thur, where
+lies the ancient town of Thann. From afar I saw the
+lacy, gray belfry of its cathedral, pressed against other
+heights of velvet rust and burnished gold. Nearby,
+the hill of the Engelburg, with its broken, overturned
+tower like a great ring, a souvenir of Turenne’s campaign<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+during the Thirty Years’ War, was soft and lovely, too.
+The long street was sun-bathed, and filled with the
+black-bowed peasants of story-books, and the blue soldiery
+of the great war. I wanted to stop by a pink
+fountain, near the richly carved portal of the cathedral,
+but we feared to be late for the ceremony at Moosch
+and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>At a place called Bitschwiller, however, we were
+obliged to wait while an almost endless procession of
+black-clad old men, women, and children, and blue-clad
+soldiers wound across the road, from its pink
+church to the distant green and yellow cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, the Fifteenth New York Infantry—black,
+black, black—is quartered at Bitschwiller, and
+the most exotic sight I have ever seen were those khaki-clad
+negroes in that valley, already very high-colored.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly against the steep hill, like a picture slightly
+tilted back, we came in sight of the square cemetery of
+Moosch.</p>
+
+<p>Above and below it was framed by a line of helmeted
+men in khaki, and as we neared I saw they were <i>our</i>
+black troops; the horizon-blue of a French infantry
+regiment made the frame at the two sides. High, high
+up were a group of white- and black-gowned priests,
+and red- and white-gowned acolytes swinging their
+censers. At the top of the steep stairway, running down
+the middle of the black-crossed cemetery, was a sacerdotal
+figure, with outstretched arms, exhorting, and
+around about the whole were groups of women and
+children. We left the motor and walked over to the
+cemetery, where I found myself standing near the
+resting-place of Norman Hall, the first American to
+die in Alsace. From the tall, black cross floats the
+Stars and Stripes, and some one had planted chrysanthemums
+thick on his grave. Peace to him. He lies
+not far from General Serret, who fell, too, on the nearby<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>
+sacrificial Hartmannswillerkopf, where commingled lie
+fifty thousand who at the word of command had put
+out each other’s light.</p>
+
+<p>After the sermon the negro band of the Fifteenth
+played some grave and measured music, the French infantry
+band then something a little too gay. As one of
+the officers said afterward, “<i>Cela a presque frisé la polka</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the “Marseillaise” sounded and “The Star-spangled
+Banner.” I felt my veil wet against my eyes
+and my lips atremble as I thought, a second time that
+day, how well, how very well, the soldier sleeps.</p>
+
+<p>Above the cemetery in a higher contour of eternal hill
+was a great patch of yellow and black and rust-colored
+forest against a clear blue-white sky, in which tiny
+black specks were moving eastward.</p>
+
+<p>We waited to watch the negro troops defile. They
+appeared very smartly dressed till the eye got to their
+feet, and such a collection of ripped, torn, cut, down-at-the-heel
+footgear was never seen! They seem to be
+a flat-footed race, too. I spoke to a couple of darkies
+very much <i>en repos</i>, who were leaning against a fence,
+near the motor, as I got in.</p>
+
+<p>One answered, with a broad grin, “You an American
+from America?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, have you heard dis here war’s about over?”
+The coalest-black one then contributes this to the conversation:</p>
+
+<p>“When peace is signed dis here nigger starts to walk
+home.”</p>
+
+<p>“What about the ocean?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll take a swim, lady; the water can’t be no colder
+and no damper dan dis here ‘Alice’ land.”</p>
+
+<p>The mulatto by his side said, “I subscribes,” and
+became a pale gray at the bare idea of getting colder or
+damper.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then we see Commandant Poulet, tall, blue-clad, with
+high decorations a-shine, coming toward us, and he and
+many officers are presented to me, after which I change
+into his motor, and we start out over a magnificent
+military road built since the war. It was begun and
+completed almost miraculously, it would seem, in little
+more than a year, and over it, safely hidden from German
+guns, come and go the great military supplies of the
+Alsatian front—troops, artillery, munitions, food, ambulances.</p>
+
+<p>As we mount, mysterious, dissolving twilight views
+present themselves near red cherry trees, burn against
+distant blue hills, yellow larches illuminate other “hilltops
+hearsed with pines,” and the beech woods are a
+deep, deep purple. Then we plunge into the dimness of
+the great cedar forests of the Route Joffre, talking, but
+not too much, in the large, enfolding twilight, of the
+war, and of Alsace of to-day. Commandant Poulet
+has been in charge of the Military Mission since Christmas
+Day of 1914, and I thought, rolling over the broad
+road, contemporaneous with his administration, how out
+of thousands, nay millions of men, his part during these
+war years had been to construct and not destroy. He
+told me that almost his first official act was to be present
+at the burial of Norman Hall on December 26, 1915.</p>
+
+<p>As we issue from the dark forest we find ourselves
+on a crest overlooking many other twilit hills. There
+is a pale, pale yellow still burning in the west, and the
+most timid of evening stars shines above it. Then we
+dip into the deep blue valley where Masevaux lies.</p>
+
+<p>Peasants are hurrying to their villages, and there is
+a continuous, but dull, sound of cannon. In the chill
+of the fallen night we arrive at the Place du Chapitre,
+the town dark, dark as we enter it, and no light in any
+house. Having seen my pleasant room only in daytime,
+I proceeded in hunting for the light to try to turn on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+a barometer, then by another door feeling my way
+along, I fumbled about an arrangement of mandolin
+and pipe, then, as a last resort, I sought light from a
+stuffed owl. After which I went into the corridor and,
+re-entering the room, found the electric button just
+where it ought to be—by the door.</p>
+
+<p>A saving hour of solitude before I am fetched for
+dinner, which was very pleasant, but I can’t tell about
+it now, for sleep, dear sleep, is touching me, and it is
+two days and a night since it has been near.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III<br>
+<span class="smaller">FÊTE DES MORTS, NOVEMBER, 1918</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Church again, seemingly in company with the
+entire population, civil and military, after which
+I <i>flanéd</i> in the old streets of Masevaux, word having
+been brought that no motor was available for our
+projected trip to Dannemarie. Indeed, I had early
+noticed from my window much mounting in hot haste,
+accompanied by the lively sound of two kinds of firing.
+Some <i>coup de main</i>, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>I strolled about under an uncertain sun, occasionally
+sensible of that delicate, not unpleasant smell of bark
+and leather hanging on a windless air. About me was
+that world of blue-clad soldiers, black-robed women,
+and many children were playing in the pink and gray
+streets; a group of little girls were skipping rope to the
+words <i>ein</i>, <i>zwei</i>, <i>drei</i>, <i>quatre</i>, <i>cinq</i>, <i>six</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The post-office of modern Teutonic origin still wears,
+high up and indifferently, the Double Eagle, though
+the more accessible <i>Kaiserliches Post-Amt</i> has been removed.
+A little farther down the street is the old inn
+of the “Golden Eagle” whose historic sign dates from
+Napoleonic days, and which, as was pointed out to me,
+turns its golden back disdainfully to the black, double
+face of the once proud eagle of the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>And this inn of the “Golden Eagle” hangs its charming
+sign out on a corner of the square called “La Halle aux
+Blés” (the Grain Market), surrounded by sloping-roofed,
+roomy houses. In the center is a rose-colored<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+fountain, with three diminishing rose-shaped basins
+around a carved central column.</p>
+
+<p>And the cobblestoned square with its good fountain
+and its comfortable houses—there’s even a stable and
+a garage on one side—has something cozy about it,
+its atmosphere that of a place long used by human
+beings for the homelike customs of “the simple life,”
+which last bears no resemblance to that occasionally
+practised at great expense and inconvenience by those
+who “need a change” and can afford one.</p>
+
+<p>American troops passed through the Halle aux Blés
+on the 30th of May of this year, again on the 4th of July,
+and on the 14th, too, always drawing themselves up
+at last in the Place du Marché, one end of which is my
+Place du Chapitre. There, under the lindens, General
+Hahn and General Boissoudy watched them deploy,
+while gaily attired Alsatian girls grouped about the
+fountain acclaimed them, and from every window hung
+the Stars and Stripes.</p>
+
+<p>Then I found myself wandering out on the road to
+Belfort, past the high, grassy eminence known as the
+“Ringelstein,” once crowned by the proud castle of
+Duke Mason, founder of Masevaux. Traces of ancient
+walls embowered in ivy are still to be seen, and at its
+base are many old outbuildings of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, once dependencies of the Abbey
+and the Chapter, and when you are not expecting it
+you find old inscriptions and bits of carving plastered
+into them. On one high-roofed outhouse was a large
+crown and three fleurs-de-lis. Blasted through one end
+of the great rock of the Ringelstein rims the railway.
+And there is a near view of the red and green and yellow
+roofs of the houses of the <i>chanoinesses</i> confounding themselves
+with the autumn foliage of the trees which embower
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I begin to know a little of the early history of Masevaux,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+enveloped in legends and many contrary tales—Masevaux,
+ruled now by abbots, now by feudal lords,
+belonging sometimes to the House of Austria, sometimes
+to the House of France.</p>
+
+<p>And the first legend is that of its foundation. How
+the lord of the country, by name Mason, a nephew of
+Saint-Odile, was feasting in his castle of this same
+Ringelstein, and the wines of Burgundy and Alsace and
+of the Rhine were flowing, and a troubadour was reciting
+a tale of war and love, when suddenly Duke Mason
+cries out:</p>
+
+<p>“Soul of my soul, misfortune is happening to my son!
+Night is falling. Where is he?” And he goes to the
+window and looks out. Some one answers:</p>
+
+<p>“Fear not, illustrious father of so dear a child. He
+has doubtless tarried with the holy fathers of Moutiers.”
+But the night gets blacker, the lords and ladies drop
+their golden hanaps and the troubadour is still.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mason, in the grip of deeper presentiment,
+cries out, “Who loves me to the succor of my son!”
+And they seek with torches for the child. Alas! the
+white body of Mason’s son, born of a dead, beloved wife,
+is found floating upon the little stream, and Mason,
+pressing what was once his child to his heart, cries out:
+“Nothing can ever give me joy again. I will build a
+monastery wherein to pass my days until God calls me
+from this heavy world.” And that is the origin of
+Masevaux—Masmunster. The legend has it, too, that
+on moonless nights the child returns, weeping, because
+he did not live long enough to read all the beautiful
+stories inscribed by the gods, the prophets and the
+wise, concerning the sons of men. And as I looked up
+at the great grass- and vine-covered rock whereon the
+castle of Mason once rose, the Doller flowing at its base,
+the cannon of the great war sounded. Down the white
+road was disappearing a battalion of blue-clad men,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+going toward the black and rust and yellow of the hills—a
+red cherry tree between me and them. Then I turned
+back into the town and hied me to the <i>popote</i>, where
+some half-dozen extremely agreeable men were awaiting
+me, as well as a sustaining repast.</p>
+
+<p>The American <i>communiqué</i> was immediately and very
+appreciatively read out. Our victorious advance was
+continuing along the Meuse (known as the “Muse” by
+the doughboy), the First American Army attacking on
+the west bank in liaison with the Fourth French Army
+on the left. Then we looked over the Turkish armistice
+terms, quite satisfyingly comprehensive from the opening
+of the Dardanelles to promises on the part of the
+Turks not to speak to any of their former friends.</p>
+
+<p>And we talked of how from the terrace of Versailles,
+where the German Empire was proclaimed, the statesmen
+of the world will watch the twilight descending
+upon Walhalla and its gods; and here in Alsace the crash
+of falling temples can be heard.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I went with Lieutenant Lavallée to see a
+bit of Alsace from within, for he was to invite various
+mayors of villages to go to Paris for the “Fêtes Alsaciennes,”
+to be held the middle of November, and also to
+select a discreet number of veterans of 1870 and school-children
+of 1918 to accompany them.</p>
+
+<p>We went first to Gewenheim, a somewhat war-battered
+village and, as we entered it, Lavallée pointed out the
+iron plate on the sign-post, indicating the name of the
+village and the department. Like many others of the
+Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine), after 1870 it had been quite
+simply turned and marked in German. This proved
+most convenient and economical, for all the French
+Military Mission had to do when they came to Alsace
+in 1914 was to turn them back as they had been before
+1870!</p>
+
+<p>The mayor’s house, one of the usual dwellings with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+small door for humans and a big door for harvests, had
+been much damaged. Passing in through a sagging entrance,
+we found the mayor, the classic, horny-fisted,
+wrinkle-faced mayor of a village, with cobwebs and
+straw and other substances adhering to his coat, but
+possessed of a certain air of dignity and authority notwithstanding.
+There was a moment’s silence after the
+lieutenant gave him the invitation, pride visibly wrestling
+with parsimony, accompanied by the working up
+and down of a very prominent Adam’s apple. He accepted
+finally with a sort of “I am a man” expression,
+but there was a quite apparent melting of his being when
+he found that it was the State that would defray expenses.
+Then the wife of his bosom, who had helped him make
+and save his money, came in and showed us some of
+their “best” shell-holes, and a statue of the Virgin of
+Lourdes under a large glass bell which had not a scratch,
+even, though everything around had been shattered.</p>
+
+<p>There was also a lithograph of Henner’s red-headed
+“Alsatian Girl,” who hangs in every home and every
+railway station, and is used for loans and appeals and
+calendars and advertisements of complexion washes and
+hair-dyes; and she was once a charming creature, before
+familiarity bred contempt.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy couple then fell to a discussion in Alsatian
+German as to which of the veterans would be possible
+candidates for the trip to Paris. There seemed to be
+something the matter with every one mentioned. Rudler,
+Franzi, was nice and it was a pity that his rheumatism
+prevented his getting about, as he had lost his
+dung-heap, though not his house, in a recent bombardment
+and needed distraction. It wasn’t quite clear to
+me <i>how</i> you <i>could</i> lose a possession of that kind, but I
+wasn’t at the front to ask questions, so I let it pass.</p>
+
+<p>Handrupp, Hansi’s, eyes were giving him trouble. If
+he went, a boy would have to go to lead him about,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+and, even so, would he be welcome in Paris if it were
+known that his daughter, old enough to know better, had
+run away with a German?</p>
+
+<p>First names, it will be noticed, came last, and last
+names first, a relic of German order. Another incautious
+but evidently esteemed veteran, by name Bauer,
+Seppi, had fallen from a hayrick last summer and would
+never walk again. It was like looking at the back of
+the web of Fate, and I found myself wondering with
+somewhat of exasperation, “for this had a hero’s death
+at Gravelotte or Villersexel or Saint-Privat been denied
+him, where angels would have awaited his strong, young
+body to take it to the heaven of those who die for
+country?” Suddenly the <i>dulce et decora</i> of so dying was
+quite clear to me, and Bauer, Seppi, who fell from the
+hayrick last summer, and all his still extant contemporaries,
+had the tragic part—as would these men of the
+great war some forty or fifty years hence, who were now
+going about with an astonished yet proud consciousness
+that, <i>ex millibus</i>, <i>they</i> had been chosen and been spared.</p>
+
+<p>But as Lavallée very justly remarked, “What would
+happen to the world if everybody died young?” I suppose
+he is right, and I bethought myself that there are
+those who must await threescore and ten before the
+reasons for their having been born are apparent; the
+“Tiger,” for instance, and Moses, and many others.</p>
+
+<p>We then visited the curé, living at the very end of the
+village toward the lines. He was called from the church
+where he was hearing confessions, and Lavallée proceeded
+to ask him which of the schoolboys he recommended;
+wideawake ones, without, of course, being obstreperous,
+were wanted. Something, disappearing almost as swiftly
+as it came, passed over the curé’s face. It was a look of
+sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to go himself, and
+the immediate realization of the impossibility of that
+or anything else that meant change.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the round center-table was a book, <i>Deo Ignoto</i>,
+and <i>L’Echo de Paris</i>. A little harmonium with manuscript-music
+on its rack was near the bed; on the walls
+were shiny lithographs of three popes, and an illuminated
+Lord’s Prayer in German. As the upper rooms of
+the house were “unhealthy,” on account of the raids
+and bombardments, the curé lived and breathed and
+had his being downstairs in this one room, with a rather
+boisterous yellow dog that kept sniffing at my gaiters.
+He was a large man, with a naturally masterful eye,
+who would have been at home in many places, occupied
+with many things, but he had lived, and would die,
+Curé of Gewenheim. And he at least owed the Germans
+a temporary widening of his activities, for Gewenheim
+is but three kilometers from the firing-line.</p>
+
+<p>Then we crossed the muddy street to the schoolhouse
+to confer with the nuns concerning little girls, and were
+greeted by a dark-eyed, sparkling-faced Sister, very
+gifted by nature, who would have graced any drawing-room.
+There was something of elegance even in the way
+she had the washing of the stairs cease to allow us to
+pass up, and in the way she removed piles of coarse
+linen from the chairs in the room to which she conducted
+us. Then another Sister, not so bright, though she
+evidently ranked the gifted one, came in, and together
+they pondered the names of possible little girls. I had
+a feeling of being behind the scenes, and recognized how
+orderly and reasonable is the working of a so-often
+fortuitously appearing Fate, as they decided who should,
+or should not, take the journey to Paris. I thought,
+too, that it would have been well-nigh intolerable to me,
+had I been a little girl in Gewenheim, not to be among
+those chosen to go. But there was no longing on either
+of <i>their</i> faces. Especially the charming one radiated
+happiness and content. And how true that nothing
+can enter the heart that is not already there! I wondered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>
+if I, to whom so much of life is known—its glories and
+its miseries—possessed what that graceful woman had
+found in the dullest routine of duty imaginable. <i>She</i>
+knew whither she was bound, also whence she had come.
+In comparison, shaking, shifting, uneasy, appeared the
+compass of my life....</p>
+
+<p>A bottle of quite sour white wine was produced and they
+watched Lavallée and myself drink; no escape possible.</p>
+
+<p>They are of the Sisters of the Divine Providence with
+their mother-house at Ribeauville, who have taught in
+the schools of Alsace for generations.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving them, we visited the inn, entering into
+the <i>Gastzimmer</i> through a tiny antechamber of a
+shop, where thread and candles and oil for lamps, socks,
+and a few other strict essentials were sold. The black-toothed,
+thin-haired landlady, Tritter by name, might
+have been of any age, but a handsome boy of fifteen
+or thereabouts, with a bad cough, calling her “Mother,”
+gave a possible limit. A good-looking, high-complexioned
+girl appeared breathless from a bethumbed back door,
+arranging two little curls under her ears. After the
+greetings, Lieutenant Lavallée said:</p>
+
+<p>“Have you had any news of your daughter Odile?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not since last winter from Colmar,” both mother
+and sister answer; “the parcels we sent her, they cost each
+fifteen francs, have not been received. She was hungry
+when she wrote.”</p>
+
+<p>Then was poured out a confused story concerning the
+capture of a squad of Germans with their gun, in the
+autumn of 1914. A few days after the event the sisters
+had been standing in the street in front of their door,
+when a German officer came up and said to Odile, the
+younger:</p>
+
+<p>“You are wanted for a moment.” She followed him
+to another officer on horseback, waiting in a field. They
+had not seen her since. Then it appeared that it was the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>
+baker’s wife who through jealousy had denounced the
+pretty Odile (the rôle of the baker himself was not indicated),
+but such an expression of hatred for the baker’s
+wife, rather than for the Germans, came over the mother’s
+visage that I was reminded of faces in pre-Raphaelite
+pictures—I mean those on the goat side in Judgment Day
+scenes. It was evidently one of those obscure yet ruthless
+village tragedies set in the frame of equally ruthless war.</p>
+
+<p>When we came out we copied an old inscription over
+the house door of a man, Louis Vogler by name, who, returning
+from a campaign, had been decorated with the
+Legion of Honor in 1816, and had recorded the fact for
+all time over his door, his decoration even being carved
+in with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently a man who, having done a deed, was not
+content that it should be writ only in water (or blood),
+but had it put squarely and clearly over the door of the
+house to which he returned; and was he not justified?
+For here it is being recorded some hundred years after,
+instead of having been carried away on the great river
+of Napoleonic deeds.</p>
+
+<p>Then, through several wet villages, groups of girls
+with their felt slippers stuck into their clacking wooden
+sabots (very comfortable footgear, it appears) pass
+groups of blue-clad soldiers, and words are exchanged.
+I couldn’t hear, but by the looks accompanying them and
+the giggles I judged them to be the eternal words exchanged
+in all ages between soldiers and future mothers of
+the race. And there is a verse, old as the army, which runs:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Le négligent troupier</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Qui laisse passer l’heure</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et trop longtemps demeure</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sera puni par son sous-officier.</i><a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span></p>
+
+<p>Everywhere along the road, through the mist, detachments
+of blue-clad men would appear and disappear.
+I thought with a touch of sadness, an esthetic sadness,
+to be sure, that this extreme beauty of dissolving distances
+would be lost when the world of blue-clad men
+would have disappeared, replaced by men in shabby,
+nondescript, civilian clothes, or by <i>des types à melon ou à
+tube</i>—those wearing derby hats or cylinders.</p>
+
+<p>Near Rodern, between some lines of poplars, a helmeted
+cavalryman, with his detachment, rode by on a
+great black horse. He was bending slightly forward,
+his lance in his hand, his eyes looking straight ahead, his
+ample, light-blue tunic almost concealing his saddle.
+He was a pure French type, pale of face, with black
+hair, black mustache, slanting nose, and I knew him for
+the archetypal Gallic warrior as he has appeared
+through the ages, making epics for France.</p>
+
+<p>At Bourbach-le-Haut, Lieutenant Lavallée was to invite
+a last mayor to partake of the trip to Paris, and hunt
+up some remaining veterans. Whatever gentle thirst
+I had had for mayors and veterans being now quite
+slaked, I went to the little church, instead of to the
+<i>Mairie</i>. Through the half-open door came light and
+chanting sounds. I went in to find a dim interior, with
+an ancient arch framing the altar space, in front of which
+was a narrow, black coffin. Only some very old bit of
+mortality, waxy and shrunken, could lie within. Women,
+children, and what may have been veterans were saying
+the rosary in German—the Sorrowful Mysteries—and I
+thought on my dead, and on that dear and holy brother
+born into the world on this day long years ago. In
+Alsace he had desired and received, dreaming and adolescent,
+the baptismal waters.</p>
+
+<p>Sadness invaded me, even as the dreary night was invading
+the day, and I would have groaned aloud, but I
+saw Lieutenant Lavallée standing by me. Haunted by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>
+the mournful chanting, with its mysterious indications,
+“<i>Jetz und in der Stunde unseres Absterbens, Amen</i>,” I
+passed out into falling night and rain; dark masses of
+mountain loomed up, lighter spaces were the stretching
+valleys. Soon we found ourselves on the deep road to
+Masevaux, I lonelier than the loneliest of the dark and
+hurrying clouds.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br>
+<span class="smaller">THANN AND OLD THANN</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Sunday morning, November 3d.</i>—Awakened at
+six by heavy firing. After wondering what could
+be happening, I remember that life, as far as I am concerned,
+is for the moment largely joy, or rather joyous
+riding, with a series of agreeable French officers (they
+certainly are of an amiability!), in a series of large,
+powerful military motors, through a series of beautiful
+autumnal hills, over a series of the newest and most
+wonderful of war roads.</p>
+
+<p>Enough church-going, however, as will have been
+noticed, to keep me mindful that man, and woman, too,
+is grass, and though it, or rather she, springs up in the
+morning, she may be cut down by night, and that this
+bending of the hills is by the journeys of her eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Well, to get to the point, or rather to Thann. We
+started out early, at nine, for I was to find a Mass in the
+cathedral, after which we were to proceed to Vieux
+Thann, where war has not spared the church nor left
+worshipers.</p>
+
+<p>Again we took the screened road overhanging the
+valley. Again we stopped on an eminence and climbed
+into a field, and again I was shown the blue valley, over
+the tops of some red cherry trees. Nothing detached
+itself from gradations of velvety mists and beaming distances,
+but I knew that on the grape-planted slopes of
+an unseen river that other wine of defeat was being
+drunk from cups held stiffly to unwilling lips.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus04" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span></p>
+
+<p>As we dipped down into the valley of the Thur, the
+belfry of the church of Thann appeared, so mistily,
+lacily soft that its form and substance seemed but as
+something breathed into the air, at any moment to be
+dissolved, against hills that were like brocaded stuffs,
+whose gold would be very thick if one turned them
+wrong side out. My heart was stirred because of the
+fairness of the Sabbath world.</p>
+
+<p>We drew up in front of the gorgeous portal of the
+cathedral, once a deep pink, but with time grown
+paler and softer at all its edges, and whose boardings
+and sandbags now partly hide the carved story of the
+life of Christ and His Mother. We grope our way in
+through several swinging doors, and find the high,
+Gothic space filled with a misty yellow light coming
+in through narrow windows, covered with oiled paper,
+the precious stained-glass having been long since removed.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the forms of kneeling women and
+children, and many soldiers standing, detach themselves
+from the lovely gloom. The green vestment of the
+priest at the altar, on which are six tall, crystal, wide-branched
+candelabra, misty like the rest, is the only
+spot of color, for the splashes of horizon-blue become
+nearly white after a strange fashion of this color in dim
+light, whether of church or falling night. In the ancient
+wrought-iron pulpit the curé was just finishing a sermon
+in French, immediately beginning one in German. It
+appears that as the <i>communiqués</i> improve, the French
+sermon gets longer, and the German shorter, and mercifully
+neither is long.</p>
+
+<p>We passed out quickly after the “<i>Ite, missa est</i>.”
+I had been feeling that Captain B—— might be in a
+hurry, but when I looked about to see if he were fidgeting,
+I found him doing what any <i>miles gloriosus</i> should
+be doing from time to time, saying his prayers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span></p>
+
+<p>And this is the story of the building of the church
+of Thann, and of its arms, which bear a single pine tree.</p>
+
+<p>Death found the holy Bishop Théobald in the Umbrian
+Valley, and, knowing that his hour had come, he said to
+his servitor Maternus, who knelt weeping by his side:</p>
+
+<p>“Thou knowest I leave no worldly goods, for the
+poor have needed what I had. But this sapphire ring,
+dear memory of her once loved, take it, thou, that worms
+may not dwell within it.” And then he entered into contemplation,
+saying nothing further of the things of earth.</p>
+
+<p>When Maternus had made ready to hide his master’s
+body from the light, he tried to take the ring from its
+finger. But with the ring came the finger, and both
+were inclosed as in a shining rim.</p>
+
+<p>Maternus, greatly wondering, hid the precious relic
+in a hollow place in his staff and started back to Alsace,
+begging his bread along the way. After many delays,
+having been set upon by wicked men and molested by
+prowling animals, he finally arrived in the valley of the
+Thur.</p>
+
+<p>Exhausted, he laid himself down to rest, placing
+against a pine tree the precious staff. The next morning
+he was awakened by the ringing of the Angelus, and
+when he started to grasp his staff he found that it was
+as if grafted on to the great pine, while to left and right
+were burning two tall, pale, sapphire flames.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the lord of the Engelburg came by,
+the ruins of whose great castle are those one sees rising
+above the town of Thann. He had perceived the two
+blue flames from afar and, hastening to find out what
+they signified, he recognized Maternus, faithful servitor
+of his friend Théobald.</p>
+
+<p>Maternus then related the death of the saint in the
+Umbrian plain, showing him the finger and the ring;
+whereupon the lord of the Engelburg, weeping and
+sighing, cried:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Oh! my precious friend Théobald; oh! my dearly
+loved sister Adelaide, this is thy betrothal ring, and
+these two sapphire flames announce thy union in dear
+heaven!” (In those days they were quick to see divine
+meanings.)</p>
+
+<p>Now, the so well-loved Adelaide, in her green youth,
+had been struck by a bolt from heaven, after which
+Théobald, for whom the whole round earth held nothing
+more of value, had consecrated himself to God.</p>
+
+<p>The lord of the Engelburg, his gaze fixed upon the
+luminous finger and the familiar blue ring, knew soon
+the too often hidden will of God, and cried out again:</p>
+
+<p>“Here I will build a church, and its reliquary shall
+contain this precious ring and finger.”</p>
+
+<p>And so was built the church and monastery of Thann,
+and about them grew the town, and during long centuries
+on the vigil of the feast of Saint-Théobald, a freshly
+cut pine tree was placed in front of the cathedral,
+flanked by two great wax candles. Nor can any one,
+even of the very positive-minded, who look no farther
+than stones and mortar for all meanings, give a better
+reason for the arms of Thann.</p>
+
+<p>Then we motored on toward Vieux Thann, half destroyed,
+and evacuated since 1914, but were obliged to
+leave the too visible motor on the outskirts of the village,
+creeping close along a very high screen of wire and broom
+branches that we might not be seen by the enemy. For
+we were in the plain of Cernay, now known as the
+Ochsenfeld, once called the “Field of Lies,” where the
+three sons of Louis le Débonnaire routed their father’s
+army. Lothair, Louis, and Pépin were their names.
+But of all this another time.</p>
+
+<p>Vieux Thann is a half-demolished, echoing, empty
+town, with a background of neglected vineyards on
+very close-pressing hills.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere were signs of German war occupation.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>
+The schoolhouse had been their evacuation hospital,
+and one of the old inns bore the sign, “Verband-Station.”
+The only living things in Vieux Thann were the fountains,
+quite lovely in the pink-stoned, gracious Alsatian
+way, with their gentle, unhurried streams of crystal
+water. It all reminded me vaguely of Pompeii, even in
+the misty light of a northern Indian summer sun.</p>
+
+<p>Above, in the perfect blue, the usual firing on German
+airplanes was going on. Long after the black specks
+had disappeared to the east the little, round, soft,
+compact balls of shrapnel were still slowly unfolding
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>About fifteen hundred feet from us were the battle-lines,
+where the French and Germans have faced each
+other in the “Field of Lies” since 1914.</p>
+
+<p>One of the battered inns, “Zum Goldenen Lamm,”
+has its once lovely old sign still hanging out, but the
+golden lamb is gone, and only his golden feet and the
+green wreath of laurel that once entwined him remain.</p>
+
+<p>And to what winds had the dwellers of the great
+village been scattered? Where had they been received,
+unwillingly, by strangers, those hosts of refugees, fleeing
+from their homes, red with excitement, bright-eyed,
+voluble? I’ve seen them, too, after months of treading
+up another’s stairs and eating of the salt bread of charity—pale,
+silent, dispirited, returning to villages like Vieux
+Thann, to see their all among disorderly piles of fallen
+stones and crumbling mortar....</p>
+
+<p>Back to the living city, to an increasing sound of
+cannon, but the Sabbath stillness was so deep nothing
+seemed really to disturb it.</p>
+
+<p>The cathedral with its single, finely pointed tower
+was like a needle everywhere threading up long streets.
+I had a desire to see it empty, and as I entered, its perfect
+proportions gave me a sweet and satisfying welcome.
+The red lamp of the sanctuary was now the only<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>
+spot of color in the thick yellow gloom, out of which
+line and proportion gradually detached themselves.
+The celebrated choir-stalls had been removed to Sewen,
+but above the altar of the Virgin is a Gothic triptych,
+and the beautiful pulpit is of fifteenth-century wrought-iron.
+We groped our way into a low, vaulted chapel
+which existed even before the church was built, passing
+a tombstone bearing the arms of the house of Ferrette,
+a family once all-powerful in these valleys. Over the
+altar of the chapel is an ancient statue of Saint-Théobald.
+He has a long, thin, shaven, upper-class face,
+his eyes are bent, and he is looking perhaps as he did
+shortly before death found him in the Umbrian Valley.
+It is the visage of a man having done with personal
+things, and a great pity is woven into the downward
+curves of the benignant face.</p>
+
+<p>We drove back to Masevaux, over one of the splendid
+new war roads, rising and dipping through forest-covered
+hills. The brilliant sun shone athwart each
+leaf, still dewy and sparkling, and a strong, rich, autumnal
+smell exuded from the earth. It reminded Captain
+Bernard of hunting before the war, that carefree <i>chasse
+d’avant-guerre</i>, and I thought of Hungarian castles, and
+long days in forests, walking through rustling leaves,
+or sitting silently in glades with men in green-brown
+hunting garb, awaiting the game. In the evening,
+shining dinner-tables, and talk about the day’s bag
+by men in pink hunting-coats and women wearing their
+best gowns and all their jewels.... And much that is
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>We descended at the <i>popote</i> as the hand of the church
+clock pointed to 12.15. Blue-clad officers were standing
+by the windows reading the Belfort morning paper just
+arrived, and the Paris newspapers of the day before, as
+I went in.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy is beating his retreat through the Argonne<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+Forest, to the sound of the hour of destiny, and there
+are armistice and abdication rumors, and indications
+that they want to <i>sauver les meubles</i>, or, as they would say,
+seeing they’ve got into a bad business, <i>retten was zu
+retten ist</i>—<i>i.e.</i>, German unity, which, saved, means all
+is saved. But there are strange dissolvents infiltrating
+everywhere, scarcely any substance can resist, and the
+blood of peoples boiling over, and much good broth
+spilling, and too many cooks everywhere. For what
+man but wants to try his ’prentice hand at seasoning of
+the mess? And it was all talked about to the consuming
+of Mère Labonne’s especially excellent Sunday dinner,
+an example of <i>la vraie, la délicieuse cuisine française
+bourgeoise</i>. There were <i>pieds de veau</i> that melted in
+the mouth, and creamed potatoes, after which a very
+delicious <i>hachis</i>, with some sort of horseradish sauce,
+and when I remark that it has also a touch of garlic,
+Sérin cries out, “But not at all—it’s only horseradish.”
+On my being supported by everybody at the table,
+he finally says, with an innocent but somewhat discomfited
+smile, “It’s true that there must be a lot for <i>me</i>
+to notice it.” Then he tells with gusto of a repast in
+his dear Toulouse where there was a whole cold pheasant
+for each guest, and each pheasant was blanketed with
+such a thick cream of garlic that the bird itself could
+scarcely be seen. “It was exquisite,” he added. “I
+dare say; one can even smell it here,” some one cruelly
+finished.</p>
+
+<p>Then they spoke of how the French had supported
+captivity better than the English, and why.</p>
+
+<p>“We always talk while eating,” said Bernard, “no
+matter how scanty or ignoble the repast. It’s our hour
+for relaxation.” (Any one lunching or dining at French
+officers’ messes will have noticed this.) “But with the
+English it is different. They eat silently, and in captivity
+they easily get the spleen and fall into melancholy,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+because the food isn’t served as they would like, or
+because they can’t wash or shave or exercise.”</p>
+
+<p>And I told the story of the brother of a French friend
+whom I had recently seen, just back from nearly four
+years’ captivity, who returned in such a stout, rosy condition
+that his sister was ashamed to show him, and when
+asked about her <i>pauvre frère</i> would blush.</p>
+
+<p>We sat long, talking now of books, now of personages,
+now of local happenings, Sérin telling of passing that
+morning through one of the smaller villages where even
+the young girls had saluted him with a military salute
+as he rode by—and one of the officers said, with a flash,
+“<i>Très délivrées celles-là!</i>”(“Very delivered, those!”) Then
+some one told the story of the man who came down to
+Masevaux to make a book on Alsace and, seeing the line
+of the trenches marked that day in blue on the commandant’s
+map, remarked, in a <i>dégagé</i> way, “<i>Le Rhin,
+n’est-ce pas?</i>” (“The Rhine, I suppose?”)</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet,” was the quiet answer.</p>
+
+<p>He then rushed them all off their feet for ten hours,
+after which, having got what <i>he</i> wanted, he went back
+to Paris and wrote his book. And from what I hear it
+wasn’t a bad book, either. Though one of the officers
+said he knew he could do the same about Prague or
+Peking, that he’d never seen, with some books, a good
+pair of scissors and as much paste as he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>All is handled lightly, as only a group of Frenchmen
+could handle it, <i>glissant, n’appuyant jamais</i>, each bringing
+his little gift of wit and culture, enjoying the impersonal
+with the same pleasure as the personal, in the
+French way. Of course, the <i>communiqués</i> are as honey
+after four years of bitter herbs, very bitter, even though
+distilled in extinguishable hope.</p>
+
+<p>And I must say that to me lively and untrammeled
+conversation is the salt of daily life; and if, as it sometimes
+happens, one’s own thoughts are expanded,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+brightened, and returned to one, it is indeed delectable
+above all things, the true salt to be used in quantities
+(if you can get it). For, alas! the majority of people
+have no ideas, when you come down to it, or, having a
+few, they are pig-headed and look but into the converging
+point of the angle, knowing nothing of the
+splendor of diverging lines where self is swallowed up in
+unself. And there are the close-headed, whose minds
+work slowly in a cramped way, or not at all, and they
+are forever complaining that they only think of things
+to say when they get home and the lights are out.
+They might just as well not think of them (one sometimes
+doubts if they really do) for all the good they are
+to their neighbors. And there are those very thin-skinned
+ones who immediately get contentious, and think the
+arrow is meant for them instead of the universe at large,
+and one could go on indefinitely through the list of impenetrable
+heads, to whom the blow of an ax is as the
+brush of a feather, or cushiony heads that once dented,
+however, never regain their contours, and many, many
+others. These all need material sauces, good, rich sauces
+to their food, or they would find it tasteless, not having
+even a pinch of this other salt to season it with. And
+they are mostly those who do not work, but whose
+fathers worked—sometimes even their mothers—and
+<i>oh, là là</i>, the subject is endless, for everybody talks—even
+those who have nothing to say.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE BALLON D’ALSACE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Sunday afternoon.</i>—At two o’clock I started
+out with Captain Bernard and Captain Antoni
+for the great mountain known as the Ballon<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> d’Alsace,
+sometimes called, too, “the knot of Europe,” in an
+especially high-powered motor (I never know the mark
+of any of them, distinguishing a Ford from a Rolls-Royce
+only by the generally pampered feeling pervading
+me when in the latter).</p>
+
+<p>The Ballon rises like a wall at the very end of the
+valley of the Doller, and we passed through many villages,
+shining pinkly in the prismatic November afternoon,
+where there was much going into church for
+vespers, of blue- or black-clad figures. The thirteenth
+century-towered church of Sewen is on a slight eminence
+in the heart of the village, and the cemetery around it
+was crowded with the faithful, regretting their dead, or
+some, perhaps, for one reason or another (What know
+I?), feeling, “’Tis better they lie there.” “Live long, but
+not too long for others,” is an excellent device.</p>
+
+<p>The charming lake of Sewen, though far from the
+village, seen from a certain angle, reflects the tower of
+the church and is, they told me, of Moorish origin. These
+valleys and hills seem everywhere like open books concerning
+the dim, dim youth of the earth; I had a sense<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+of my transitories, with those lessons written everywhere.
+And it is autumn, too.</p>
+
+<p>We got out at the immense reservoir of Alfelt which
+dams up dangerous springtime floods with its giant
+wall of masonry, for from the “knot of Europe” loosened
+waters flow to the North Sea and to the Mediterranean.
+Climbing to the top of the rocky elevation, we read
+on the monument the date of the inauguration of the
+reservoir, 1884, and the name, Prince Hohenlohe
+Schillingfurst, Statthalter.</p>
+
+<p>And, looking down, the shining villages through which
+we had just passed, Sewen, Oberbruck, Niederbruck,
+Masevaux, are like beads on the thread of the lovely
+valley, lying between the breasts of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain-ringed lake of the reservoir reflects the
+rich coloring of the hills in which it is set; white-stemmed,
+yellow-leaved birches, blood-red cherry trees; rust-colored
+beeches, larch trees shining like torches borne
+by wanderers, on black pine slopes; all is seen twice—once
+on the hills and once in the mirror of the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Then we mount up, up, up, twisting and turning over
+the magnificent military road, made like so many others
+since the war, to become some day the joy of tourists,
+when, thousands upon ten thousands, nay, millions upon
+millions, they shall come from over ocean and mountain
+to see what it all looks like and get the belated thrill.</p>
+
+<p>Violet hills become black, outlined against a copper-colored
+band of western horizon. Captain Bernard
+points out some English airplanes just over our heads,
+tiny, tiny specks hanging in a high waste of heaven,
+and I wonder if in one of them sits my friend, the chartered
+accountant of the Belfort train, fulfilling his destiny
+in the air.</p>
+
+<p>We leave the motor at the highest point of the road,
+where trees no longer grow, and start to climb the
+grassy crest, patterned with great brown patches of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>
+barbed-wire defenses. Captain Bernard’s sharp eyes
+soon discerned the <i>chicanes</i>, intricate, almost indistinguishable
+pathways through the wire, and if one knew
+them one could get through without leaving one’s
+clothes. Breathless, we arrived at the <i>table d’orientation</i>
+and find ourselves looking out over what seemed the
+edge of the universe. In front of us lay the gorgeous
+panorama of the Alps and behind it the wide band of
+copper-colored sky, with here and there a burnishing of
+glaciers by the dipping sun. To our left stretched the
+immense and splendid valley of the Rhine, behind it
+the Black Forest, clearly yet softly outlined against a
+paler horizon. One could have rolled the whole earth
+like a ball from the feet. I felt as if suddenly freed
+from any heaviness of the flesh, and Goethe’s soaring
+words brushed against my mind, and beckoned me on—those
+words he cried after he had reached the Brocken
+and was looking down on a cloud-covered Germany.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dem Geier gleich</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Der auf schweren Morgenwolken</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mit sanftem Fittig ruhend,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nach Beute schaut,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Schwebe mein Lied.</i><a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I knew those vast expanses for material out of which
+a new earth, if not a new heaven, must be formed, on
+some eighth day of creation. And the new earth was
+to be made out of old and conflicting desires, worn,
+yet persistent passions, small, yet greedy thoughts, the
+whole about as facile as the weighing of the winds,
+making one almost feel that He who worked with new
+materials those first seven days had the easier part.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span></p>
+
+<p>I was filled, too, with a great longing for an improbable
+wisdom and strength to be breathed into the men who
+are to reharness the plunging, escaping destinies of the
+nations. Each man that has his hands on the reins seems
+like some one clinging to a runaway horse, trying to
+dominate a relentless, unreasoning, reckless course.</p>
+
+<p>Reverberating through the eternal hills was the sound
+of heavy cannon; and before my mind came a vision
+of the great forges wherein they were formed, men working
+day and night in hot, dim, noisy spaces—Creusot
+and Krupp and Skoda, and all the rest....</p>
+
+<p>Some near summit hid the dread Hartmannswillerkopf,
+the “Verdun” of Alsace, and one of the officers
+spoke of that winter of 1916, when its snow was always
+pink with blood and black with death—“tens of thousands
+sleep there.” I thought of the souls breathed out
+into that pure, high ether, like to this, but cold, cold,
+almost as tenuous as the immortal stuff commingling
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>Then we started to the other edge of the summit,
+whence we might look into <i>l’élégante et douloureuse Lorraine</i>,
+for one side of the Ballon slopes toward Alsace
+and the other toward Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p>As we threaded our way carefully through more
+<i>chicanes</i> of barbed-wire defenses “that you had to have
+your nose in before they could be distinguished,” I
+discerned on the crag three familiar silhouettes, outlined
+against the heavens toward the Lorraine slope.
+And as things are rarely in their proper setting nowadays,
+there on the Ballon d’Alsace were three dusty
+Y.M.C.A. men who had come from their <i>cantine</i> at
+Belfort. We spoke to them and gave our names, and
+the brightest one, Tallant was his name, asked if I were
+the wife of my husband—and said he’d been on the
+Mexican border.</p>
+
+<p>Then we told them where the <i>table d’orientation</i> was,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+but forgot to point out the <i>chicanes</i>, and we saw them
+from a distance entangled in barbed wire. Their souls
+were safe, I hope, but heaven help those khaki clothes!</p>
+
+<p>And looking down into Lorraine from my splendid
+height was as if looking into another world, for its distances
+were bronze and silver and pale green.</p>
+
+<p>Great black spots of shadow cast by wasteful masses
+of white clouds were lying heavily over those new and
+ancient battle-fields. Forever obliged to protect themselves
+from some invader, the villages hide rather than
+display themselves, and are barely detached from the
+silvery brown of the plain, crossed here and there by
+the bosky lines of the Meuse, or those of the great canal
+joining the French river to the Rhine. And each tiny
+hill has been an altar or a fortress, often both at once.
+Over the majestic, melancholy stretch Romans have
+passed, the hosts of Attila, Normans, Germans, Burgundians,
+Swedes, English, and many others. Now its
+white roads sound to the tramp of American armies, are
+encumbered by giant quantities of war material brought
+from over the seas. And of all who have passed over it,
+of the most ancient even, much remains. Close against
+one another are Roman encampments, feudal castles, the
+two-sided, two-faced bastion defenses of Vauban, the
+great, mined earthworks of modern times, and now in
+leafy darknesses are the cement emplacements of the
+big guns of the twentieth century.</p>
+
+<p>But alas! as I turned to go, pulling my gaze from the
+wide horizon (a pale, pale pink where it covered the
+western way to the city that is the heart of France), I
+saw on that slope, directly under me, a cruel statue of
+Jeanne d’Arc. A stiff yet boneless Pucelle sat astride
+an equally stiff yet boneless steed; both seemed about to
+drop into space, the mountain falling away from them,
+and both were of a dreadful superfluity! However,
+one isn’t so plagued with horrid modern statues in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+Alsace as in other places I have been, for they run rather
+to fountains and living waters. At St.-Amarin, for
+instance, I don’t remember anything later or more personal
+than the fiery Gallic cock, “<i>der spuckende Welschhahn</i>,”
+surmounting a sphere, borne in turn by the
+column of the 1830 fountain; and the fountain in the
+Place du Chapitre at Masevaux, bearing the date 1768,
+has a single, lovely column, too, on whose top burns a
+stone flame in an urn. And the shaft of the fountain
+of the wine-growers at Thann is a mass of rich yet noble
+carving, surmounted by a helmeted figure bearing a
+shield on his back. Furthermore, crystal water flows
+into its six-sided emblazoned basin.</p>
+
+<p>I think of the statue of Thiers, <i>Libérateur du Territoire</i>,
+in that dusty, begonia-planted, iron-railed plot
+in front of the station at Nancy, and I could weep.</p>
+
+<p>But hereabout I haven’t found a single nineteenth-century
+statesman in frock-coat and top-hat, done in
+granite, nor any bronze female pointing him the way to
+a dubious heaven, with a long finger and a heavy palm-branch—and
+so may it remain.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the <i>très chic chef</i> of the Military Mission
+will be well punished for <i>his</i> good works in Alsace if they
+ever raise a statue to him. For they will make him, too,
+out of either bronze or marble with a <i>plaque de commissaire</i>
+on his frock-coated breast, and heaven knows what
+kind of a hat they’ll put on him, or how the fancy will
+seize them to do his hair! And the statue won’t be of
+lapis lazuli, as it should be, nor of pale sapphire, nor of
+dull turquoise, nor of any of the lovely blue stones of
+the earth, alone fit to perpetuate the beauty of the blue-clad
+men who have written France’s greatest epic.
+Blue-clad men splashed about fountains at twilight,
+blue-clad men taking form and substance as they emerge
+out of gray mountain mists, blue-clad men weaving
+their cerulean patterns through the woof of long-trunked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+pine forests, blue-clad men like bits of turquoise
+embedded in the matrix of white roads, and what know
+I besides?</p>
+
+<p>As I gave a sigh for Art and a prayer for the serried
+ranks of her erring devotees, I found myself looking into
+another splendid valley, toward Giromagny, near where
+is a height known as La Planche des Belles Filles, after
+a story of the Thirty Years’ War, when men with blue
+eyes and very light hair and skin were for a while masters
+of the domains of Belfort and Ferrette. After the
+best manner of invading armies, ’tis recorded that these
+Swedes committed many excesses, and dark-eyed girls
+lay concealed in the forest, and when they feared their
+hiding-place had been discovered they fled to the mountains,
+but even there they were pursued by the hosts of
+fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed men, bent on the
+most elemental of errands. And again they fled precipitately,
+scarcely knowing their direction. When they got
+to the top they found themselves on a great ledge of
+rock and in their distress they tumbled from the height
+onto other rocks below, and the blue-eyed, fair-skinned,
+fair-haired men from the North knew them not. Hence
+the “Ledge of the Beautiful Girls.”</p>
+
+<p>And then we took a last look at the vast heaping of
+the Alps; to the left, the Jungfrau and the Mönsch, to
+the right, Mont Blanc, the whole great mass outlined
+against that persistent dark-red band. The glacier of
+the Jungfrau was as if in conflagration; Mont Blanc was
+soft and roseate, yet its beauty left me cold.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Bernard said he had climbed the Ballon many
+times and only twice before had he seen the great panorama;
+but as, alack! to him who does not want shall be
+given, except for their gorgeousness, I would have
+turned from them indifferently, had not my beloved
+mother been dwelling almost in the shadow of Mont
+Blanc.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p>
+
+<p>But one<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> has written, as men of genius write of things
+in times of peace, of this Ballon d’Alsace. He who
+brought out from his Gallo-British mind new things and
+old has said in one of the most charming of books: “Then
+on the left you have all the Germanies, a great sea of
+confused and dreaming people, lost in philosophies and
+creating music, frozen for the moment under a foreign
+rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a
+word to us others. They cannot remain long apart
+from visions.” I thought they have, indeed, given a
+“word.” But when again the “visions”?</p>
+
+<p>I turned and followed my two blue-clad officers down
+the Alsatian slope, over the gray grass, threading neatly
+through the <i>chicanes</i> of the brown, barbed-wire defenses,
+and got into the motor waiting on the roadway once
+known as that of the Dukes of Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p>We were silent as we started down the great mountain.
+I was again wrapped in thoughts of the New Day
+to be created out of old and rotting stuffs, and of the
+death of heroes. The hills were velvet-palled against
+the deepening crimson band of light.</p>
+
+<p>Later, a <i>panne</i>, and we waited in a violet-valleyed
+world, illumined only by white candelabraed torches of
+strangely luminous larch and birch, while the prudent
+yet daring chauffeur changed the tire.</p>
+
+<p>A great khaki-colored motor passed us, marked with
+two stars, filled with khaki-clad men of my race, going
+up, up, whence we had come.</p>
+
+<p>Then we stopped at the little restaurant of Alfeld.
+The lake of many colors was dark and mysterious. Its
+high tints had been dipped in something deep in the
+hours since last I saw it, though strange blues and
+purples and rust colors were still reflected in it, and
+the light of a single, very yellow birch had not yet
+been snuffed. At the restaurant four glasses of white<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>
+liqueur were poured for us (one, of course, for the
+chauffeur), distilled from raspberries, the odor of the
+berry very strong, and long afterward the taste, the
+<i>arrière-goût</i>, remains in the mouth, as if one had just
+eaten the fruit. But one of the officers said, “All the
+same, it doesn’t equal a good <i>quetsch</i> or <i>kirsch</i> or, above
+all, a good <i>mirabelle</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>And then we dipped into the darkening valley of the
+Doller and through dim villages found the way to
+Masevaux and the house on the Place du Chapitre,
+where the Demoiselles Braun had tea awaiting us, and
+there were stories told that made us laugh. And one
+was of the renowned 15th Dragoons, so long quartered
+there, which, briefly—and humanly—is this:</p>
+
+<p>At intervals after their departure little dragoons saw
+the light of a war-world, and, to be exact, fifty in all
+saw it. The curé was broken-hearted at the ravages
+among his sheep, but he was also a practical, long-sighted
+curé, so he wrote, presenting his idea of the matter before
+the colonel of the regiment, with the result that from
+the savings-box of that same regiment a sum was subtracted
+to provide ten years later for the first communion
+and confirmation clothes of the fifty! (Would
+you have thought of it?) Then, casting about in his
+mind how he could further improve the general situation,
+this time not so much from the temporal point of view
+as from that of eternity, he decided upon a pilgrimage—a
+pilgrimage of reparation to Huppach, where is the
+shrine known as that of the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln,
+near Sewen, through which we had just passed. He announced
+the pilgrimage from the pulpit, then took the
+further precaution of rounding up his strayed sheep in
+person, and in person conducting them to Huppach to
+offer up prayers and tears to the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln.
+There were so many of them, however, and they
+were mostly so young, that history does not record the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+pilgrimage as being entirely without smiles—and God
+have mercy on us all!</p>
+
+<p>But the curé was not yet (so to speak) out of the
+woods, for fate replaced the Dragoons by another regiment,
+having, as it happened, a colonel possessed of a
+boundless love for his men and who couldn’t do enough
+for them (or rather have the inhabitants of Masevaux
+do enough for them).</p>
+
+<p>“The inhabitants of Masevaux are very nice, very
+nice indeed,” quoth he, “but the happiness of my men
+above everything. We left three thousand on the
+battlefield last week, and the others need distraction—of
+a pleasant sort. My men above everything.”</p>
+
+<p>So the colonel who loved his men with a boundless
+love and, furthermore, was not one to waste time in
+vain endeavors to portray the eternal feminine as undesirable,
+nor to render the chase unpopular, caused
+dances to be organized on this very Place du Chapitre,
+under these very linden trees, then heavy-scented, and
+every evening. The curé, foreseeing trouble, with the
+aid of Heaven and his own undiscourageable will, had
+them suppressed after eight days (eight days is a long
+time) of wrestling with leagued powers both civil and
+military. And again God have mercy on us all!</p>
+
+<p>Now the virtuous, I mean the truly virtuous (that
+is, the untried, untempted virtuous), mustn’t throw
+stones at Masevaux nor at this book, but rather remember
+that anything could have happened to anybody had
+everything been different. And even so, hasn’t a lot
+happened to many of you? You know a good deal
+better than I do just how much.</p>
+
+<p>To the <i>popote</i> at seven-thirty, and before I’m an hour
+older I’m going to tell you about the <i>popote</i>. And you’ll
+wish you had been there instead of hearing about it—as
+runs the classic expression, “<i>Regarder manger des
+glaces</i>,” and I give the translation, “Watch others eat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+ice-cream,” partly because I want you all to know just
+what I mean, and partly because some one in the United
+States wrote to my publishers that <i>My Lorraine Journal</i>
+was a nice book, but couldn’t they suggest to me that I
+write my books either in French or English.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. O’S.</span>: “But, my dear Mr. Graham” (his name is
+Graham, and this may be his chance of immortality),
+“I couldn’t write one entirely in French to save my soul,
+and to save my soul I’d find it impossible when everything
+I’m writing about takes place in France not to
+slip into <i>la belle langue</i> occasionally.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Graham</span> (from a distance): “Occasionally!
+There you’re at it again. Occasionally!” (It does get
+on his nerves.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. O’S.</span>: “And there is another saying to the effect
+that ‘<i>On ne peut pas contenter tout le monde et son père</i>.’
+That is to say, dear Mr. Graham, that you can’t please
+everybody and your father as well, and this, of course,
+mostly applies to young men (are you a son or are you
+a father?) trying to win smiles outside family circles—and
+father ultimately paying the bills. But as it occurs to
+me here, there must be some connection.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Graham</span>: “I don’t see it. And while I’m about
+it, I’d like to tell you a thing or two concerning those
+Mexican books of yours. The Spanish was awful—even
+<i>The Yale Review</i> and <i>The Nation</i> noticed it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. O’S.</span> (getting a bit nasty): “It’s about all
+either of them did notice, especially <i>The Yale Review</i>;
+and nobody loves me on <i>The Nation</i>, but it was entirely
+the printer’s fault. He received them immaculate. I
+turned my face to the wall for three days after a glance
+at <i>A Diplomat’s Wife</i>. But then you probably don’t
+remember how perfectly sweet about these very books
+<i>The North American Review</i> was (a man with the most
+perceptive of souls and a neat flair for the imponderabilities,
+named Lawrence Gilman, does <i>their</i> book reviews),<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+also <i>The New Republic</i>, which possesses a man named
+Alvin Johnson, inexorably sure about the humanities,
+separating with a single, infallible gesture the goats
+of letters from the sheep (but he still thinks, alas! that
+all men are born free and equal). And <i>The New York
+Sun</i> was kind, kind, and <i>The New York Evening Post</i>, too,
+and they do say this latter rarely says anything nice
+about people till they’re dead and can’t enjoy it, and
+<i>The New York Tribune</i>, which has the reputation of
+being very particular about itself, and <i>The New York
+Times</i>, which never jokes and is known as a searcher
+after truth.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Graham, dreadfully bored with me, mumbles
+something like “this is what you get when you try to
+do somebody a good turn.” I couldn’t catch it all, as
+he’d doubtless continued farther on his journey through
+the great Northwest. He wrote from one of a chain of
+“Grand Trunk Pacific Hotels,” and all I can think of
+to call after him is <i>Bon voyage</i>, though he won’t like it.</p>
+
+<p>And now back to Masevaux in the valley of the Doller—Masevaux
+smelling a bit like nice leather things
+in expensive shops, with a hint of falling leaves.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI<br>
+<span class="smaller">LA POPOTE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And how shall he who has not dined be strong?
+And how shall he who is not girded fight? And
+how shall he who has not wept laugh? And how shall
+he who hath not made a free offering of his life find it?
+And many other things occur to me, but enough for the
+wise of heart.</p>
+
+<p>And now for <i>la popote</i>, which is in what was once the
+house of the Oberforster, in a street doubtless always
+muddy, looking out on the church, and it is square, of
+gray stucco, and red brick with a hall running through
+the center, like many and many a house.</p>
+
+<p>The woodwork is everywhere painted brown and the
+wall-paper, too, is brown, a lighter, depressing brown.
+Above the dining-table is a ponderous, imitation-bronze
+chandelier, but its cruel light now shines on blue-clad
+men who have fought the good fight, agreeable, cultivated
+men of the world, and it touches strongly scar
+and galloon and decoration of these, selected <i>ex millibus
+et ex millibus</i>, by hidden powers, to return from battlefield
+and trench....</p>
+
+<p>It’s the Oberforster’s glass that we use; it’s his imitation-bronze
+fruit-dish that is now filled with dark,
+rich grapes of victory. It’s his imitation-tin and real-glass
+punch-bowl that is on the table by the window.
+On the porcelain stove that heats well, too well (I sit
+with my back close to it), is a <i>dégagé</i> marble bibelot, the
+heads of a man and a woman in <i>basso-rilievo</i> cut in an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+obtrusively chance bit of marble, and it bears the motto,
+“<i>Amor condusse noi</i>.” Perhaps on their honeymoon,
+the Oberforster and his bride had made the classic
+<i>Italienische Reise</i>, and had pressed closely, so closely
+against each other in the railway carriage, that the apprehensive
+fellow-voyagers shut their eyes or sought
+another compartment. The Teutonic “will to live” is
+irresistible, and when it’s at work there’s nothing to
+be done except get out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>Theirs were the lithographs representing beings of
+the Biedermayer epoch, theirs the many-tiered machine-turned,
+walnut sideboard. Theirs was (I know
+not how it got into that company of <i>ersatz</i> and imitation)
+a beautiful old glass carafe, a shepherd and a sacrificial
+lamb engraved upon it (perhaps once a church
+vessel), but in it was a stopper, half cork and half tin,
+with an imitation turquoise in the middle.</p>
+
+<p>Theirs was a smoking-set of imitation tin whose massive
+ash-receiver in the most horrid <i>art nouveau</i> continually
+mocked the delicate spirals of smoke. Said the
+commandant one evening, flicking his cigar-ash into the
+dreadful thing:</p>
+
+<p>“That invasion was almost as bad as this. You could
+have bought an ash-receiver like it in every big shop
+in Paris.”</p>
+
+<p>“And in every little one,” finished Laferrière. “Thank
+God the frontier <i>is</i> closed, even at the price.”</p>
+
+<p>In the corner between the windows was an upright
+piano piled with the best of music, and there was a large
+and completely uninteresting turned-wood clock, stopped
+at 12.25 on August 7th, four years ago.</p>
+
+<p>And the man that earned and owned it all is dead
+in a soldier’s grave, and the woman, Anna by name,
+weeps somewhere her lost love and the equally lost gods
+of her household. <i>Et c’est la guerre.</i></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus05" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>COMMANDANT POULET</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>As for Madame Labonne’s cooking, she knows her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+business, and if it weren’t the obvious duty of those
+sitting about the table to take the gifts the gods and
+Madame Labonne provide, I should feel I were living
+much too well.</p>
+
+<p>She gives us a <i>gâteau à la crème</i> that disappears smoothly,
+leaving but an exquisite memory. She has another
+<i>gâteau à l’oignon</i> (don’t turn away; it’s perfectly delicious
+and takes a day to make the onion part), her
+<i>filets</i> melt in the mouth, and her <i>purées</i> are the insubstantial
+fabric of a dream. When she serves the classic
+Alsatian dish of sauerkraut decorated with boiled potatoes
+and shining pieces of melting pork, you don’t
+really need to eat for twenty-four hours, and wouldn’t
+go to the <i>popote</i> except for the conversation and the
+company. Sometimes the officers, the unwedded ones,
+think of marrying Madame Labonne—she’s fat and about
+sixty and doesn’t try to look young (by her works alone
+they shall know her), and the married ones think of
+trying to introduce her into their happy homes in some
+rôle or other.</p>
+
+<p>And when they move into the rich, shining Alsatian
+plain, that they have looked down upon these four long
+years, she is to take part in the triumphal procession.</p>
+
+<p>And this is how we generally find ourselves placed
+at table. I sit on the right of Commandant Poulet,
+who, somewhat as a prince of story, for these four years
+has administered with much calm, with great good
+sense, with wide understanding, and, above all, with
+immense tact and kindness, the not always simple
+affairs of the delivered ones of the reconquered triangle.</p>
+
+<p>Only he can know the difficulties of the French Military
+Mission, though all may see the results. It is a
+land flowing with honey if not with milk (the busy bee
+in and out of war-time doth its work, though, it would
+seem, not so the cow).</p>
+
+<p>In full maturity it has been given to Commandant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span>
+Poulet to see results, and sometimes I have looked
+almost in and at a man whose strange lot during the
+war years has been constructive work. His first public
+appearance was when, as <i>tout jeune lieutenant remplissant
+des bouts de table</i>, he accompanied President Loubet
+to St. Petersburg on his 1902 visit. Since then many
+honors have been his, and here in Alsace he has been
+both Paul and Apollo, for he has reaped where he has
+planted and God <i>has</i> given the increase. <i>Très chic</i>,
+in his horizon-blue, with his high decorations on his
+breast, <i>et très homme du monde</i>. This is what I see and
+it seems very fair. Of his personal life what can I know?—except
+that it must be as the life of all that walk the
+earth, disillusion succeeding illusion, grief tripping up
+joy; for there is no getting away from the old verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ainsi du mal au bien,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>De la joie à la peine</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Passe la vie humaine.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Somewhere in Lorraine the commandant has a destroyed
+château. But he can always dwell in the dwelling
+of his labors in Alsace.</p>
+
+<p>Vis-à-vis is his first aide, Captain Tirman, whom I
+saw on my arrival, always with deep rings under his
+eyes, too much in rooms and bending over desks—<i>il
+boit le travail</i>. Entirely devoted to his chief. He is
+musical, too, and sometimes while waiting in the dining-room
+for the mess to assemble we find him playing
+Beethoven or Bach, or more recent and more compromising
+Germans, from the piles of the Oberforster’s
+music on the Oberforster’s piano. <i>La musique n’a pas
+de patrie</i>—for musical men who have fought. (But let
+a zealous <i>civil</i> far from the front hear a strain of Schumann
+or Brahms issuing from some window and he runs
+straightway to the police.) Captain Tirman wears the
+Legion of Honor and the <i>Croix de Guerre</i>, and is so pale,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>
+I am told, because of the hard campaigns he has passed
+through, and wounds and illness. He is always in charge
+in the absence of the commandant, but though <i>être
+Tirmannisé</i> is one of the gentle jokes of the <i>popote</i>, no
+signs of tyranny were apparent to me.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Bernard, second aide, is, like the commandant,
+from Lorraine, and had prepared himself for the Paris
+bar. He conducted himself admirably during the war,
+Laferrière tells me. Wounded three times, he bears
+a great scar—<i>sa belle cicatrice</i>, as his comrades proudly
+call it—on his forehead (Verdun, August, 1916) and over
+his heart <i>la Légion d’Honneur</i> and the <i>Croix de Guerre</i>.
+Always very carefully dressed—<i>tiré à quatre épingles</i>
+(pulled out by four pins), as they nearly all are.</p>
+
+<p>At his right sits Captain Sérin from Toulouse, the
+only Meridional at the table. He is very straightforward
+and uncomplicated, I should judge, as regards
+his psychology, with the rather objective eye of the man
+from the south. (They don’t dream the way we farther
+north do.) He sees a joke at any distance and is the
+sort, they tell me, who would obey as simply as he
+would breathe, without a thought of hesitation, an order
+unto death. The sort that when told to bring up reinforcements
+at a moment when it seems impossible,
+quite simply does it, and it only <i>happens</i> to happen
+that he is living. He is not tall, but wide of shoulder,
+holding himself very straight, and on his breast there
+are ribbons, too. He is chief of the Gendarme Service,
+the first and last provost of Alsace reconquered.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of Captain Bernard sits Captain
+Toussaint, chief of the Forestry Service of the Masevaux
+district, clad in bottle-green, with silver bugles on his
+collar and the Legion of Honor and other decorations
+on his breast, <i>d’une grande bonté</i>, his comrades tell me.
+He is from the north, from Douai (his brother was
+killed at the front), tall, slim, pale-faced, lantern-jawed,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>
+everything is in his eyes—in the <i>regard</i>, as some one said
+of him—and much of his life is passed alone in forests.
+So different from Captains Bernard and Lavallée, living
+in Paris, between whom he generally sits; and he nearly
+always comes in late from his forests for luncheon and
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>“For Toussaint, Creation is represented by the first
+day when the heavens were formed, and everything that
+came afterward had something to do with forests,” some
+one said last night, as he was talking rather hotly about
+the war-time cutting down of the trees of France, and
+the influence the loss of forests had on the life of
+nations. <i>Très catholique</i>, also; but then these men
+of the Mission, with all of whom I have entered tabernacles,
+are of an extreme reverence. What they “believe”
+I know not.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Laferrière sits sometimes by me, sometimes
+at the end of the table. He has early gray hair,
+a fresh complexion, gray-blue eyes with a certain inwardness
+of expression, a smiling movement of the lips when
+speaking, and, with all his wit, an extreme kindness in
+human judgments. Indeed, I am struck by something
+of softness and patience in the eyes of each one of these
+men to whom nothing of war is foreign, who have looked
+on all combinations of mortal anguish, and whose eyes
+at times, too, have had the red look, the hard, bright
+look of men who have just killed.</p>
+
+<p>Laferrière is very cultivated after the way of us
+dwellers in cities. He was Doctor of Law at the University
+of Lille. On the 2d of August, 1914, he closed
+his books, after which, as under-officer, he had lived for
+months that closely packed life of the trenches, “where
+one was never physically a moment alone” (hardest of
+all hardships, I have heard fastidious men say), then he
+had been called as jurist to the Mission. Emotional,
+but through circumstances or will, how can I know?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>
+giving the effect of having dominated the personal—to
+what point also I know not.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Lavallée, but recently come from Paris,
+sits at another end. His personality is less striking than
+some of the others at the table, though he has <i>une tête
+un peu mauresque</i>, like pictures of the <i>Conquistadores</i>,
+and is inclined to solemnity of mien. He has a charming
+voice, fresh, with warm notes in it, and sometimes of an
+evening sings Breton <i>chansons populaires</i>. We especially
+like the one concerning <i>la douce Annette</i>, who spun a
+fatal love-story with a certain Pierre who wouldn’t let
+go her hand.</p>
+
+<p>There is one, Stroll by name, now absent, but his comrades
+evidently love him, for I often hear, “What a
+pity Stroll isn’t here”; or, “That is Stroll’s story.”</p>
+
+<p>Also for a few days <i>en visite</i> like myself is Captain
+Antoni, born at Strasbourg, but very French in appearance,
+a tall, <i>svelte</i>, thin-faced man with a rising and
+falling inflexion in his voice, who has been through the
+whole campaign and wears many decorations. He said
+last night that the fighting at Verdun, especially that
+at Hill 304, was the worst he had seen.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the Verdun sector, which knows the
+blood of men of many climes, is moist with that of <i>my</i>
+countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is part of what I see as I sit at table with
+these men. The common patriotic effort tends to screen
+the personal life of each, of which I know nothing. But
+I do know that destiny is largely formed by character
+and endowments, and, barring the fact that time and
+chance happeneth to all, I would be tempted to wager
+that when such or such a thing came to such or such a
+one, <i>thus</i> he received it—gift or blow—thus he used it,
+once his own. So unescapable and visible are the sequences
+of character.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes we play bridge in the evening, pleasant,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>
+easy bridge, anybody taking a card back when once
+played, and changing his mind about declarations.
+As they so truly say, “<i>Nous jouons pour nous amuser</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>And yesterday there appeared on the table the famous
+<i>cafetière</i> and Sérin, his face shining with a great light,
+performed the rites. It was one of those large, high
+glass bulbs with a nickel coffee-pot below. Dry coffee
+is put into the glass bulb, water into the pot, an alcohol-lamp
+beneath, and the whole is hermetically sealed.
+After which, according to the mysterious and wonderful
+laws of nature, the water rises and wets the coffee; it
+must rise thrice, giving forth at the same time volcanic
+sounds. During the ceremony nothing else is thought
+of. The officiating high priest is harried with liturgical
+suggestions, or unkind remarks are made about his
+natural endowments. As that corked spout of the pot,
+horrid with potentialities, is turned now toward one,
+now toward the other, men who would have given their
+lives without a thought in the trenches, get nervous and
+call to Sérin, “<i>Dis-donc, tu vas me crever un œil!</i>” “Not
+toward Madame. It would be too terrible,” etc., etc.,
+and in the end the spout, with all its possibilities, is
+turned toward the Oberforster’s made-in-Germany clock.
+After which one has a delicious cup of coffee and conversation
+becomes normal.<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Last night I found they were talking about giving a
+certificate of good conduct to one of them who is married,
+to take home with him to reassure his wife. A
+comrade, after a little badinage in the Latin manner,
+but very discreet I must say, objects: “But now there
+won’t be any <i>permissions</i>,” and, doubtfully, “We would
+have to give him the certificate for three whole months.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then, like the antiphon of some song, a voice said,
+“<i>Trois mois, c’est long</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Another said, “<i>Trois mois, c’est très long</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Another, with a sigh, “<i>C’est trop long</i>....” And I
+to smile—within myself.</p>
+
+<p>Then a stumbling home on an invisible but strong
+horizon-blue arm, through the inky streets, ankle-deep
+in mud. Sometimes I haven’t known which one of the
+various kind arms it was, the electric pocket-lamp only
+occasionally making the darkness more manifest. No
+one to bump into, as circulation in the streets is forbidden
+after nine o’clock, on account of possible espionage.</p>
+
+<p>And you will say these are pleasant days!</p>
+
+<p><i>Later.</i>—Hunting in the bookcase, I found a small
+diamond-printed copy of <i>Hermann und Dorothea</i>. As,
+to the sound of near night-firing, I turned its smooth
+old pages, I realized it for one of the most completely
+objective works of genius ever born into the world. No
+thread of its maker’s identity is woven with it, no color
+of his personal experience. I felt but a sense of his complete
+and serene equilibrium, though the stream of
+words, bearing those golden thoughts, was so softly
+flowing, so crystal-clear, that it made me remember a
+line from another of Goethe’s poems, as subjective as
+this is objective:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Der Geist ist Bräutigam.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Wort sei die Braut.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the little preface I found that the poet, in his old
+age, was wont to say of <i>Hermann und Dorothea</i> that of
+his long poems it was almost the only one that gave him
+pleasure. I seemed to understand what he meant. By
+reason of its complete objectivity, he could have had
+no consciousness of that inadequacy familiar to mortals
+contemplating anything formed from themselves. No
+suffering had attended its birth; rather it would seem<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>
+to have formed itself spontaneously on the heights out
+of some plastic stuff, light and bright as summer air,
+imperishable as granite. It did not recall to Goethe
+(nor does it to one who reads) that night of personal
+anguish, that day of emptiness, that hour of longing,
+nor even some glimpsing, vistaed moment wherein personal
+fulfilment held out its shining, shadowy hand.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the sound of cannon and the smarting of
+my eyes from the strain of the tiny Gothic print, for a
+moment within myself an almost equal feeling of harmony
+arose, taking a form of Peace, like an antique
+statue, free yet restrained, noble yet persuasive; bearing
+no one’s mark, nor any signs of workmanship, except
+that stamped by its own beauty. Then it vanished,
+leaving the little book to throb between my hands to
+the beat of my own times. Though generations had
+passed on and other wars were being fought, and the
+word “freedom” was again on every lip, as always, the
+women, the children, the old, were paying the heaviest
+tithes of invasion. Had I not seen like streams of
+fugitive populations flooding into Paris that hideous
+spring of 1918, heard the cries of anguish from those
+fleeing before an enemy army? Then also death and
+birth waited not on circumstance, and love and hate,
+fear and hope, hurry and exhaustion, were at work in
+strange commingling. I had seen deeds of succor, too,
+like unto those of the lovers, proffered in boundless devotion,
+by nameless, uncounted men and women, coming
+from the world’s ends to minister to its woe.</p>
+
+<p>A vision of <i>toux ceux qui ont bu à la coupe amère de
+cette époque</i> passed before me. Deeply sighing, I at last
+put out my light, thinking “war is war,” needing no
+adjectives, and of the changelessness of the human heart,
+however the formulas may be multiplied and renewed;
+and forever <i>Væ victis</i>!</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES<br>
+THE COMMANDANT TRACES THE RECONQUERED TRIANGLE ON MY
+MAP. THE MILITARY MISSION</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Monday, November 4th.</i>—Dreamed of old griefs
+and awakened with the heavy taste their memory
+can even now distil. Raining. The yellow-and-brown
+carpet under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre is wet
+and dull and the few leaves still on the trees are soft
+and heavy, the houses damp and shabby. “The old
+wounds burn,” even here, where all is new and bright,
+and fancy flings itself delicately, amorously, consolingly
+about the pleasant happenings of each day.... Fortunately
+my breakfast is brought early by a smiling maid,
+who enters, bringing with her the aroma of fresh tea
+and the delicately scented, dark-green, liquid honey
+of these pine forests. There is that blessed volatilization
+of night-grief, and I arise to another pleasant day,
+knowing once again, however, that everywhere the old
+ghosts find one....</p>
+
+<p>The rainy light coming in seems but to darken the
+oak-paneled room. What there is of wall-paper is a
+darkish blue with a narrow frieze of red. The curtains
+are stripes of red-and-blue cloth. Even the daytime
+cover of the very comfortable eider-downed bed is of the
+same red-and-blue-striped stuff. It was because they
+were the colors of the French uniform that the young
+man once living herein, under German rule, chose them.</p>
+
+<p>But he himself is gone, gone the hope of his house.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+One of his sisters was saying to me last night as I tarried
+for a few minutes in the little sitting-room, where I
+had first found them all rehanging the portraits of their
+ancestors:</p>
+
+<p>“The price for peace is so high and terrifying that
+one can’t yet rejoice in it. Rather one says to oneself
+in desolation, ‘and all that was so precious is gone, that
+in the end one may sit around deserted fireplaces, or
+try to find shelter under bombarded roofs, and be at
+grips with the terrible <i>après-guerre</i>!’” And of her brother:</p>
+
+<p>“At least he fell for the cause that is so dear to us;”
+she added after a moment’s silence, “it might so easily
+have been otherwise.”</p>
+
+<p>I have noticed everywhere a great pride tempering
+grief over fallen beloved dead. Even in mothers’ hearts
+this pride is strong enough to console. They know why
+their sons were born, and to many a death of glory has
+been as a second birth; he whom they lost is, in some way,
+laid a second time, bright, beautiful, complete, in their
+arms, and <i>safe</i> from life. And they are blessed who so
+mourn.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes there are further griefs. I knew a mother
+of twin sons; one had fallen far away, a gentle, young,
+musician son, in a fierce, unequal conflict, whose details
+she was not spared; the other had been brought back
+to her on his twenty-first birthday a sightless stump.
+I cannot forget her as she stood, tall, black-veiled, by a
+pillared door, like an antique statue of grief, her eyes
+as dry as marble eyes. And though she, too, said:</p>
+
+<p>“At least I know why I bore them, and it was for
+something more than myself,” the obsession of a further
+grief was in her eyes as she added, “<i>I must not die first</i>—and
+he is so young!”</p>
+
+<p>Here on the borderland I find there is often an additional
+reason for pride, where Fate, which could so
+easily have willed it otherwise, sometimes has allowed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+the beloved to die for the beloved cause, as did the brother
+whose room is now mine. And this is his story, or
+rather the end of it. Those first four days of August,
+1914, he had gone about the mountain heights and passes
+with his field-glass continually at his eyes to see if help
+were not coming from the hills in the guise of the <i>pantalons
+rouges</i>. But on the fourth day he was obliged to
+accompany his regiment into Germany, where he stayed
+three months. On hearing of the battle of the Marne
+through a French prisoner, he cried, “<i>Nous avons eu
+là une belle victoire!</i>” (“We have had a great victory!”)
+and he was put under arrest. His one idea being to
+desert, he asked to go into the lines again, knowing there
+would be no opportunity, if he remained in prison, training
+recruits. His chance came when he was fighting
+against the English in the north. His chiefs being killed
+or wounded, he, as under-officer, found himself in command
+of a company of a hundred and fifty men. With
+him deserted ninety-seven others. Later, he fell fighting
+in the French lines near Tahure. And this (it is
+perhaps much) is all I know of him or ever shall; if he
+were beloved of a woman or had loved many, I know not.
+He, the last of his race, took his name with him to the
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>All that surrounds me as I write was his. His
+the full bookshelves, with an elaborate set of a
+<i>Geschichte der Literatur</i>, and a <i>Welt-Geschichte</i> in many
+volumes, his the books of early boyhood, of travel, the
+many old, little books of prayer in tooled and beveled
+bindings of a generation or two ago, and the piles of
+the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>. Two eighteenth-century
+maps hang on the walls, one of “Alsatia,” with queer
+German names for familiar places, and another of “Gallia,”
+and there is an incomparable, white, porcelain
+stove which heats quickly and gives out its pleasant
+heat during long hours.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span></p>
+
+<p>On a little corner shelf is an old engraving of the
+last <i>chanoinesse</i> of the Chapter of Masevaux, Xavière
+de Ferrette. She is dressed in full canonicals, with a
+large ruched coif and ermine-trimmed mantle; some high
+order in a Maltese-cross design is suspended from the
+broad ribbon worn across her breast, and in her hands
+is a richly embossed prayer-book.</p>
+
+<p>The long face with its immensely high forehead has
+a full-lipped, very human mouth, and in the right, upper
+corner is her sixteen-quartered coat of arms.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the Chapter would make good, though
+long, reading, for, like many other things in this part
+of the world, it begins with Charlemagne and ends with
+the French Revolution. Of both France seems equally
+proud, and certainly <i>il y en a pour tous les goûts</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Women always seem to have had great influence on the
+life of their times in Alsace. Not even those with the
+vote and all the rights, together with all the privileges
+of our times, can pretend to half the influence of certain
+holy women of the so-called dark ages. They built
+on hilltops and in valleys those many citadels of peace
+whose traces still are to be seen, where life was free from
+violence, and, like sweet odors uncorked, their good deeds
+have perfumed the ages. Saint-Odile, <i>Vierge Candide
+et Forte</i>, daughter of Duke Atalric, is patroness of Alsace,
+and in her many have sought the feminine ideal of the
+Alsatian soul; and there are Saint-Richarde, tried by
+fire for a guiltless love, wife of Louis the Fat, and Herrade,
+Abbess of Hohenburg, author of the famous <i>Hortus
+Deliciarum</i>, preserved through seven centuries and
+destroyed in the siege of Strasbourg in 1870. These
+are but a few, and the histories of the secular dwellers
+in the Rhine Valley, spectacular though they were,
+seem often quite colorless contrasted with those of these
+saints of the Holy Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The first monks and pilgrims to come to Alsace were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+from Ireland (the last of these before the very end of
+the world will doubtless also come from Erin). It would
+appear that even in those days it could not be said of
+the Irish that they were neither hot nor cold, which is
+probably one of the reasons “why God loves them.” In
+the lovely rivered plains and great forests of the Rhine
+Valley it was they who built the first chapels and traced
+the first paths. It was an Irish monk whom Atalric,
+hoping for a son, consulted before the birth of his daughter;
+but of Saint-Odile another time.</p>
+
+<p>The house next the one wherein I dwell was that of
+the abbess, and now belongs to Madame Auguste Lauth.</p>
+
+<p>It, too, has a beautiful stairway, with a time-polished
+oaken balustrade, and it contains the great room of
+noble proportions and lovely panelings (still heated by
+the celebrated porcelain stove, fit only for a museum),
+where the ladies of the Chapter assembled in their rich
+toilets and great coifs to go to the church, reached by a
+two-storied gallery, which old prints show as having
+a most distinguished air, with its sloping roof pierced
+with oval windows and its pleasant proportions. But
+the upper story and the roof were done away with in
+the nineteenth century, which has demolished so much
+(not always in heat of battle), and it is now but a long,
+formless building used for some sort of storehouse connected
+with the Koechlin manufactories. And the way
+the six houses came to be constructed was this:</p>
+
+<p>The Abbess Xavière de Ferrette, a woman of resolution
+and energy, as one can easily see by the high forehead
+and long jaw, becoming alarmed at the increasing
+expenses of the Chapter and the equally decreasing
+revenues, decided on some radical remedies. Through
+the Middle Ages, down to her time, the <i>chanoinesses</i>
+had lived under one roof, and, according to the holy
+rule, ate together. But with them fared so many outsiders,
+their friends and their friends’ friends, with their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+domestics, that they found themselves being literally
+eaten out of house and home. The abbess called a
+solemn meeting wherein they arranged for the building
+of separate houses, whose construction was given into
+the hands of Kléber, then architect and inspector of
+the royal buildings at Belfort. Pictures of Kléber,
+known rather impersonally to Americans by the Parisian
+avenue that bears his name, abound in Alsace, and show
+a sensitive, artistic face, with a pleasure-loving mouth
+above a short chin, and a halo of light, curly hair. He
+met an early death in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
+“<i>Il avait six pieds en tout</i>,” his contemporaries were wont
+admiringly to say of him.</p>
+
+<p>In these separate houses, with garden attached, each
+<i>chanoinesse</i> was to live alone with her <i>demoiselle</i>, who
+at her death would step into her very comfortable shoes,
+and the abbess only was to receive guests in the name
+of the Chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The house I lodged in was that of the Chanoinesse
+von Reutner. These dames had to make their titles
+very clear to their earthly mansions, each having to
+possess sixteen quarterings evenly balanced, eight on her
+father’s side and eight on her mother’s side. Gentlemen
+were chosen to give their word on this somewhat
+elusive subject, and methought ’twas well they didn’t
+have to put their hand in the fire at the same time, for
+what can be sworn to with certainty of those things
+which have their origin on the mysterious borderland of
+the emotions? However....</p>
+
+<p>The <i>chanoinesses</i> belonged mostly to the great families
+of Alsace, the Masevaux, the Ferrettes, though the
+records show many German names like Furstenburg and
+Seckingen, or French like Beauffrémont and Fontenoy.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the Abbey and Chapter were under French
+domination, sometimes under Austrian, sometimes they
+would be ceded to noble families like those of the Counts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+of Bollwiller and of Fugger, and in many ways their
+history had been checkered since their foundation in
+the eighth century.</p>
+
+<p>And as for the Thirty Years’ War, they could have
+told tales of the Swedish invasion scarcely to be beaten
+by certain tales of our days. Indeed, so complicated is
+the history of those times, every shade and branch of
+combatant having fought against every other shade
+and branch, in kaleidoscopic changes, that when Turenne,
+allied with the Spaniards, revolted against the king,
+Louis XIV, it was a Swede, Rosen by name, who helped
+the Maréchal du Plessis Praslin to conquer him at Réthel.
+Rosen, who with his brothers had come originally from
+Livonia with the armies of Gustavus Adolphus, then
+promptly put on his standard a tower falling on a rose-bush
+in full bloom, with the device, <i>Malgré la Tour les
+Roses fleuriront</i>.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>In turning over pages concerning the involved chronicles
+of this borderland, I feel once again that history
+is, of all things, the most difficult to write, because of
+having to do with facts, and what more elusive than
+facts, eternally subjective? Even this simplest record of
+historic days is as different from one that another might
+have written about the same things as if it dealt, instead,
+let us say, with the genial suggestion of letting the Hottentots
+and the Zulus have their own government. It
+is that fantasy-awakening thing called temperament
+that is forever at work with facts, one thing always
+suggestive of another, rather than explanatory of itself,
+and I frankly rejoice that the “primrose by the river’s
+brim” <i>is</i> to me something more than a primrose.</p>
+
+<p>I am now such a long way from the history of the
+Chapter that there is scarcely time to get back, and so
+I will finish quickly by saying that in the epoch preceding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+the Revolution it found itself entangled in various
+temporal affairs, especially lawsuits with the inhabitants
+concerning their convenient but disappearing feudal
+rights. Otherwise life was probably not too strenuous
+for the <i>chanoinesses</i>. As nothing escapes the influence
+of its hour and age, why should one think the Chapter
+entirely escaped those of that light, pervading, charming,
+inconsequent, rich thing known as the eighteenth
+century, where everything seems to have finished by a
+song, or a witty quatrain, or by delicious angels holding
+up holy-water founts in the shape of lovely shells.</p>
+
+<p><i>To the popote at 12.15.</i>—Its windows look out on the
+unmistakably plain timepiece in the church tower, and
+everybody knows when anybody is late, and just how
+late, and there’s a nice little green box on the table
+designed for fines, but only intermittently insisted on.</p>
+
+<p>Commandant Poulet greets me with the words, “At
+three o’clock to-day Austria ceases hostilities.” Something
+cruel and red seemed suddenly rolled away.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash I saw that Viennese pre-war world I had
+known so well, partaking tranquilly of the pleasant
+things of life, public events making little noise, intellectual
+passion absent—or discouraged, and things easy,
+easy—except for those dying of hunger. But that world
+has been burned to ashes, and the winds of destiny are
+about to scatter even them.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as usual, some one read the American <i>communiqué</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And to the deeds of the First Army must be added
+those of the National Guard, for the words Texas,
+Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico,
+New York, New Jersey, are stamped in fadeless red
+upon the villages and banks of the Meuse.</p>
+
+<p>We talked long, and at two o’clock, as we arose from
+table, I knew that those others to the east had already
+arisen from the bitter meal of defeat, and after the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+manner of human hearts were adjusting themselves
+to the things that <i>are</i>. And perhaps there in Vienna
+they may not find it so difficult. They’ve been defeated
+before and they’re far enough east to have a touch of
+fatalism.</p>
+
+<p><i>Later.</i>—Through mist and low-hanging clouds and
+rain with Captain Bernard to Sewen, where we visited
+first the school. Neat rows of sabots were in the hallway,
+all alike to <i>me</i>, but it appears some spirit in the
+feet leads each unmistakably to his or her own pair.
+A dozen children only were in the schoolroom, the
+others ill with grippe.</p>
+
+<p>The school-teacher, a tall, horizon-blue-clad Frenchman,
+with kind eyes and a decoration on his breast,
+had just finished the dictation. Its subject was <i>de la
+viande</i> (concerning meat). Looking at the copy-book
+of the nearest little boy, very blue-eyed, I read <i>de la
+fiande</i>, and his dictation was further embellished by
+sounds reminiscent of German rule. “<i>Chez le bourgé,
+le tinton, le charcoutier, le boutin, le zocisse</i>,” but as I
+said, that’s their German ear—and little by little it
+will be done away with and “French as she is spoke”
+will take its place. One small boy who wrote a beautiful,
+copper-plate hand was stone-deaf, but he had dear,
+questioning eyes and something patient in his being.
+I asked, when we came out, if nothing could be done
+for him. But the master said, with a terrible finality,
+“His father is an alcoholic.”</p>
+
+<p>It is evidently not without result that they distil
+their <i>quetsch</i> and their <i>kirsch</i>, their rose haws and their
+gentian, and everything else that has the merest embryo
+of a fruit or a berry or leaf in these pleasant valleys;
+as to which the bright-eyed, Italian-looking curé initiated
+us further, as you will see.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the school, we went to the church, beautifully
+familiar to me against the sky, but completely and,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>
+from our point of view, hopelessly modernized within;
+though I couldn’t help feeling that for those who come
+from dingy farms and dung-heaps the crude splendor
+of that house of God must be greatly comforting.</p>
+
+<p>The old ossuary chapel nearby, with its fifteenth-century
+vaulting, was crowded with beautiful things
+from the church at Thann. The carvings on the choir
+stalls, of the most delicate workmanship, were amusing
+to boot, nothing human being foreign to the artists
+that made them. One figure forming an arm-rest had
+a swollen cheek bound up in a cloth, and, furthermore,
+he evidently had an ache in the center of his being,
+for he was doubled up, his hands pressed close to his
+person in the classic position of one so suffering. Another
+showed a man leaning over, with delicately modeled
+back, his head in his hands, but <i>his</i> ache was very manifestly
+spiritual. Another had a goiter, and monkeys
+and parrots abounded, the native fancy of the fifteenth
+century evidently being out on a loose snaffle. A celebrated
+row of musical angels were so delicately carved,
+with cymbal and harp and bugle and lyre and flute,
+that they would be well placed in some vitrine rather
+than high on a choir stall in a dim Gothic church. The
+celebrated statue in stone of Saint-Théobald from the
+column of his fountain at Thann had been brought here
+for safety, too, and I fingered it as well as many another
+thing generally beyond reach.</p>
+
+<p>As we came out, the clock in the tower of the church
+struck three. The great and disastrous Austrian war-act
+was finished.</p>
+
+<p>It was a moment beyond words, and as we walked
+silently over to the curé’s house I thought of the cruel,
+interminable lists of dead and wounded and missing
+in the Vienna newspapers that winter of 1915, when the
+Russians were flooding Galicia and spilling over the
+ridges of the Carpathians. The curé, however, young,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>
+with fine, Italian face-bones, and frayed and spotted
+cassock, somewhat changed our thoughts by bringing
+out various of the thirty-four specimens of distilled
+liqueurs which are the pride and playthings of these
+valleys, explaining to us with snapping eyes special
+variations of his distillings. Holding a bottle and a
+glass up against the light in his long, thin <i>primitif</i> hands,
+he poured me slowly something wrested from the mountain-ash
+(I had thought I might as well have a completely
+new sensation), and I went about the rest of the afternoon
+feeling as if a hot stone were lodged in my breast.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at Masevaux, we drove to a house on the
+Place du Chapitre, where I found another interior of the
+kind I am now familiar with—that of the high and comfortable
+Alsatian bourgeoisie.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Chagué, large, white-haired, energetic, intelligent,
+agreeable, received us flanked by an amiable
+married daughter and a thin, upstanding veteran, his
+ribbon of honor in his buttonhole. But, to be perfectly
+frank, the veterans get on my nerves. It’s the picture
+of what the gorgeous young heroes of our great war
+will be one day, <i>sans</i> eyes, <i>sans</i> teeth, <i>sans</i> hair, <i>sans</i>
+everything, and <i>toutes les fins sont tristes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” said Madame Chagué when once started and
+tea had been poured (accompanied by cakes you don’t
+get a chance to serve unless you are <i>délivré</i>, and you have
+to be well delivered, or else never in bondage, to get
+the chance to eat them), “the government must proceed
+with a good deal of caution as well as consideration.
+The Alsatians aren’t like anybody but themselves.
+They mustn’t lay hands on our little ideas and ways,
+‘<i>ces Messieurs de l’Administration ont compris cela</i>’
+[with an appreciative look at Bernard]. We held on
+all these years, awaiting the day of deliverance. <i>Enfin</i>,
+for two generations we have looked on the reconquest of
+Alsace as the coming of heaven upon earth, as if that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span>
+once come to pass, there would be nothing more to
+desire.”</p>
+
+<p>She said all these things with an appraising light in her
+eye; being a clever old lady, in the four years since
+she had been “delivered,” she had doubtless found that
+life is life—even though there is a great choice as to
+whom one wants to live it out with, and how.</p>
+
+<p>About this time the veteran was encouraged to tell a few
+of his 1870 experiences, and I felt as my grandchildren,
+if I ever have any, will feel when the veterans of 1918
+will tell what they did “single-handed in the trenches,”
+or how, “as the only man left of their regiment,” they
+had held back the invaders, or how they hid in a barn
+and let them go by and then gave the alarm, “and a
+whole battalion had to surrender,” or what know I?
+Politely, but without eagerness, I listened, the 1870
+veterans almost “spoiling the war” for me, with their
+eternal illustration of the flatness of not dying on the
+battlefield. I tried to bring the conversation back to
+1918—leaving a rather long and not very clear account
+of how he kept his ancient, beloved, red <i>képi</i> under glass,
+or next his heart, or pressed in an album, I rather forget
+which. I wanted to hear the story of the famous entry
+of the <i>Pantalons Rouges</i> into Masevaux on August 7,
+1914, where they have been ever since, though now
+changed into this celestial blue, which decorates the
+earth (as I have frequently said, and doubtless will
+again) as never before has it been decorated by any
+men of any age or any war. Pictures of “<i>La Guerre en
+Dentelles</i>,” or gallooned and be-caped and be-frogged
+officers with lances or drawn swords on horseback,
+charging the enemy in the typical poses of Lasalle, or
+“<i>La Vieille Garde</i>,” or Wellington or Blücher at Waterloo,
+or anything else that ever was, are dull beside the
+strange, appealing beauty of the blue battalions of the
+twentieth century.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p>
+
+<p>I listened to Madame Chagué telling of the glad
+reception of those who entered Masevaux on that 7th
+of August, houses and hearts flung wide open, how everywhere
+the upper windows were crowded with women
+and children leaning out to see them come over the
+dark mountains and along the bright roads. Many
+left that same night, as they did from Thann and
+Bitschwiller and Moosch and all the towns about,
+marching on to Mulhouse, which they took only to be
+driven out, and since then many red-trousered ghosts
+walk the otherwise unmystical, industrial streets of Mulhouse.
+Three weeks later Mulhouse was again entered,
+and again, with many losses, other red pantaloons were
+driven out, since which the chimneys of Mulhouse have
+smoked a German smoke to a German heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Chagué is very Catholic, too, and bristles at
+the bare idea of any government, even the “Tiger’s,”
+taking liberties with the ancient faith. They want a
+bishop of their own, an Alsatian shepherd—“<i>faut pas
+nous bousculer dans nos petites habitudes</i>”—she kept
+repeating. I wondered what the Tiger and all the imitation
+tigers would say when they come to learn just how
+they feel here. There’s the most Gordian of knots
+awaiting them, for it appears that the Germans gave
+three thousand marks a year to each curé, and the
+French government, less enamoured of the ministers of
+God, doesn’t give any. However, that is only one of a
+series of knots on a very long string, and patient and
+very deft fingers will be needed for the untying.</p>
+
+<p>In each of these comfortable houses authentic ancestors
+look from the walls, ancestors who knew the Thirty
+Years’ War, or the Napoleonic campaigns, or 1870, or
+ancestors-to-be who have seen the World War. And all
+the dwellers of these large-roomed, high-roofed, deep-windowed
+houses, having been delivered, in turn deliver
+themselves of their sensations, thoughts, emotions, acts,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+on being delivered. One might, I dimly foresaw, do to
+one’s breast what the wedding guest did to his when he
+heard the loud bassoon. That I may not seem unkind,
+I want to say another last word about the veterans, the
+so often toothless, bent, sightless, forgetful veterans.
+They would be all right in themselves, if they weren’t so
+horribly illustrative. They seem to be saying all the
+time, “If Mortality doesn’t get you one way, it does
+another,” till you think that short agony on the battlefield,
+and long glory, are greatly preferable to decay
+and no glory. And no veteran will keep this my little
+book on the table by his bed. He would know, too
+well, that I am right.</p>
+
+<p>Later, as I slipped across the cobbly square to my
+house, and mounted the broad oaken stairway to my
+room, a feeling of nostalgia possessed me at the thought
+of leaving Alsace, to which but a few short days before
+I had seemed so unrelated. This bit of French history
+in the making, molded by the men of the grave, kind
+eyes, whose comradery with one another is so unfailing
+and whose courtesy to me is so exquisite, had become
+dear to me, and, too, I was looking on something that
+would never be again. The web was shifting, other
+figures were to be woven in it. Fate was to pull new
+things as well as old out from its storehouse and proceed
+with its endless combinations. Masevaux, capital of
+Alsace Reconquered, would be overshadowed by Strasbourg,
+by Metz, by Colmar, by Mulhouse. But it will
+have had again a little day, which is all an individual
+or a town can reasonably ask, standing under the changeless
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>As I went to the <i>popote</i>, low over the houses stretched
+the Great Bear, so vast, so splendid, that it seemed
+almost alone in a heaven growing misty toward its
+edges, though Alcor, the Starry Horseman, was twinkling
+strangely bright close to Mizar. But the autumnal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+stars hanging over the rich-colored hills of Alsace have
+not the brilliancy of those that I saw above the gray-white
+Châlons plain, that late, red October of 1917.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner Commandant Poulet drew on my map
+the boundaries of <i>Alsace Reconquise</i>, as it is now, this
+fourth day of November. But as he drew I knew he
+was feeling that it was a fleeting, vanishing thing he
+was recording, for he stopped a moment, as a man might
+stop following a wind or tracing a line in water.</p>
+
+<p>Then as we sat, some half-dozen of us, about the dining-table,
+under the hard light of the Oberforster’s
+chandelier, the commandant, flicking his cigar ash into
+the Oberforster’s dreadful ash-receiver, told me something
+of the history of the Mission, which is briefly this.</p>
+
+<p>Though French troops entered the valleys of the
+Doller, the Thur, and the Largue on the 7th of
+August, 1914, the French administration of that little
+triangle of Alsace Reconquered, as I found it, was organized
+only in November of the same year. Its first
+form was purely military, the authorities responsible
+for the civil population being also in command of the
+military operations, the final word in all that concerned
+Alsace coming from the general in command of the
+Seventh Army, in whose sector it was. These were
+successively Generals de Maud’huy, Villaret, Debeney,
+and de Boissaudy. The little triangle was first divided
+into two territories only, that of the valley of the Largue,
+with Dannemarie as its capital, that of the valley of the
+Thur with Thann as capital. Masevaux at that time
+did not form a distinct territory, but was an annex, as it
+were, of Thann, as also was St.-Amarin.</p>
+
+<p>The officers administering the territories were chosen
+mostly from the reserve—men whose former avocations
+had prepared them for the various rôles they were to
+fill in Alsace. They were members of the <i>Conseil d’Etat</i>,
+of the <i>Cour des Comptes</i>, magistrates, <i>Gardes des Forêts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+et des Eaux</i>, together with many others belonging to
+technical professions. The first <i>Capitaine Administrateur</i>
+was Captain Heurtel, in civil life <i>Maître des
+Requêtes au Conseil d’Etat</i>. Though seriously wounded
+at the very beginning of the war, in December of 1914,
+he asked to be again sent to the front. He met his
+death at Verdun in 1916. His successor was Commandant
+Poulet, <i>Conseiller d’Etat</i>, who took up office
+on Christmas Day, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>In July, 1917, the Mission was detached from the
+General Headquarters and placed under the Ministry
+of War. Its new name, expressive of enlarged activities,
+was changed to <i>Mission Militaire Administrative en Alsace</i>
+(Military Administrative Mission in Alsace), the central
+office being transferred to Masevaux, which Fate had
+placed half-way between St.-Amarin at one end of the
+reconquered triangle and Dannemarie at the other.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since, in and out of the building of the German
+<i>Kommandantur</i>, once the nave of the old Abbey, men
+clad in horizon-blue have been coming and going, busied
+about affairs after the French way, the ancient town of
+Masevaux entering into the unexpected enjoyment of
+what might be called an Indian summer. Nothing else
+has happened to it, so far as I can see, since the Revolution,
+when the Chapter was suppressed and the Goddess
+Reason briefly installed in the Abbey. And Masevaux
+loves and cherishes its brief glory as only lovely and
+transient things are loved and cherished.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN
+RESIDENCE AT ST.-AMARIN. SAINT-ODILE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 5th.</i>—Awakened early, early by the
+sound of heavy firing. Later, looking out of the
+square, I see the market in full swing. Against the inn of
+Les Lions d’Or, with its comfortable courtyard and two
+red wings, stands a wagon-load of hay with a pale-green
+cover thrown over it. Carts of cabbages and carrots,
+drawn by white oxen, are pulled up under the yellowing
+trees. The black of the clothes of the women making their
+purchases cuts in very hard. Blue-clad men come and go;
+several motors are standing before the door of the
+Administration. The shining, diffused light of the mist-hidden
+sun rounds every corner and fills up every space
+with a pleasant softness.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven I start out with the commandant, Captain
+Sérin, and Lieutenant Laferrière to motor to Thann
+through a world of rust and green and gold-colored
+hills, under the whitest of heavens. So soft and shining
+is the beauty of the lovely earth, and so soon to pass
+into the winter, that I say to the commandant how like
+the transient beauty of a woman of forty-five are these
+delicate, hazy hills with their cashmere shawls still
+twisted about their shoulders, drawn up over their
+heads, dropping down to their green-valleyed feet. I
+mean the woman of forty-five who is still loved.</p>
+
+<p>Again we stopped on the crest between the valleys
+of Masevaux and of Thann, and again we stopped and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>
+peered through the wire-and-pine screen, out toward
+Mulhouse and the Rhine and the Black Forest. The
+valley was blue and shining. Even the windows of the
+great, white building of the <i>Idioten-Anstalt</i>, where the
+Germans are bivouacked, were visible. Beyond were
+the high towers of their potassium-works. As those
+three men stood looking out over the rich plain I thought,
+“Always will I remember the officers of the Mission like
+that, standing on the heights, shading their eyes with
+their hands as they looked down into the land of Egypt,
+wherein the Lord was to lead them....”</p>
+
+<p>New shell-holes were all about us, and there was a
+sharp, continual reverberation of cannon among the
+cashmere-shawled hills.</p>
+
+<p>At Thann we stopped for a moment by the fountain
+near the church (in peace-times, the old statue of St.-Théobald
+that I saw at Sewen surmounts the charming
+column), the commandant having been saluted by a
+young American officer, leading by the hand a little girl
+of seven or eight, in Alsatian costume—huge black bow,
+black velvet bodice, full white skirts. He was quite
+simply a young man whose parents had gone to America,
+he himself had fought on the Mexican border, got his
+commission, and was proudly—oh, so proudly and so
+smilingly—walking his native streets of Thann with his
+little niece.</p>
+
+<p>We are <i>en route</i> to lunch with M. and Madame Galland,
+at Bitschwiller, who receive us as agreeable people
+of the world receive their guests in all quarters of the
+globe. They were of those who could have gone, yet
+remained, during the many bombardments of the town—<i>noblesse
+oblige</i>, and have been a blessing to the valley.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus06" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Madame Galland, with powdered hair, slender,
+delicate of feature and of form, dressing older than she
+is, might have looked out of a Latour pastel. M. Galland,
+too, is fine-featured, well groomed, agreeable, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>
+there was a handsome daughter with a quietly sorrowful
+expression on her young face. It is a house from every
+one of whose many wide windows one saw gold leaves
+hanging on black branches, behind them warm, rust-colored
+hills, traced with pale-yellow larches and stamped
+with black patterns of pine. Within, the rooms were
+beautiful with blue-clad men. There was an agreeable
+and suave odor of kindness and unstintingness about
+the house, mingling with that of the ease of people of the
+world, and the surety of those in authority, altogether a
+<i>good</i> house. Eight or ten officers besides ourselves sat
+down to the usual delicious and abundant Alsatian
+luncheon, the conversation intimate enough to have
+color, general enough not to exclude the stranger within
+the gates. And it ran after this way, beginning with
+accounts of that last day of July, 1914, when <i>Kriegsgefahrzustand</i>
+had been proclaimed in the valley and
+they were completely cut off from the outer world,
+witnessing only the sinister passing and repassing of
+regiments of dragoons and detachments of artillery.
+M. Galland had procured all the flour and dried vegetables
+possible at Mulhouse to ration the population of
+Bitschwiller in case of need, and collected what money
+he could. The days passed in suspense, till the 6th
+of August, when they remarked much coming and going
+of troops; on the 7th the German cavalry was seen
+beating a hasty retreat.</p>
+
+<p>A <i>Brigadier de Chasseurs</i>, mounted on a great black
+horse, is the first Frenchman they see, advancing alone,
+looking slowly about him, his revolver in his hands,
+fearing some snare. Then the <i>Pantalons Rouges</i> pour
+into the valley, flowers at every bayonet and in every
+tunic, and the Gallands receive the first French general
+to enter Alsace since 1870, General Superbie, commanding
+the 41st Brigade. At two o’clock, after refreshments
+had been offered from every house, the regiment took<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+the road to Mulhouse, where that same night many of
+them had their “rendezvous with death.”</p>
+
+<p>The talk then fell on that mysterious thing called
+luck, and how the soldier must have it, be <i>chançard</i>, if
+he were to come through, and of generals who, like
+General Liautey, wouldn’t have under them any save
+notoriously lucky officers. And there was much heedless
+joking (with the Fates perhaps listening). I, who never
+say even within myself, “I <i>will</i> do thus and so,” without
+adding “if God will,” remarked at last, propitiatingly,
+that “’twas somewhat difficult to tell <i>beforehand</i> who
+was going to be lucky.”</p>
+
+<p>“But for military purposes,” dryly remarked an officer
+who had not yet spoken, “one needs to be lucky only
+as long as the war lasts,” which being hideously true,
+we turned to the less elusive subject of the rich and easy
+living of the peasants in this part of the world since the
+war, and how they, even like unto those other tens of
+thousands of “war-workers,” will “miss” it. They had
+become accustomed to the troops, and there was the
+thrice blessed <i>popote</i> in which they more or less shared.
+And when the Americans came things were still better
+in a still better world. For they were very free with
+their money (though no one could understand a word
+that they said), and then they went, and the French
+troops came again, and there was something very
+pleasant about their return. Though they didn’t have
+the money of the Americans, they could be conversed
+with and they would lend a hand in the garden, and
+were always joking with the children, and helped with
+the crops, and the virtues of the Americans, if not their
+money, were somewhat forgotten. They were, in
+places, even remembered as a nuisance, wanting everything
+cleared up, stupid bores about the dung-heap,
+“and will you believe it, Monsieur,” one of them said
+to Laferrière, “they even washed their dishes with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+<i>soap</i>, and you couldn’t give the dishwater to the
+pigs!”</p>
+
+<p>After which I related Colonel Burnside’s “best short
+story,” also concerning the peasant point of view.
+When he was in Lorraine with his men, at the well-named
+watery (not watering) place called Demanges-aux-Eaux,
+a delegation of villagers waited on him,
+with the complaint that the Americans made so much
+noise at night that the <i>sheep</i> couldn’t sleep!</p>
+
+<p>And we finished luncheon gaily, to the rather distant
+sound of German guns, with the story of the wife of a
+(or probably the) French soap manufacturer in Tonquin
+who came to the Gallands’ for convalescence after “war-strain.”
+How she charmed them with her singing,
+especially of children’s songs, delighted them with the
+reserve and modesty of her conduct, and after two
+months turned out to have been once a well-known,
+café-chantant singer with the proverbial “past and many
+brilliant presents,” enjoying a glimpse of home-life in
+Alsace.</p>
+
+<p>Coffee was poured by the handsome daughter, who
+with her firm yet delicate profile, and rich, dark hair
+drawn heavily back, looked like some model for a head
+on a bank-note or medallion. Her mother, saying to
+me, “<i>Vous êtes femme de cœur</i>” took me apart and told
+me her history.</p>
+
+<p>And perhaps because so much had been buried in the
+great war of youthful love and hope, I may record a
+little of this story; its grief is typical in simplicity and
+purity of many countless thousands in this land of
+France.</p>
+
+<p>For months she had been beloved by a handsome
+young <i>chasseur</i> stationed with his regiment at Bitschwiller,
+one of many officers to frequent the hospitable
+house of the Gallands. His photograph on a table
+shows him tall, broad-shouldered, straight-eyed, kind-mouthed.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+On account of the uncertainties of his life
+he did not declare himself while there, but immediately
+afterward, doubtless because of some presentiment, he
+wrote to the mother telling of his love. This was found
+to be returned and they became fiancés.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks after he was killed in Flanders, in one
+of the Mont Kemmel combats, a ball striking him
+in the forehead as he leaped from a trench to lead a
+counter-attack.</p>
+
+<p>He was one of ten sons. Six of his brothers had fallen,
+too. Awed, I asked concerning her who had borne
+them, but she had gone to her grave long before the
+World War; though I knew her not, thinking of the
+mother of the Maccabees, and many like her, I
+thanked God that those seven wounds had been
+spared a mother’s heart. Then we returned to the
+young girl’s story.</p>
+
+<p>“But never to have looked into each other’s eyes
+and exchanged the glance of love,” I said, “it’s a
+shadowy and heavy grief for her youth to bear. Would
+it not have been better for them to have been united?”</p>
+
+<p>The mother answered, after a pause, “There was no
+time.”</p>
+
+<p>“But this can’t be the end for her; she’s only beginning
+life!” I said, and thought of the great, sorrowing
+hosts of these young widows of the heart alone, and
+of the vexed question in their families, as to whether it
+was better to become a widow or remain a maid.</p>
+
+<p>“She said to me only the other day, ‘I have all that
+I need for my whole life.’”</p>
+
+<p>“She will find that the heart is not like that,” I cried;
+“it doesn’t seem able to content itself even with the
+sweetest and holiest things of memory. It’s forever
+reaching out.”</p>
+
+<p>For a moment we stood with clasped hands, looking
+out to the hills whence despair had so often come, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+Madame Galland added, quite simply, “Fifty thousand
+sleep around about us.”</p>
+
+<p>For one of the many-colored hills, pressing close to
+the broad windows of the salons, separated us from the
+Molkenrain and the sacramental Hartmannswillerkopf.</p>
+
+<p>In the nearest, that rises without any perspective
+immediately from the house, is an old quarry, and it
+is there that since four years the workers in M. Galland’s
+factory are sheltered during the frequent bombardments
+of the town, for in what once was used
+for constructing spinning-machines eleven million shells
+have been turned out, all of which is quite well known
+to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasant odor of the house followed us to the
+motor and even as we rolled swiftly down the valley
+of the Thur, past Moosch, against whose hill, still like a
+picture tilted back, lies the military cemetery, cut out
+of the rust and gold-colored hill, with its black splashes
+of pines. Again peace to those who lie there.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere negro troops, sitting, standing, leaning,
+lying (a good deal of leaning and lying). An occasional
+forlorn-looking white officer. It is the same Fifteenth
+New York Infantry.</p>
+
+<p>“I am told they were all, before they were drafted,
+lift-boys and newsboys and bootblacks and railway-car
+porters,” said one of the officers.</p>
+
+<p>“You mustn’t class these last with the others. You
+don’t know the majesty and authority of the Pullman-car
+porter. He’s as final as the Germans think the
+Fourteen Points are,” I answered.</p>
+
+<p>I had felt myself somewhat exotic when I arrived in
+Masevaux; but I’m blotted into the landscape, one
+with Alsace, compared to these sons of Ham, clad in
+khaki, who fill the blue-and-gold valley of the Thur.</p>
+
+<p>Then we roll into the long street of the village of St.-Amarin,
+named after the saint to whom a saint friend<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+said, upon seeing him about to make himself scarce at
+the approach of assassins, “<i>If you miss this opportunity
+for martyrdom, you may never get another!</i>” (It all
+depends on what you want and what your friends can
+do for you, and it isn’t a bit like politics.) But I’ll tell
+the story of St.-Amarin another time.</p>
+
+<p>The town that bears his name is long and rambling.
+There is a pink church tower surmounted by
+a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban
+with a point like those on helmets, and there is the
+fountain bearing the date 1830, and on its column is
+perched the Gallic cock, and it is the pride of the
+long street and vies with the church square as a
+meeting-place.</p>
+
+<p>But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin,
+as I can see by the gentle, almost affectionate
+way he looks about, shows me first the cinematograph,
+in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of
+warmth and comfort since three years for those coming
+down from frozen mountain-sides. Pictures by George
+Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and fancy is unbridled
+where the enemy is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince is represented in a <i>loge</i> with a
+voluptuous actress twice his size, and, furthermore, the
+artist, not content with mere paint and canvas, has
+given him real wooden legs which dangle from the
+painted sides of the painted <i>loge</i>. The Prince of —— said
+to an officer showing him about, “And even so you have
+flattered my cousin.”</p>
+
+<p>Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled
+up in another <i>loge</i>, with another actress, but it
+didn’t strike me as funny, nor did it recall in any way
+the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with the
+faithful Käthe Schratt.</p>
+
+<p>A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’
+club, with books and papers, deep chairs and long<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>
+divans. I dwell a little on the comfort of it all, thinking
+what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men coming
+down from those relentless winter heights.</p>
+
+<p>Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across
+the way, which had been the headquarters of the “Mission
+Militaire d’Alsace” until it was transferred to
+Masevaux a year ago.</p>
+
+<p>It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house,
+only <i>its</i> walls had been hung by the commandant with
+ancient souvenirs picked up in the valley; old engravings
+of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre,
+Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of
+Madame Sans-Gêne as well as victorious general of
+France. And there are some old engravings of the
+portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes,
+with bombazined women and high-collared men. An
+enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates one corner,
+and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time
+hang in the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant
+coming and going of men who like their work.</p>
+
+<p>More officers are presented, and there is much joking
+about our Masevaux <i>popote</i> and odious comparisons.
+We tell them proudly of the new coffee-pot, but the
+haughty chef of the St.-Amarin <i>popote</i> answers that it
+was needed, and probably we had at last heard what
+people really thought about the coffee at the Masevaux
+mess. I am to lunch here on Thursday and see—or
+rather, <i>taste</i>!</p>
+
+<p>And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even
+those who now live at Masevaux.</p>
+
+<p>Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière.
+A rising up over indigo mountains, blackening at their
+base, blotted against the strange white sky, white even
+now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley of
+Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things
+of wisdom and valiance done or undone. And the end<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+in sight. Though Laferrière said: “I am not sure that
+they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record
+the dates of their great victories, and their historians
+will tell of their sweeping invasions; one must confess
+they have had great generals. They will doubtless
+reproach their statesmen with not having made better
+alliances, and decry their <i>gaffes</i>. But as for fighting,
+they will feel that men may fight one to two, one to
+three or to four or even five, but that no one can fight
+the world. <i>Tenez</i>, for Napoleon, after Waterloo, there
+was nothing more personally, but his victories remain
+among the great military glories of history.” On the
+crest as we started to drop into the valley, in that pale,
+pale sky above a blue, blue hill, something almost like
+words was written in delicate gold, in long looping
+characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not
+what they spelled, but I think it was Peace, lovely
+Peace....</p>
+
+<p>Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off
+my things and lain me down when word was brought
+up that Captain Bernard was waiting for me. Put on
+my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out
+all over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness
+which conceals the whereabouts of the match-box, as
+well as minor accessories like gloves and veil, I depart
+to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where I find
+more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious
+little bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called <i>shankelé</i>, are
+served with tea, and there was brought out a great
+tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted with the eagle
+of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable
+silk, dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many
+and many another, it had been put in a long box and
+nailed against the beams in the attic, remaining so
+hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the
+winter of 1915.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then home through black and muddy streets, full of
+hurrying, stumbling forms. Later the cheerful <i>popote</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And then before I went to sleep I read again the story
+of Saint-Odile according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs
+somewhat like this:<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of
+the Rhine Valley, Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by
+Childeric II, one of the last of the Merovingian kings.</p>
+
+<p>He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable,
+worshiping neither pagan divinities nor the one God.</p>
+
+<p>He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay
+in the Vosges, and here one day he received the visit
+of an Irish monk and gave him shelter, according to the
+custom of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said
+to him:</p>
+
+<p>“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous
+powers. If that be true, demand of thy God that my
+wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me a son and
+heir.”</p>
+
+<p>At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining
+long in prayer in spite of Atalric’s impatience.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the holy man arose, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife
+will bring forth a daughter, and thy life will be one
+long struggle with her. But in the end the dove will
+vanquish the lion.”</p>
+
+<p>Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant
+prophet well flogged, but he finally contented himself
+by chasing him from the castle to the accompaniment
+of his choicest maledictions.</p>
+
+<p>When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear
+and trembling (her lord having made no secret of what
+he expected) gave birth to a blind daughter, such a
+rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>
+thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings
+are not recorded. The duke declared loudly that he
+did not intend to endure such dishonor, and that if the
+child were not promptly hidden he would with his own
+hands make away with it.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess
+of the Convent of Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To
+her the child was sent, and the legend has it that
+Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal
+waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to
+spiritual light in the darkness of a barbarian age.</p>
+
+<p>She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however,
+told her nothing of her princely birth, letting her think
+she was the child of parents killed in war, though, as
+she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a
+princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that
+it was recorded that birds and even deer would eat from
+her hands as she wandered in the forest clearings. Often
+at night in her cell she had strange and beautiful visions.
+The most frequent was that of an angel of shining though
+severe visage, who would appear presenting her now
+with roses, now with lilies, the perfume enfolding her
+as if in some heavenly felicity. But once as day was
+about to break she had quite a different vision. It
+was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore,
+as did the Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with
+a leathern girdle, while his golden hair fell freely about
+his shoulders. His long sword was suspended from a
+strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The
+purple border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a
+prince, and in his mien there was both pride and gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address
+him when suddenly he vanished, and the angel of the
+austere visage took his place, holding out a cross of
+ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+and many after, the young lord returned. At last he
+came carrying in his hands a crown of gold. Odile was
+about to grasp it, when the angel, graver and sterner
+than before, stepped between them and presented to
+Odile a jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake
+of the Saving Host, Odile pressed it to her lips. What
+was her horror when she found it filled with blood still
+hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on
+awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess,
+who then revealed to her the secret of her birth. How
+her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers of the
+duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn
+never to look upon her face. The image in the dream
+was that of her young brother, Adalbert, born after her,
+and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess,
+“beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is
+no longer there to defend thee. Stay rather here, for
+thou art destined at my death to become abbess of this
+convent.”</p>
+
+<p>But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of
+the glory of her race and the promise of fraternal love
+that she could not resist the desire to contemplate with
+her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so enchanted
+her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in
+her arms. By a faithful servitor she despatched a letter
+to him, saying in it: “I am Odile, thine unknown
+sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my
+father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute
+thee tenderly. At thought of thee my heart blossoms
+like a lily in the desert.”</p>
+
+<p>This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking
+in his youthful heart all generous and romantic sentiments.
+He cried, “Who is this sister whose words
+are sweeter than those of a betrothed?”</p>
+
+<p>A tender desire seized him to make her his companion
+and coheir and to give her back her rank and family<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>
+estate. He answered, “Trust but in me. I will arrange
+all things for the best.”</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase,
+he sent to Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn
+by six richly caparisoned horses. With it went a numerous
+retinue, that Odile might return to her father’s
+house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins
+the tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay,
+where his birthday is being celebrated with great pomp
+and circumstance. It is the day, too, that he has
+chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals. About
+the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver
+dishes, his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from
+great horns of aurochs or clanking their burnished
+hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window, espies
+in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses;
+banners are flying and palms waving. Above it float
+the ducal colors.</p>
+
+<p>He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?”</p>
+
+<p>Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young
+and trusting heart, “It is thy daughter Odile come to
+beg thy mercy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast
+I beg thy grace for her.”</p>
+
+<p>“How has she, who desires my death, been able to
+bewitch you?” cries Atalric, pale and stiff with anger.</p>
+
+<p>Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the
+honor of the family, and his own brotherly love, but
+Atalric, beside himself, commands the youth to cast his
+sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses.</p>
+
+<p>“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly.
+Upon this the duke menaces his son with disinheritance
+if he does not immediately obey. But Adalbert, drawing
+his sword, lays it at his father’s feet, telling him<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his
+heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury
+that he gives his son a great blow upon the temple
+with the hilt of his sword.</p>
+
+<p>The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground.
+The vassals crowd in fear at one end of the great hall,
+while Atalric stands alone, petrified by the horror of
+his crime.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty,
+dressed as a bride for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall.
+A single look suffices. She gives a great cry and throws
+herself on her knees by her dying brother. She clasps
+his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that
+single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the
+whole world transpierces her gentle breast. It is the
+chalice of blood the angel once put to her lips. The
+dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored
+brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a
+more than fraternal bond, turn all her desires to the
+other world; the first young innocent love of family
+is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in
+that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins.</p>
+
+<p>Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent,
+did not dare cast his daughter out, but he spoke no
+word to her, harboring always in his heart the prediction
+of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.”</p>
+
+<p>In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly
+in the great forests that surrounded the castle, often
+climbing to the heights of Altitona. Under the shadow
+of those great trees, high as the nave of some cathedral,
+she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human
+time. All things appeared to her under the guise of
+eternity. Her beautiful brother, her unique love, was
+dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she not in
+turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as
+he roamed the heavenly fields?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p>
+
+<p>One day, as she was deeply meditating these things,
+she found herself midway up the great hill, when,
+enveloped in a blinding light, the angel of her dreams
+in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His
+wings, touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his
+face shone like the sun. With an imperious yet protecting
+gesture he pointed to the top of the mountain,
+where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman
+camp, saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home;
+there shalt thou dwell and gather to thee others whose
+thoughts are holy and whose wills are bent to service.”</p>
+
+<p>Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered
+her fleshly sight the angel was gone, but she had
+understood. On the heights of Altitona she was to
+build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace,
+a fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall
+to the castle, and this added beauty was observed
+by all.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get
+rid of her, conceived the design of marrying her to a great
+Austrasian lord from Metz, then his guest, who had
+been struck by love for her. He called her to him, and
+told her his intention. She answered gently:</p>
+
+<p>“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou
+knowest I am vowed to Christ alone.”</p>
+
+<p>The duke, enraged at her resistance, but grown somewhat
+wary by experience, sought out a docile monk
+and commanded him to impress upon Odile the wisdom
+of obedience, by which she might placate him and even
+win his heart. But all was in vain. Then he conceived
+the black idea of delivering his daughter by
+force into the arms of the Austrasian lord, thinking, once
+she had been embraced by the lover, she would consent
+to marriage. He sent two armed men to seize her
+in a grotto where she was accustomed to pray. Hardened<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+by the fierce design that filled his heart, he cried
+out when she was brought before him, “The Lord of
+Austrasia awaits thee for betrothal; willingly or unwillingly
+thou shalt be his.”</p>
+
+<p>Odile, knowing the supreme moment had come, answered:
+“Thou hast already killed thy son. Wouldst
+thou also cause the death of thy daughter? If thou
+bindest me to the arms of this man I will not survive
+my shame, but I will kill myself. Thus thou wilt be
+the cause not only of the death of my body, but of my
+soul as well, and thou wilt thyself be destined to eternal
+damnation.”</p>
+
+<p>“Little care I for the other world. In this I am and
+will remain the master.”</p>
+
+<p>“That in truth thou art,” she answered, gently, “but
+listen to me and recognize the goodness of my God.
+Allow me instead to build a sanctuary upon the heights
+of Altitona; thou wilt thus be delivered from me for
+all time. There I, and those gathered with me, will
+pray for thee. I feel a strange power within me.”</p>
+
+<p>Atalric made a violent gesture, but she continued
+without flinching, “Menace me, trample me under-foot,
+but tremble before this image,” and she took from
+her bosom the ivory Christ hanging from the ebon cross.</p>
+
+<p>In that moment, as father and daughter faced each
+other, the powers of heaven and hell, of spiritual promise
+and unregenerate will, were arrayed in combat. But
+Atalric did not at first give way. Suddenly, however,
+the countenance of Odile became more terrible than
+that of a warrior, and her whole mien was wrapped in an
+angelic majesty. In her dilated eyes Atalric thought
+for an instant that he saw the bleeding image of his
+murdered son. An intolerable pain filled his heart,
+and he cried out under the irresistible pressure of the
+heavenly will: “Thou hast conquered. Do as thou wilt,
+but never let me look upon thy face.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Thou wilt see me in the other life,” answered his
+child.</p>
+
+<p>The legend adds that Atalric, regretting his moment
+of weakness, did not immediately renounce his evil
+designs. Odile was obliged to flee before his increasing
+wrath and was pursued by him and the Austrasian
+lord, accompanied by many armed men, even beyond
+the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>But at the moment when they were about to seize
+her, at the foot of a mountain where there seemed no
+issue, the rock parted suddenly and received her. A
+few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared
+enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her
+awestruck pursuers that she belonged forever to Christ
+alone. Then Atalric and the Austrasian lord turned
+silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered the
+lion.</p>
+
+<p>The legend has transformed her father’s momentary
+conversion to her will into the physical image of the
+suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it is all the
+same, for Odile, <i>Vierge Candide et Forte</i>, represents
+forever the victory of the transfigured soul over brute
+force, the incalculable power of faith sealed by sacrifice,
+the saving breath of the invisible world breathed into
+the visible.</p>
+
+<p>During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of
+Mount Saint-Odile (Odilienberg) performed its works of
+faith and mansuetude in that barbarian and ruthless
+world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and of
+Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according
+to the pagan ways, were replaced by another, promising
+eternal felicities to those born again in Christ.</p>
+
+<p>From a wall of <i>grès rose</i>, this same <i>grès rose</i> that I
+have found as building-stone for temple and home and
+fountain all over Alsace, Odile, needing one day to give
+instant refreshment to an old man spent with fatigue,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from
+which pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called
+that of Tears, is a deeply indented stone, worn, it is said,
+by the knees of the saint as she knelt there praying for
+the release of the soul of her father (long dead and
+unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend
+has it that only toward the end of her life was she able
+to accomplish this, when at last the chalice of blood the
+angel once gave her was transmuted into an elixir of
+eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too,
+the conversion of the Merovingian world to Christianity,
+and to a new will to give up life that it might
+be found again—and many other things that it is difficult
+to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them.</p>
+
+<p>And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very
+heart, as it were, of Alsace; above its throb being laid,
+passionately, now a hand from the West, now one from
+the East....</p>
+
+<p>To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights
+and wander under the lindens of the terrace built above
+the old pagan wall, looking out upon the splendid
+panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance
+of the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of
+Saint-Odile.</p>
+
+<p>These things I am not able to know of myself, for
+the Odilienberg is still in German hands.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Faro come colui che piange.</i>—<span class="smcap">Dante</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 6th.</i>—And to-morrow I am to pass into
+the sweet, broad valley of the Thur and there
+dwell. I ask neither how nor why, knowing it will
+be vastly pleasant, though a somewhat startled feeling
+overtakes me at the thought of leaving Masevaux,
+<i>tout ce qui finit est si court</i>. For a fleeting, nostalgic
+moment I think, too, “What am I about, binding
+sheaves in this rich corner of the earth that is not
+mine?”</p>
+
+<p>As we gather for lunch, some one reads the sweeping
+clauses of the conditions of the armistice with Austria-Hungary.
+Nothing is left save hunger and disorder.
+I wonder if those to whom one of the “first aims of the
+war is the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy”
+see, in their passion, what it will mean to surround the
+centripetal force of Germany with floating, unsteady
+bits, that inevitably will be drawn to it. Some one
+hazarded the remark, evidently not so trite as we once
+thought it, that “if Austria didn’t exist, she would
+have to be invented.” Passion seems more than ever
+to be its own blind end, and, looking at those men, I
+thought, have we not fought and died the good death
+for other and further ends?</p>
+
+<p>Then Laferrière began reading the American <i>communiqué</i>.
+We are but five miles from the Sedan-Metz<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+line, one of the principal lines of communication of the
+Germans!</p>
+
+<p>As in a dream I listen to the deeds of <i>my</i> soldiers,
+recited in the most beautiful of French, as many deeds
+of many men have been recited to many women through
+the ages.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“<i>Ce matin la Ière Armée a repris son attaque. En dépit d’une
+résistance désespérée nos troupes [américaines] ont forcé le passage de
+la Meuse à Brieulles et à Cléry-le-Petit.</i>” ...</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Beaumont, nœud de routes important, est tombé devant nos
+troupes victorieuses qui se sont avancées jusqu’au Bois de l’Hospice
+à deux milles au nord de Beaumont. Au cours de leur avance elles se
+sont emparées de Létanne. A Beaumont, nous avons délivré 500
+citoyens français qui ont salué nos soldats comme leurs libérateurs....</i></p>
+
+<p>“<i>L’avance des deux derniers jours a amené en certains points
+notre ligne à cinq milles de la voie ferrée Sedan-Metz, une des principales
+lignes de communication des armées allemandes.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p>
+
+<p>As we sit down the commandant tells me they had
+been picking all sorts of strange things out of the air
+that morning, the ether stamped with unaccustomed
+names. He had just got a message, not meant for
+French ears, bearing a new signature, Ebert; the day
+before he had got one bearing that of Scheidemann.
+It is like a further dream of a dream, these things that
+are borne “upon the sightless couriers of the air.”</p>
+
+<p>At two o’clock I started out with Bernard and Laferrière,
+the latter on the errand of rounding up an actor in
+one of those obscure yet deadly village dramas.</p>
+
+<p>“Generally I have little to do; they know they are
+well off,” he said, and we agreed that it was indeed a
+pity to be pursued by original sin even unto these
+pleasant valleys.</p>
+
+<p>We descend at Rammersmatt, a quite unsinful-looking
+place, and while he is gone Bernard and I visit the old
+church, beautifully held in the cleft of the hill, lying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+against another hill, looking down on the plain of Cernay,
+toward the German lines. It is this same plain of
+Cernay, which I mentioned before, that was known in the
+old days as the “<i>Champ de Mensonges</i>.” There Ariovistus
+was defeated by Caæsar. There, too, Louis le
+Débonnaire was attacked by his three sons and betrayed
+by his army, and ever since it has been justly known as
+the “Field of Lies.” Centuries later the Swedes vanquished
+the imperial armies there under a Duke of
+Lorraine. To-day it is that thing known as “No
+Man’s Land,” brown with barbed-wire entanglements
+and rough with shell-holes—and other things besides.</p>
+
+<p>Back of it are the zigzagging German lines. It is, too,
+the place of the century-old legend of the Niedecker’s
+young Thierry who, wandering there one night, saw
+strange sights. He had not drained a single glass of
+the <i>Rang de Thann</i>, nor of the red wine of Turckheim,
+called “<i>Sang des Turcs</i>,” but was dreaming, as an adolescent
+does, of everything and nothing, when suddenly
+the very stones of the valley began to move, and great
+fissures showed in the earth. From them issued thousands
+upon thousands of warriors of bygone times,
+striking against their shields and crying out in strange,
+hoarse voices, “<i>Hodeīdah! Hodeīdah!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Finally a man taller than all the others, Louis le
+Débonnaire, son of Charlemagne it was, his long,
+silvery hair surmounted by a gold and jeweled crown,
+jumped on a white horse and called by name, one
+after the other, the chiefs of his cohorts, who answered,
+“Here.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the king, groaning with great groans, spoke beseechingly
+the names of the sons he had begotten,
+Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin.</p>
+
+<p>But Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin mocked him and to
+further wound him caused to be brought on the battlefield
+his nephew, Bernard, he who had taken arms<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+against him and whose eyes the king had caused to be
+put out (and for this the king knew little sleep).</p>
+
+<p>Then as the battle begins the sightless Bernard jumps
+up behind the king’s saddle, paralyzing his every movement.
+But at the very height of the combat, above its
+clash and shoutings, the third hour of morning sounds
+from a church tower, and suddenly the earth receives
+again the ancient host and all is as before. Only
+Thierry from the Niedeckers lay as if dead.</p>
+
+<p>And the Field of Lies, <i>le Champ de Mensonges</i>, is
+said to be the spot where the children of earth will be
+assembled at the Day of Judgment, for what crime can
+equal that of the sons of Louis, who conquered, imprisoned,
+and caused to die of grief a father whose only
+fault was that he loved them too well? It is even said
+that it is the troops of Louis who will sound the brazen
+trumps to awaken the dead for their last accounting.</p>
+
+<p>Now I see it as “No Man’s Land,” rusty and brown
+with patches of barbed wire, rough with great shell-holes,
+but they say that even in intervals of peace
+it is never so luxuriantly fertile as are the fields that lie
+about it....</p>
+
+<p>A white, very white afternoon heaven stretches above
+us. Very violent cannonading.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>C’est nous—c’est le Boche</i>,” Bernard repeats from
+time to time. Then his sharp eye distinguishes a group
+of German airplanes, and, looking where he points, I
+see five spots black, black in the white sky.</p>
+
+<p>They, too, are immediately fired on. I hear over my
+head the great swish made by the shells from the guns
+placed on a hill behind us—or so sounding. My ear is
+not quick to distinguish directions in these echoing hills.</p>
+
+<p>Little balls of snow-white shrapnel, like beautifully
+wound balls of fleecy wool, gently unloosen themselves
+about the black spots of the five airplanes, which, after
+a while, disappear to the east.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span></p>
+
+<p>Though not so overcome as the Niedecker’s Thierry,
+I feel that my eyes, too, have looked on a strange
+spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Then Laferrière rejoins us. By the pleased look on
+his face we guess that he hasn’t made the wages of
+sin too high, and we continue on our way under the late,
+and still very white, afternoon sky. Suddenly the
+heavily plated, thickly enameled rust and gold and
+black of the hillsides seem to disappear and the earth
+is green again, young and tenderly green, like spring,
+but how and why? It lasted but a few minutes, for
+on the slopes toward Thann there was again the autumnal
+gleam of gold and rust, and spots of fathomless black.</p>
+
+<p>Entering Laimbach, we stopped to get the mayor, who
+was to conduct us to the old Jesuit church, half-way
+between his village and the village of Otzwiller, or
+rather its site, for Otzwiller disappeared completely
+during the Thirty Years’ War, wherein each lovely
+Alsatian valley had been sacked and burned and destroyed,
+and friends of yesterday were enemies of to-day,
+and <i>vice versa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor was a voluble, amiable mayor, who had
+conserved, during those many German years, a vast
+amount of creaking, noisy, unpleasant French.</p>
+
+<p>His village was ancient, high-roofed, many-fountained,
+and had been much shelled. The streets were full of
+children playing, blue soldiers were walking about,
+girls were leaning out of the windows to give and get a
+greeting, or being pinched as they giggled about the
+streets, clicking their sabots in the mud. As we passed
+out the white sky darkened suddenly and a hard red
+began to burn in the west. We found ourselves nearing
+a half-demolished fifteenth-century church, placed
+strangely between the battered, living village and the
+ghostly village of the Thirty Years’ War. It was of
+<i>grès rose</i> and had been built on the foundations of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+even earlier one, and near it was a shell-shot, ancient,
+high, red-roofed presbytery. For generations the church
+had been a shrine of St.-Blaise, and on every 3d of
+February the mayor told us (but sadly, as one speaking
+of a pleasant past) there had been a great pilgrimage
+made by those suffering from throat maladies.</p>
+
+<p>Now over all was hanging a penetrating atmosphere
+of bootless desolation, and I was suddenly seized with
+an anxious feeling that I should be about the secret lonely
+business of my soul. Life seemed unbearably sad and
+short, and “where was the place of eternal happiness,
+the place where the Barbarian need be feared no
+more?” ...<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>In front of the church had been placed, somewhat
+indiscreetly, the officers thought, a big battery. And
+the mayor said, too, apologetically, “<i>Evitément z’édait mal
+joizi par écard à l’éclise</i>,” for the battery had soon been
+sighted. After the church had received many shells
+right in her pink and lovely bosom, it had been moved
+some forty meters away, but even so it had again been
+<i>repérée</i>, and the church had suffered the usual fate of
+churches near batteries. Some fine old columns were
+left in the apse, of the delicious <i>grès rose</i>. For a moment
+Laferrière and I stood scaling off bits of the disfiguring
+gray plaster and wondering why it had ever been put
+on, it and all the other gray stucco that a certain austere
+century had plastered over gorgeous building-stone
+everywhere in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The church, like the village of the Thirty Years’ War,
+will soon be but a name, for its walls are cracked and
+sagging, and with another winter’s frost they will crumble
+and fall. Through the roofless nave we walked over a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+mass of torn-up old mosaic flooring, and heaps of gaudy
+modern stained glass fallen from the lovely, ancient,
+pointed windows.</p>
+
+<p>It was getting dark as we passed out into the disorderly
+cemetery, between the church and the battery
+(and even for a cemetery very uninviting, torn up as it
+was by recent shells). Ends of coffins were sticking out,
+shabby, twisted, bead wreaths and muddy, discolored
+tricolor badges lay about, while in the middle of a once
+tidy family plot, by name Hilz, was a huge new shell-hole
+of only the day before.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor gave a shudder as he looked at his own
+familiar graveyard, where his parents and his friends
+had been laid—though not to rest. He was out for the
+first time after grippe and he said, with a determined
+look and in his most creaking French, “If I have to die,
+all right, but I’ve forbidden my daughter to bury me
+here.” Many, many had also fallen in the fields, and
+everywhere thin earth lay over damp, shallow graves
+marked by shabby, crooked crosses. Meadow mists
+were beginning to rise and the copper-colored edge had
+hardened in the sky. I felt again an inexpressible discouragement.
+I tried to think of Peace, so near, so
+hotly desired, so redly pursued, but I could only perceive
+the damp meadow, the demolished church, the
+gun-emplacements, the disorderly, shelled cemetery,
+and the humid odor of death and mold and rotting
+leaves. As yet nothing seemed to have risen incorruptible.</p>
+
+<p>We turned and went again along the dark, damp
+valley road till we reached the village with its consoling
+hum of life. Through the dusky street washed the
+lovely soft blue of soldiers; a group stood with some
+girls around the beautiful fountain, deeply pink in the
+half-light, built in the fifteenth century by the Jesuits,
+though the mayor insisted on placing the Sons of Loyola<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+in the fourteenth. In fact, the Jesuits and the
+fourteenth century were one in his mind. Then, as far
+as he was concerned, came the war of 1914. He wanted
+us to come into his house to partake of some brand of
+white liqueur—as I have said the people of these valleys
+distil all and every bright-colored fruit of their earth.
+It would seem that the whole flora of Alsace can be
+used to this end, and no matter which of God’s colors
+go into their alembics, passing through, it comes out
+pure white, to befuddle the heads and harden the
+stomachs of the populace—and little boys are born
+with the burden of deafness. Though twilight enveloped
+us, I knew the look that must be on the mayor’s face,
+and something a bit phosphorescent came into his
+eyes as he spoke of a <i>petite mirabelle</i>. Fortunately, it
+was too late to accept.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later we found ourselves on the screened
+road to Masevaux, moving slowly, without lights, the
+road overlooking the Field of Lies, where the Germans
+watched.</p>
+
+<p>Above the hills in front of us was a very thin, very
+long, very red, crescent moon. No one spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the officers, like myself, were wondering
+upon what, when it was full and white, its light would
+shine. Now it was turned to blood.</p>
+
+<p>The roads were crowded with rattling artillery wagons,
+transporting guns and supplies under cover of the deep,
+blue night. Once or twice on some hillside, turned away
+from the German valley, was the leaping of a flame,
+from the fire of a group of <i>artilleurs</i>, who were to wait
+the morning on wooded slopes.</p>
+
+<p>Thoughts of the ghostly village of Otzwiller, now
+but a name, pursued me, and of the Swedish invasion.
+And the miseries of the Thirty Years’ War seemed to
+confound themselves with these of the war I know so
+well, while the night deepened, under the long, thin,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>
+red moon, hanging behind black-palled hills, in a heaven
+that still had an edge of copper.</p>
+
+<p>A church bell sounded and something flying swiftly
+touched me at that hour of the evening sacrifice, and I
+knew then that those who tread the olives are rarely
+anointed with the oil, and I cried out within myself
+suddenly and in despair, a long-unremembered line of
+the great Italian:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Faro come colui che piange.</i>”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE VALLEY OF THE THUR</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 7th, St.-Amarin.</i>—This morning farewell,
+perhaps a long farewell, to Masevaux, and I now
+dwell in the broad, sweet valley of the Thur. I had felt
+many pains of parting while putting my things into the
+Japanese straw basket and the little leather valise. This
+was quite a simple act, for I flatter myself that those
+receptacles contain only essentials, though I had long
+since begun to wish that I had brought another dress
+for evening, feeling a bit dull always buttoned up in my
+uniform, and only a white shirt changed from a blue
+one to mark the difference between morning and evening.
+One of those 1918 dresses, that can be carried in the
+pocket without making it bulge, would not have added
+perceptibly to the weight of my accoutrement, and
+would have brightened up the <i>popotes</i>. The light from
+the Oberforster’s chandelier at Masevaux was as pitiless
+as that which beats about thrones—and presidential
+chairs (which much resemble them)—and ladies <i>en
+mission</i> should come prepared.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving I went to say good-by to Mère Labonne,
+who showed me the good things in preparation for
+luncheon and begged me to stay—scrambled eggs with
+truffles, two <i>poulets</i> ready for roasting, a tart <i>au mocha</i>
+that she was frosting on a marble table. But the look
+of one who goes was in my eyes, and she ceased to
+insist.</p>
+
+<p>Return to the Place du Chapitre; many officers and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+motors under the yellowing trees in front of the <i>Kommandantur</i>,
+a general arriving, some sort of delegation
+departing. I say a thousand thanks to the amiable,
+cultivated, agreeable Demoiselles Braun, three of whom
+wear decorations for their war-work in hospitals, for
+contagious diseases, and one, Stéphanie, “<i>qui n’a pas dit
+son dernier mot</i>,” is charming after the way of the perceptive,
+witty women of the seventeenth or eighteenth
+century. Then I find myself getting into the motor
+of the commandant, who, in the meantime, has greeted
+and sped the general on his way. His face has something
+shining about it as he gives the great news, written
+on the no longer insubstantial air, of the German demand
+for an armistice. Then he reads the <i>communiqué</i> from
+the Belfort newspaper as we drive out of Masevaux, telling
+us more about the Germans in full retreat, and the
+Americans close behind them at <i>Sedan</i>! What a rustling
+of the pages of history! The mind leaps to new things,
+life normal again, and all forces bent to reconstruction.</p>
+
+<p>As we pass over the screened road to Thann, where
+we are to lunch with the military mayor, Captain Saint-Girons,
+the net of broom and pine camouflage, screening
+the valley where the Germans are, suddenly seemed
+some monument of ancient history; and, unlike the
+noisy hours of yesterday, there was no sound of cannon.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at Thann, it is we who give the great, the
+unbelievable, the unrealizable news of the demand for
+an armistice to Captain Saint-Girons, who, with several
+uniformed schoolmasters, is waiting in front of the
+Mairie to receive us. And our “feet are beautiful as
+the feet of them that bring the Gospel of Peace and
+glad tidings of good things.”</p>
+
+<p>I think for a moment how strange for <i>me</i> to carry
+it to them, to these men, who have fought for it, who
+have waited for it, watched for it, bled for it—but everything
+is strange in this strangest of all strange worlds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span></p>
+
+<p>Going into the house, we find other schoolmasters,
+with some bright-eyed little boys ranging in years from
+seven to twelve.</p>
+
+<p>Then to lunch. I sit on the commandant’s right,
+Captain Gasquet, <i>adjoint</i> of the mayor, on my other
+side, the mayor himself opposite, the schoolmasters
+placed prudently and watchfully near that selected flock,
+who enliven the ends of the table. Now these little
+Alsatian hopefuls are very bright of eye, rosy of cheek,
+and on their good behavior, which, in spite of lurking
+potentialities, persisted during the lunch, even when
+a glow, doubtless not unaccustomed, tinged their
+cheeks, as they drank the wine of their own hillsides.</p>
+
+<p>At dessert I asked Commandant Poulet to drink to
+Sedan, the <i>new</i> Sedan. I thought within myself, “Is
+it not even now as a temple being cleansed and glorified
+in the chalice of the blood of <i>my</i> people, the blood of the
+khaki-clad youths from over the seas, whom Fate,
+since all time, had decreed to unseal it?” Tears came
+to my eyes, there was a deep beat in my breast.</p>
+
+<p>And it had been forty-eight years and two months
+and seven days since it was torn from a vanquished
+France.</p>
+
+<p>I scarcely remember what was said of the day’s
+events; feeling, rather than thought, was flooding about
+the table, and it was in gratitude, in wonderment, and
+rather silently, for a group of Frenchmen, that the
+luncheon proceeded. Each was thinking perhaps of
+his part of loss and grief making up the victory.</p>
+
+<p>Names of Americans who had visited Thann were
+spoken: Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, long the friend
+of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the god of
+the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John
+Weare; and others whom I don’t recall. There had been,
+too, a fair and fleeting vision of Mrs. Bliss one snowy
+winter day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span></p>
+
+<p>Many beautiful words were said of my country,
+and in that hour I think it was, to them of the reconquered
+triangle, “<i>dulce et decora</i>” to have even the
+least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their
+board, that hers should have been among the feet bringing
+“the glad tidings of good things.”</p>
+
+<p>When coffee and <i>quetsch</i> and cigarettes were passed
+around, the schoolmasters made ready to pour some
+of the heady white liqueur into the glasses of even the
+smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said,
+“No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I
+would put my hand in the fire (knowing I could draw
+it out unsinged) that it was not the first time they had
+puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his
+with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When
+he had finished he was stood on a chair, from which he
+recited “<i>Le Loup et l’Agneau</i>,” the lines concerning
+the now extremely well-demonstrated “<i>La raison du
+plus fort est toujours la meilleure</i>,” being given almost at
+a breath, one word tightly tied to another in quite an
+ingenious way.</p>
+
+<p>An older one, whose naturally flashing eye was slightly
+restrained only by the solemnity of the occasion, gave
+us the equally classic, “<i>Maidre corpeau sur un arbre
+bergé</i>.” He hadn’t been caught so young, and the old
+Adam in the shape of his German accent was heavy
+upon him. Then, standing in a row, they sang “<i>Le
+Chant du Départ</i>,” that greatest of all the wars’
+marching songs, and the childish voices cut my
+heart like a knife, and tears were loosened, and
+through their blur I seemed to see the march of the
+generations of Alsace adown the ages, fulfilling the
+shifting, cruel destinies of border peoples. Ghosts of
+the Thirty Years’ War, of the Napoleonic wars, of 1870,
+and of 1914, and of the other dateless struggles that
+have ravaged their rich valleys, come before me. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+weep and weep, and my handkerchief is a microscopic,
+damp, gray ball. I have an idea that pride of sex alone
+restrained the blue-clad men from tears. Peace, lovely
+Peace, desired like the morning, was arising, but her
+light was to shine on rivers of blood, running through
+such black ruins that her glory and her sweetness, and
+even her hope, hurt with a great hurt, and I thought
+again on those who, empty-armed, must yet rejoice....</p>
+
+<p>Afterward I strolled along the banks of the pebbly
+Thur with the commandant and Captain Saint-Girons.
+There is a river-path leading under balconied, red-roofed
+houses, or by gray walls, and there is an old
+round tower having a caplike roof with a point on the
+top, and against it are silhouetted a poplar and a sycamore.
+Nearly everywhere the lovely gray lace spire
+of the cathedral shows above roof or tree or chimney;
+and it is said that though Strasbourg’s cathedral is
+higher and Friburg’s is wider, Thann’s is the loveliest.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>When the Mission had its headquarters at Thann,
+the commandant and Captain Saint-Girons were wont
+to walk along this path in the afternoon, holding a
+sort of tribunal, receiving petitions, granting favors,
+righting differences that may occur even among the
+delivered, quite after the fashion of Saint-Louis receiving
+the petitions of his people under the great tree.</p>
+
+<p>The river flows through the heart of the lovely old
+town, badly bombarded in spots. To our left as we
+walked rose the deep-colored hills in the full afternoon
+burnishing of their deep rusty reds and pale gilts. As
+we pass up the steep winding road we meet the Duc
+de Trévise, under-lieutenant, with a sketch in his hand
+of a shell-shot historic corner of Thann, the commandant
+wishing to save at least a memorial wherever he can.
+Furthermore, Thann was black-spotted with our negro<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+troops. Sometimes I stopped and spoke, sometimes
+I waved as I passed, just to see the full, white-toothed
+smile against the exotic background.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus07" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the
+old Château de Marsilly, beautifully situated in the
+cleft of its own hill and restored not too cruelly. Close
+above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose castle
+was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war
+in the valley. Part of it lies like a great ring, and is
+called the “Eye of the Witch.” To our right as we
+mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the
+Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides,
+on which lie in lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of
+<i>l’heureuse Alsace féconde en vignobles</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable
+by twenty years, dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose
+manners could not have been surpassed for ease by
+any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for
+the thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual
+life gives. I have seen in peasant cottages
+the rooms wherein they were born, these women of
+restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in
+conversation, of finished courtesy, and realize again
+that something invisible, imponderable, yet all-powerful,
+shapes the coarse block, polishes the rough surface, till
+there is no resemblance to that out of which it was hewn.</p>
+
+<p>As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking
+again through the V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue
+plain held by the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>“How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a
+silence, “it has seemed to me like the Promised Land,
+and how often during these four interminable years
+have I longed to look at these hills <i>from</i> the plain.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered.</p>
+
+<p>The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was
+fixed on the wide horizon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant
+place, as cemeteries go, with many trees, and fallen,
+rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming flowers. Many
+sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”;
+others had been but lately laid away. The two officers
+stood for a moment with uncovered heads by the graves
+of four comrades of the Mission, killed by a bomb in
+front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch.
+Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never
+as in this war has “death been made so proud with pure
+and princely beauty.” How can we so soon be engaged
+in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of
+these dead?</p>
+
+<p>Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly
+loved by those who dwell therein, inclosed by purple
+and dark-amber hills, but inclosed easily, widely,
+leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of
+being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight.</p>
+
+<p>As we enter St.-Amarin, the long, central street is
+like a pale-blue ribbon, for through it a battalion of
+some Marseilles regiment is passing. As my eye
+received it I knew the lovely picture for some bleaching
+daguerreotype, its color and lineaments to fade in the
+bright light of peace. We stop a moment at the Administration
+building and see again M. de Maroussem,
+to whom, on meeting him first at Madame Galland’s,
+I had said, “You are an Englishman?” And to those
+who have frequented international worlds I don’t need
+to say how he looks. To others I would say that he is
+tall, blond, athletic, wearing easily a well-cut, not too
+new uniform, and having a perceptive blue eye (which,
+however, is really a very French eye when one takes
+a second look). One would have known that he hunted
+in England and had polo-ponies in France. In civil
+life he is a banker.</p>
+
+<p>Now among other things he is chef of the St.-Amarin<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span>
+<i>popote</i> and tells me dinner is at 7.45 “tapant.” The
+hour is near wherein I am to be shown how far superior
+the St.-Amarin <i>popote</i> is to that of Masevaux.</p>
+
+<p>Then the commandant accompanies me to the house
+of M. Helmer, the well-known Alsatian lawyer who is
+counsel for the Mission. Also it was he who defended
+Hansi when he was brought before the German courts
+and condemned for <i>lèse-majesté</i>.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>From the great bowed window of Madame Helmer’s
+drawing-room I could look down the suddenly mystical-seeming
+valley, discerned by the spirit rather than the
+eye at 4.30 of a November afternoon. It was but a
+stretch of white filmy substance between violet hills,
+under a gray-green heaven, with something warm and
+precious at its western edge. Such a passing of the day
+as the saints of old would have loved.</p>
+
+<p>Hung along the wall opposite the great window are
+engravings of the Mantegna frieze from Hampton
+Court, and there were many books.</p>
+
+<p>After tea the commandant took his leave and Madame
+Helmer showed me to my comfortable room where I
+had thirty saving minutes, horizontal and in the dark,
+fully conscious, but completely resting, thought consecutive
+but not active, flowing in a smooth way between
+banks of quiet nerves in quiet flesh.</p>
+
+<p>“Seven forty-five tapant” finds me again at the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+Administration building, whither M. Helmer accompanied
+me, and it is very pleasant as I enter. Commandant
+Poulet is sitting at a huge desk signing papers,
+more blue-clad officers and two <i>infirmières</i> are presented,
+after which we pass into the dining-room, whose doors
+are flung open in classic style by a well-trained orderly.
+In Masevaux we simply gathered and sat down. Now
+the mess-table of St.-Amarin has a decided touch of
+elegance, too, in the way of pink-shaded candles, and
+in the middle there was an arrangement of chrysanthemums
+and autumn leaves. Instead of a Mère Labonne
+they have a <i>cordon bleu</i> who performs his rites very
+suitably in the dark-blue uniform of the chasseurs. We
+sit down to a dinner that might have been served with
+pride at Voisin’s or the Café de Paris, where all except
+the chairs is extra and getting back a cane or hat costs
+the remaining eye (if one remains) of the head. I am
+indeed impressed, as I was meant to be, and M. de
+Maroussem might have said, “Didn’t I tell you so?”
+in his pure and pleasant English. I sat between the
+commandant and Captain Perdrizet, chief of the Forestry
+Service of the Thann district, and to the sound of cannon,
+which in spite of peace prospects was heavily
+firing over the Hartmannswillerkopf, we consumed
+<i>carpes à la Flamande</i>, a course of game elaborately
+presented with all its feathers, finishing with <i>poires
+Bordaloue</i>, the whole perpetuated on a charming menu
+card decorated with the classic Alsatian stork by
+Andrieux, one of the officers of the mess.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat down I saw in front of me a sign over the
+door leading into the pantry, a somewhat Y.M.C.A.-ish
+sign, “<i>Sois sobre et tu vivras longtemps</i>” (“Be sober and
+you will live long”), and de Maroussem’s feelings were
+almost hurt when I asked if perhaps behind me there
+was one that said, “<i>Mange peu et tu seras invité souvent</i>”
+(“Eat little and you will be invited often”). And when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>
+it came time for coffee and cigarettes and some especially
+old <i>quetsch</i> he brought out the book, “The Friends of
+France,” that I had first seen at Harry Sleeper’s in
+Gloucester Bay, a thousand years ago, it seemed, and we
+turned to the death and citation of Norman Hall, Commandant
+Poulet recalling again that he had begun his
+work in Alsace on the 25th of December, 1914, and on
+the 26th he had stood by Norman Hall’s open grave.</p>
+
+<p>Then a radio, just received, concerning the Parlementaries,
+is discussed; among them is slated von
+Hintze, leading to talk of the days when I had known
+him in Mexico. Count Oberndorf, too, husband of a
+dear and charming friend of Dutch and American birth,
+was on the list, and we spoke of Vienna as it had been—and
+was no more. <i>Sic transit</i> ... though I thought
+within myself, as I looked, for a flashing moment, down
+the vista of history, many things return.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when two officers accompanied me to
+my dwelling, to the sucking sound of boots in mud,
+and under a starless sky hanging dark and heavy over a
+black, black earth. At last I could draw literally the
+drapery of my couch about me and lie down to dreams
+of <i>my</i> men in blood and glory before Sedan.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 8th, St.-Amarin, Night.</i>—Fancy and feeling
+too quickened for sleep. If there is anything I
+did not see or anything I did not feel, in and about
+St.-Amarin, I challenge some one of the Mission to
+produce it.</p>
+
+<p>This was my day, or rather half of it. At 8.45 Lieutenant
+Fress, Inspector of Schools, came to fetch me,
+and not knowing how to be late (alack!), I am on the
+stairs as he rings the bell. We pass out into a white,
+rather flat November world toward the schoolhouses,
+everywhere the clean odor of freshly hewn wood and
+sawdust hanging on the November air.</p>
+
+<p>Now the re-Gallicizing of Alsace is one of the most
+interesting political operations I have ever seen, and
+Heaven knows I’ve seen many in many lands. But this
+washing out and marking in of history on the clean
+slate of childhood is different from anything else, though
+easier than most things, the eye of youth glancing
+easily from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth—and
+soft and eager the slate of its mind.</p>
+
+<p>The St.-Amarin schoolhouse is a large, solid building,
+its walls hung everywhere with huge war-posters, all
+of those one sees in Paris and many besides.</p>
+
+<p>The classes for the smaller children, in accordance
+with the traditions of the valley, here also are in the
+hands of the Sisters of “The Divine Providence,” who,
+in the earliest years of the nineteenth century, opened in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span>
+St.-Amarin the first school for girls. The other classes
+are taught by carefully selected Alsatian teachers or
+by mobilized French schoolmasters. Formerly French
+was the language of honor, for the well-to-do only, but
+now this article, once “of luxury,” is for all the language
+of their country and their heart, and pride mixes
+with the zeal with which the peasants pursue <i>la belle
+langue</i>—not always successfully. For in these border
+regions the tongue has an un-Gallic thickness; the
+voice is placed far back in the throat, with a strong
+accent on the tonic, nothing of the light flinging from the
+lips that makes the beauty of the French language and
+its conquest so difficult.</p>
+
+<p>We begin with a class of small children, where a
+smiling, almost exuberantly happy nun is teaching a
+group of little delivered darlings to sing, “<i>il y avait une
+bergère et ron, ron, ron, petit pat à pon</i>”—to my surprise,
+in the latest manner of Jacques Dalcroze. They evidently
+mean to keep abreast of the times here in Alsace.</p>
+
+<p>While they recited I looked about. The room was
+large, light, and superheated by a small, black, iron
+stove fiercely burning. On the wall were maps of the
+Old World, and, I had almost said, of the world to
+come, for new divisions of countries were indicated.
+Among the many posters and in the place of honor
+was a big colored text, which I afterward saw in every
+room, with the head-line, “<i>Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure
+une paix fondée sur la parole de l’Allemagne</i>” (“Why
+one cannot make a peace founded on the word of
+Germany”).</p>
+
+<p>The children were literally as good as gold. No
+scuffling of feet nor restless rubbing about on the seats.
+I remarked this as we left the room after listening to
+“<i>Le Loup et l’Agneau</i>” recited in those shrill, thin
+voices, and Lieutenant Fress said, with a smile:</p>
+
+<p>“What remains of the Boche discipline makes them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>
+docile and attentive scholars; they are often several
+hours in class without needing to be reprimanded for
+chattering or lack of attention.”</p>
+
+<p>Later I delicately inquired about ink-throwing or
+“spitballs,” but it appeared they’re unknown.</p>
+
+<p>We then betook ourselves upstairs to a class of older
+girls, from ten to thirteen or thereabouts, to whom
+Lieutenant Fress, with the greatest confidence, put the
+most difficult questions. It was a class of French
+history, and he began boldly with the Druids and
+finished with the war of 1914. He has a gift for teaching,
+and was so easy with those children, whom I should
+have been embarrassed, not to say terrified, to approach,
+that the answers came pleasantly and quickly. When
+at a certain moment, however, there was a delay, I got
+anxious, thinking to myself, suppose the Sister or Lieutenant
+Fress were to say to the class:</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know? Then we must ask this <i>aimable</i>
+lady who has come across the ocean to visit you. <i>She</i>
+will tell us.” And of Charles the Fat, then engaging
+our attention, I only remembered vaguely that he had
+had a saintly wife of whom he grew tired. There were
+other questions, too, about Louis of Aquitaine, which
+awakened only the faintest echoes in memory, but which
+to my relief were answered to complete satisfaction
+by a determined, dark-eyed, round-faced girl of twelve
+or thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Fress then asked who could recite “<i>La
+Laitière et le Pot au Lait</i>.” All hands shot up, and the
+recitation proceeded with much <i>brio</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“What does this teach us?” he boldly asked at the end.</p>
+
+<p>At this a heavy-jawed, but very bright, near-together-eyed
+girl raised her hand without a second’s hesitation,
+and equally without a second’s hesitation answered:</p>
+
+<p>“To think only of the present.” As is elegantly expressed
+in the enemies’ tongue, that girl wasn’t one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+whom it would be said she would be “left hanging,”
+except of course as regards the imponderabilities.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Fress: “But is it well to think only of the
+present? What of imagination, and things that may
+happen in the future?”</p>
+
+<p>A small, undersized girl with a deep-blue eye somewhat
+nervously answered:</p>
+
+<p>“In imagination one builds castles in Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>This was encouraging, but what she called <i>châteaux
+d’Espagne</i> seemed not, however, to find great favor, for a
+silence fell on that bright-eyed class.</p>
+
+<p>“But isn’t that all right?” continued Lieutenant
+Fress, giving a fillip. “Must we think only of the things
+we can see and touch?”</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of seeing and touching, hands again
+shot up. He indicated a thick-haired, heavy-browed
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>“In thinking of the things she doesn’t see, the good
+housewife would forget to cook the dinner, <i>et cela serait
+tommage</i>,” was the answer coming from the deepest
+depths of her consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>On which we leave the schoolroom, with its extremely
+practical atmosphere, the argument being unanswerable,
+even by Lieutenant Fress. I could but think on that
+long line of peasants who have wrestled with realities,
+begotten, brought forth, tilled the soil, baked the bread,
+struggling all the time with their border-destiny, nature
+and history, even more than their own wills, having
+made them what they are. It struck me as reasonable
+that they should be a canny set, those little girls. Something
+alert, perceptive of realities, was forming them,
+they could not be over-given to dreams, for which one
+is both sorry and glad, according to the way one happens
+to feel about human things at the moment—and not
+necessarily the way they are. Even Marcus Aurelius
+tells us that “if a thing displease us” (I suppose he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+only forgot to add, “or if a thing please us”) “it is not
+that thing, but our view of that thing.” And certainly
+a lot of perfectly good things are spoiled by the
+point of view.</p>
+
+<p>In the next room they were having a lesson in American
+history, quite in the note everywhere these days,
+and I know the Sister saw the hand of God as I entered
+at that special moment (she was a quiet-eyed, not very
+young Sister, who had trod further paths than those of
+learning). Then and there I heard the tale of the
+Boston Tea-party, and its consequences, of the War of
+the Rebellion, and the name of Lincoln, pronounced
+“Lancone,” who “wanted all men to be free and equal,”
+sounded through the room. No one, of course, expressed
+a doubt, nor ever will in schoolrooms, that men aren’t
+free, neither are they equal. As for myself, I thank
+God nearly every morning that some men always will
+be better than others, realizing that there is more
+difference between man and man than between man
+and beast, which truth was recalled to me but shortly
+by an equalitarian friend of the New Republic—but
+it’s not for schools, like many other truths. Even
+Saint Paul can do nothing except cry out, “Shall not
+the potter have power to shape the vessel as he will,
+some to honor, some to dishonor?” which again recognizes
+the fact of inequality without explaining it. However,
+there’s no use going into that now.</p>
+
+<p>I soon found myself in a class of boys of twelve to
+fifteen years of age. They were having a lesson in
+German, and were reading a “piece” called “<i>Der arme
+Sepp</i>,” the history of whose misfortunes (he was a stable-boy,
+and the horse ran away and the wagon was broken,
+and he was received by his master with blows) didn’t
+seem to stick; for after it had been read out no boy,
+in answer to Lieutenant Fress’s questions, could recount
+the short and simple annals of poor Sepp.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span></p>
+
+<p>They weren’t nearly so bright as the girls. Dull-eyed,
+pimply-faced, squeaky-voiced, they were wrestling with
+something that was for the time stronger than books—the
+eternal <i>Frühlings Erwachen</i>, that has always occupied
+philosophers and scientists—though not so much parents,
+who are apt to avoid the issues involved.</p>
+
+<p>We passed finally into a class where young women
+were dissecting <i>Les Obsèques de la Lionne</i>, under the
+guidance of a brown-bearded, one-armed teacher in
+uniform. It was a small room, and you could have
+cut the air with a knife. And for the mist I could
+scarcely see the placard “<i>Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure
+une paix fondée sur la parole d’Allemagne</i>” and the portraits
+of Clémenceau and Poincaré.</p>
+
+<p>About this time I began to understand that La
+Fontaine is the pillar of the French educational system;
+and there is no doubt that he <i>did</i> clear up a lot of doubtful
+things, in the most liquid use of the clearest of all
+languages.</p>
+
+<p>We listened here to dissertations on the falseness of
+courts and courtiers, the charms of which were not
+touched on. How those who frequented them learned
+disastrous habits of dissimulation, not to say lying, and
+how ’twas better to live in obscurity (which for some
+reason is always supposed to be cheerful and where
+nobody ever lies perhaps because it isn’t worth while).
+Courts are not in favor anywhere just now, but everybody
+will admit they’ve had a glorious past; and as for
+democracy’s future, which the Bolsheviki and the New
+Freedom are decidedly handicapping, they <i>may</i> run it a
+close second. This class was not so interesting, however,
+as were the children’s—discussions of intellectual propositions
+by people who aren’t intellectual being an
+awful bore at any time.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end there was a horrid moment, Lieutenant
+Fress bearing up with equanimity, when the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>
+over-bold teacher, interrupting the reading, asked the
+meaning of the word “<i>apothéose</i>.” Dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Continuez</i>,” he finally said, though a young woman
+with an immense amount of corn-colored hair waved
+low about some spectacled blue eyes, and wearing a large
+silver pin with the word “<i>Adieu</i>” on it, showed signs of
+being about to bring forth the answer.</p>
+
+<p>They finished the fable in unison in their strong
+border-accent, which seemed to get thicker and thicker
+as we got farther up the flights of learning.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Amusez les rois par tes songes,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Flattez-les, payez les d’agréables mensonges.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Quelque intignation dont leur cœur soit rembli,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ils goberont l’abbât, vous serez leur ami.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But methought it isn’t anything like what the “people”
+will have to “swallow,” when everybody is free
+and nobody is equal. And I wondered again at those
+who think to change the destinies of nations from without,
+by formulas or commands, when each evolves
+mysteriously, mystically, inevitably from within, out
+of its own particular shape and substance and strength.
+Even one from over the seas, clad in the supremest
+power a great nation has ever lent a mortal, though he
+pull the earth to pieces in the attempt, cannot change
+this law of nature. “<i>Que direz-vous, races futures?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And time respects nothing that is done without it.</p>
+
+<p>As we came out into the square, little boys were
+bringing in armfuls of wood for their schoolroom stoves,
+others were already noisily scampering home for dinner
+in the crisp, sawdusty air; straight columns of smoke
+from many chimneys evoked women standing about
+noonday fires; there was a homely, human feeling about
+it all....</p>
+
+<p>As I went through the school it seemed to me that the
+types of the children were modified in two ways, inclining<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>
+now toward the elongated head, with pointed chin,
+dark hair, dark eyes, and mantling color, now toward
+the round-headed, square-jawed, blond type, with full,
+dreamy, blue eyes. But under these modifications one
+felt that there was a persistent something that was their
+own, neither German nor French nor anything else,
+for all the mingling; the Alsatian root and stem, with
+an inalienable, peculiar life mounting in it, its very own,
+its race-gift.</p>
+
+<p>And this essential gift, this rich, diverse inheritance,
+had been received from each point of the compass.
+From the south, through the defiles of the Alps, the
+great Latin traditions had infiltered. From the north
+and east had come Germanic thought, with its mystical
+reactions, its metaphysical inclinations, its marvelous
+legends, and its romantic chronicles of gods and half-gods.
+From the west, from Gaul, came grace and
+courtesy and the deathless wish for liberty. Was ever
+a people more richly endowed? Yet, how shall even
+such a seed grow if it never lie quiet in the warm darkness
+of the earth?...</p>
+
+<p>Then I turned from the paths of learning, and went
+over to the very well-kept ambulance, in charge, since
+several years, of the ladies from Mulhouse, whom I
+had met at dinner the night before.</p>
+
+<p>And I stood by the bed of a dying negro of the Fifteenth
+New York Infantry, his eyes already glazed, and
+thought how he was to leave the broad valley of the
+Thur for that other wider Valley of the Soul, where,
+it is said, we are all of one color. And I am inclined to
+believe it, for the further I go, even in this life, the less
+real difference I find in people; even the white, unfortunately,
+are extraordinarily alike about most things; and
+one can but wonder why the few high differences, rather
+than the low and easy likenesses, are discouraged by
+so many good men.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then I sought out the church of pink stone, passing
+a pink fountain in the chestnut-planted square it fronts
+on, where blue-clad soldiers were coming and going,
+busy about their midday meal. And, entering the
+church, I thought, after commending the soul of the
+negro to its Maker, of St.-Amarin, who has given his
+name to the broad, sweet valley and its pleasant town.</p>
+
+<p>The chronicles have it that he erected an oratory
+hereabouts with his own hands. Later when St.-Prix,
+the holy bishop of Auvergne, was passing by, on his way
+to the court of Childeric to obtain permission to build a
+church, he stopped at the oratory to rest and found its
+builder lying ill of a fever. St.-Prix making the sign
+of the cross upon his breast, immediately the fever falls,
+and Amarin finds himself bathed in a gentle sweat. He
+arises, gives thanks to God, and in gratitude offers to
+accompany St.-Prix to the king’s court.</p>
+
+<p>Now, some time before, St.-Prix had run afoul of a
+vicious, thick-souled man named Hector, Count of
+Marseille. The matter being brought to court, in the
+final judgment the holy bishop had been acquitted, and
+the wicked Hector convicted and put to death.</p>
+
+<p>But the family of Hector was proud and vengeful
+and powerful (in our days we’ve seen such), and learning
+that St.-Prix had set out on the journey, sent a squad
+of archers and other soldiery to make away with him
+<i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These came upon him, accompanied by St.-Amarin,
+in a village known as Volvic. Now when Amarin saw
+the assassins stretching their bows, the first thought of
+the natural man was to get out of harm’s way. But St.-Prix,
+further advanced in sanctity and therefore more
+perceptive of the invisibilities, seizing him by the arm,
+said to him the words, alas! so incomprehensible to us,
+children of the age: “If you lose this opportunity for
+martyrdom, you will perhaps never find it again!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span></p>
+
+<p>At this Amarin stood his ground, though one has a
+feeling from the little one knows of him that he had a
+natural love for life. He was the first to be massacred,
+“his soul leaving his body in the company of angels.”</p>
+
+<p>The assassins, thinking their work well done, were
+about to depart, when St.-Prix called to them, saying:
+“But I am he whom you seek. Do with me what you
+will.” Whereupon one of the evil men, Radebert by
+name, gave him a sword-thrust through the breast.
+And as he cried out the words each one of us should
+ever have ready on his tongue (Heaven knows they are
+needed often enough), “Forgive them, Lord, they know
+not what they do,” another thrust caused his brains to
+spurt from his head. Whereupon angels were seen
+again descending, and the murderers, appalled by a
+great light that filled the valley, took their flight.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting quietly in the pink church of St.-Amarin
+(its interior is noble of breadth and length, though not
+high), I thought how sweet is the mystical gift, and that
+one but stingily endowed in other ways, without houses
+or lands, or even learning or beauty or grace, if he have
+but the inner light, draws many unto him.</p>
+
+<p>So alluring are such that kings in anguish call for them;
+even the wasters of life, they know not why, sometimes
+seek them out; others have been known to forget their
+money-making, or stop their spending, and render themselves
+physically uncomfortable, trying to get at the
+strange and secret gift they offer.</p>
+
+<p>For the permanent interest of life is the unseen, and
+neither visible joys nor visible griefs can compete with
+it, nor any of the ways of the flesh, however pleasant
+or however straight.</p>
+
+<p>And who would not sometimes dwell on these inner
+stages of the life-journey? With joy on the first period,
+which is that of innocence, passing with a sigh to the
+second, which is that of deviation; with a moistening of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span>
+the dry heart to the third, that of reconciliation. Finally
+in humility to the fourth and last, which is that of pilgrimage,
+where the soul, accepting the two great natural
+abhorrences, old age and dissolution, hopeth for redemption
+and renewal....</p>
+
+<p>And then I found the clock was striking twelve and I
+left the inner world (alas! rarely is my stay in it long,
+even if no clock strikes) and hurried to the <i>popote</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Now thou art come upon a feast of death</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Very pleasant luncheon, after the accounting of the
+flesh, though not dallied over, as Captain Perdrizet,
+a man (Heaven reward him; I never can) of much <i>élan</i>
+and quite a little perception of values, suggested changing
+my afternoon program, which was that of calling
+on various members of the high and comfortable bourgeoisie,
+whose “fleeting mansions” are known to me in
+many lands. When I found that, instead of basking
+in the comforts of this same bourgeoisie, eating their
+sweet and pleasant cakes, sitting in their deep armchairs,
+looking at the portraits of their ancestors, fingering
+their bric-à-brac and looking out at their view,
+I might, if the special commander of the special sector
+so willed it, make a pilgrimage to the sacramental
+Hartmannswillerkopf, where fifty thousand sleep—and
+where others even then as we spoke were laying themselves
+down, my heart was greatly quickened and my
+soul, after its manner, began to burn.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was coming out between heavy showers as
+Captain Perdrizet and I departed hastily for Wesserling,
+where the permission was to be got. Now Wesserling
+rather deserves a page of its own, for many reasons,
+though, having a single thought—that of the pilgrimage—I
+gave but a glance at the very interesting little war-museum,
+stamped hastily on memory the quite delicious<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span>
+emplacement of the old château, now divided into various
+large and comfortable dwellings of the people on whom
+I was to call, and commanding the lovely valley to the
+west. Captain Perdrizet, who proved at every step to
+be a man of sequence as well as enthusiasm, took me
+straight to Commandant de Saint-Denis. After some
+conversation, which I politely didn’t catch, but which
+terminated by: “<i>Oui, si c’est comme ça</i>” (I looked perhaps
+more reasonable than I felt with that heat about my
+heart), “but I must telephone to the commandant of
+the sector at Camp Wagram, and from there you must
+proceed with an armed escort.” Gratefully, but with
+exceeding celerity, we shook the dust of the <i>Kommandantur</i>
+from our feet, and returned through the valley as
+far as Willer, when we began to rise in a world of mist
+and breaking light, from time to time deluged by a
+diamond-like shower. Up, up through hills that one
+can no longer call changeless, for they are hills with their
+heads nicked off, neither branch nor leaf left on the
+stumps that outline their notched and shabby crests.
+Past batteries and gun-emplacements, embedded in
+wet foliage, many of them made by American troops
+last summer. Deep through a world of rusty beeches,
+with pine forests splashed like ink on near hills, here
+and there the torch of a larch—<i>mélèze</i>, it is called—and
+it is the only one of its family that grows yellow in
+autumn and sheds its foliage, and doubtless kind heaven
+made it so, that it might be a lamp in dark forests.
+There was the sound of rushing waters; and everywhere
+that beauty of moving, blue, helmeted figures afoot, on
+horseback, or on muleback was woven into highway
+and forest path, and to mind came immortal verses, of
+which I changed two words:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Know’st thou the mountain-bridge that hangs on cloud?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Blue men</i> in mist grope o’er the torrent loud.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In caves lie coiled the dragon’s ancient brood.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">For do not everywhere “in caves” great guns “lie
+coiled” whose “ancient brood” are these munition-heaps
+spawned upon the mountain-side?</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus08" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus09" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE
+BASTILE, JULY 14TH</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Up, still up, past a long convoy of munitions and
+food mounting slowly and heavily to the sacrificial
+Hartmannswillerkopf, which seems like a great altar
+under whose stone lie many saints—and the number of
+its cemeteries is one hundred and thirteen, while God
+alone knows the unnamed, unnumbered graves, and
+those yet to be dug. I find that rarely do the bones
+of soldiers travel far, and so it should be, for what
+spot, even of a father’s inheritance, is so truly his as that
+where he has fallen? No litigation of man can despoil
+him of it, and even when he and his deeds are forgotten
+it is still his. So let him lie.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere from the forest came strong, damp odors
+of things fugitive and deciduous. The violently released
+sap of shell-splintered and broken trees mingled its
+odors with that other natural smell of falling leaf.
+Lush mosses exuding still deeper, earthier odors were
+folded about the broken shafts in soft, green velvet
+swathings. And some of these forest wounds were
+new, some old and almost healed, like the human
+griefs of the war.</p>
+
+<p>At a sharp turn in the road we leave the motor,
+passing on foot many camouflaged dugouts, and, somewhat
+breathless, reach the collection of low wooden
+huts known as “Camp Wagram.” Each little building
+has layers of fresh pine branches on its roof, and its
+sides are painted in piebald or zebra-like patterns.</p>
+
+<p>We were shown into the dugout of the commandant,
+commanding the 363d Infantry, whom we found writing
+at a little pine table. He received us smiling, and
+not surprised, our visit having been announced by
+telephone. A smallish man with very attentive eyes,
+whose quiet exterior and strong Burgundy accent cover,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+I am told, a heart of gold, together with quick judgment
+and complete fearlessness.</p>
+
+<p>He gives me a military cape to replace my heavy fur
+coat, and we start out to Camp Meudon, farther up,
+where we are presented to another commandant who
+is frankly, though politely, surprised to see a woman
+where no woman has been.</p>
+
+<p>A few harmless jokes about being at Meudon, yet,
+alas! so far from Paris, are exchanged, after which, followed
+by the armed escort, we mount through the wet,
+shabby forest to the very top of the Molkenrain. There
+crouching in some bushes we peer out through them to
+the Hartmannswillerkopf, that culminating, coveted
+point of the great plateau, where men have wrestled
+unto death these four years past. Brown, withered,
+not a tree on it left, its form is traversed only by a long
+black line—the German trenches.</p>
+
+<p>Behind and on each side of “Le Hartmann,” as it is
+called “for short,” is a great, misty, German plain;
+toward the left, in the extreme background, is the three-crested
+hill of the “Hohkoenigsberg”; great flamelike
+patches of cloud lay upon it, transmuting its stones and
+mortar into something gorgeous and unsubstantial. To
+our right and beyond stretched another great German
+plain, in front of which curtains of sun-shot cloud were
+falling and rising. One moment villages and fields
+and white ribbons of road shone, the next they would
+be blotted out by pillars of mist, and others came into
+view.</p>
+
+<p>“If they see us, they will fire,” warned the commandant
+as I made an involuntary movement to rise,
+when another quick diamond-like shower beat about us.</p>
+
+<p>“But isn’t it too dark?” I asked; that world of the
+Hartmann sector seemed so indistinct in shifting light
+and rain.</p>
+
+<p>“They’ve seen us when it was darker than this,” he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+answered, rather grimly, with the expression of one
+remembering lost men.</p>
+
+<p>Passing to another vantage-ground of the Molkenrain,
+whence we could see the Sudel, now entirely in French
+hands, we met a group of blue men, emerging beautifully
+out of the colored mist under the silver heaven. They
+were carrying hot soup to other blue men in the brown
+trenches of the Hartmann.</p>
+
+<p>Standing for no uncompleted emotions as far as the
+Hartmann is concerned, Captain Perdrizet stopped
+a glowing-eyed, red-cheeked, black-haired Meridional
+stripling and told him to let me have a taste from the
+can he was carrying. I drank, thinking “there are many
+ways of winning the war,” from a dipper for which a
+trusty, much-camouflaged hand had first to hunt in its
+steaming depths. As I thanked him I wondered within
+myself should I wish him a quick young death or a
+long life and a toothless old age? As will be seen I’m
+obsessed by the veterans.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Commandant Moreteaux said: “But
+Madame will only have seen the Hartmann in mist
+and rain. Why not come a second time and lunch with
+me to-morrow?”</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Captain Perdrizet, he at me, and both
+being, as I have said, mortals of “first movement,” and
+knowing holy enthusiasm, we accept—though I bethink
+me somewhat late of our chief, the commandant of the
+Military Mission, who marks the shining course of my
+Alsatian hours, and who might have other plans. It
+was “to see.”</p>
+
+<p>As we came down in the gathering gloom, over the
+shell-ravaged sides of the mountain, I was conscious of
+a deep, in some way sweet, feeling that I might be going
+to see, to <i>feel</i>, it all again. And, too, as is the way of
+the heart, it seemed then somewhat to belong to me.</p>
+
+<p>I was not as one who never more will pass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span></p>
+
+<p>Everywhere in the brown, wet forest pale-blue forms
+stood aside to make way for us. As we reached Camp
+Wagram, where I re-exchanged the long, blue military
+cape for my coat, great shots began to echo through the
+hills, and the flare of guns illuminated the thin, dark,
+scraggly crests. It was still war. Near, so near, men
+were breathing out their souls, to be “scattered by winds
+and high, tempestuous gusts.”</p>
+
+<p>As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought
+to Commandant Moreteaux, and we heard then and
+there that Foch had received the German Parlementaries,
+and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock
+of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.”
+Nobody spoke when he ceased reading. It seemed
+suddenly like the world’s end.</p>
+
+<p>And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news,
+there in the Hartmannswillerkopf sector!</p>
+
+<p>Then we said another and quite hasty <i>au revoir</i>,
+fearing night would descend upon the valley before we
+could, for the motor had to go without lights, and there
+was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding
+chance at fate.</p>
+
+<p>The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the
+sound of rushing waters, the rattle of munition-wagons,
+the stamp of hoofs, and voices of dimly outlined men
+whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The
+odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was
+chilled in body and soul, for were not they also there,
+those other tens of thousands, whose beds were dug
+in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the
+living? How close the two worlds are I never knew
+until this war, where death is ever near, and sometimes
+sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper
+with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and
+strong, a bugle in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span>
+again, again the night sky was illumined. The unnatural
+shapes of trees fallen one against the other at
+sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the road
+was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And
+who would see the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine?
+This damp, gray, afternoon robe of consecration,
+clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz,
+amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true
+garb. And the wide mantle of the November night
+was folding close over all its beauty and its grief.</p>
+
+<p>At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer.
+She knows irremediable grief and bears it with a noble
+courage. One of her sons fell far from her in Champagne;
+the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was
+brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and
+lies forever in the sweet, broad valley of the Thur,
+claiming so little of his vast inheritance....</p>
+
+<p>To the <i>popote</i> at eight. Six Protestant pastors had
+been announced to dine with us, two of mine in the act
+of being convoyed through Alsace by four of theirs.
+The Americans were “looking over the ground,” they
+delicately informed me. I didn’t ask “what ground”;
+with my name it might have sounded argumentative,
+which I never, never am.</p>
+
+<p>Now during these days of my Alsatian visit I had
+thought, at intervals, that it might very possibly be a
+nuisance to have a woman always tagging at some
+polite heel or other, but when I saw that six pastors
+could happen to them all at once, I then and there
+ceased forever feeling apologetic. I even fell to thinking
+that they hadn’t done so badly when they got me.</p>
+
+<p>I can’t say that, at dinner, all went as merry as a
+marriage feast, because the Americans didn’t speak
+French, nor the officers English, except de Maroussem,
+who could but didn’t, even seeming but remotely interested
+in watching them consume the plenteous repast.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>
+And as for myself, I was too dull with fatigue and too
+spent with the emotions of the Hartmann to be able to
+do any “paying in person.” For a time, too, those men
+of my race were the strangers to me, not the blue-clad
+men of the Mission.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as we were unsuspectingly taking our coffee,
+one of the shepherds began saying prayers over us with a
+drop in his voice after each sentence, thanking God
+for their being there, for our being there, for Alsace
+being there, and I don’t remember what else, save that
+it was fairly comprehensive. After which everybody
+signed everybody’s menu, and then as they were on the
+run through the garden of Alsace, lingering nowhere,
+though scattering possibly seedless blessings everywhere,
+they said good-by and went out forever into the
+rain. And they ought to have thanked God for the
+dinner, which was a triumph, with vintage wines served
+by two orderlies, under Monsieur de Maroussem’s
+chic though somewhat detached eye.</p>
+
+<p>As the door closed we fell to talking as people would
+when six clergymen who came all at once leave all at
+once, though unexpectedly one came back for his umbrella—producing
+a momentary hush.</p>
+
+<p>One of mine had generously given me several boxes
+of cigarettes, produced from deep, sagging pockets,
+and we stopped to have an “evangelical puff” as some
+one called it, while I tried to explain what “nervous
+prostration” is to those Frenchmen—and to explain
+why the largest of the American clergymen, very nice,
+and looking like a lion-tamer, as some one remarked,
+could have had it, and been in bed with it, for a year.
+“<i>Chacun a sa petite misère</i>,” one of them said, “<i>mais
+c’est étrange, tout de même.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>One of the officers of the St.-Amarin <i>popote</i>, Debrix,
+is the image of the famous Coligny, and so called by
+his comrades, but he is, it appears, an excellent Papist,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span>
+while Perdrizet, who, if he had on a suit of mail, might
+have borne the banner of the Virgin, following Godefroy
+de Bouillon into Jerusalem, is an equally excellent
+Protestant, his family having fled to Montbéliard after
+the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and these two
+are continually being joked about their natural—or
+unnatural—camouflage. But in these days nobody
+really cares, alack! alack! what anybody believes,
+scarcely, alack! what anybody does, especially if they are
+quiet about it and it doesn’t interfere with the other
+person’s plans. And that’s why the war will be forgotten
+just as soon as the newspapers stop talking
+about it and business looks up and the women get new
+clothes, which they need. However, as the dead soldiers
+will mostly be in heaven, their smiles won’t be too
+unkind, though their language!—if it’s anything like
+what I’ve discovered they use on earth!</p>
+
+<p>I was finally convoyed home by a largish contingent
+of the sons of Mars. As soon as we stepped from the
+door we were in ankle-deep mud; the sky, black and
+flat and close, had a vaultlike heaviness, and the
+fog was so clinging that I was as if wrapped in some
+soft, wet stuff. Monsieur and Madame Helmer were
+kindly waiting up for me, but mercifully let our good-night
+be short. And here I am with no more thought
+of sleep than a meadow-lark at dawn, though that’s
+my only resemblance to the meadow-lark, for I am
+tired, dead-tired, and my hair is still wet with the
+mists of the Hartmann.</p>
+
+<p>And how shall one sleep who has so lately touched
+the fringe of the mountain-couch where many soldiers
+lie?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">“LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE
+FREUNDSTEIN AND ITS PHANTOMS</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 9th.</i>—This morning at eight-thirty we
+started out, Captain Perdrizet, Lieutenant Debrix,
+and I, for the famous trip along the crest of the mountains
+that, on one side, hang over the valley of the Thur,
+and on the other fall toward the Germanies. Having
+beheld with my eyes the first and second line defenses
+of these crests and of the “Hartmann,” I have come
+to some slight realization of how men have lived (and
+died) four winters through on these weather- and shell-swept
+heights.</p>
+
+<p>We had to go to the very end of the shining valley
+before beginning the ascent to the crests, passing Wesserling,
+situated so charmingly on its eminence in the
+ancient moraine, commanding the valley from both
+ways. Once upon a time the Château of Wesserling
+belonged to Prince Löwenstein, Abbot of Murbach,
+the history of the great Abbey of Murbach being closely
+bound up with that of these valleys, for Charlemagne
+gave to the first abbot, St.-Pyrmin, the whole country
+of the Thur, with St.-Amarin and Thann and all the lesser
+towns. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was converted
+into a noble Chapter with residence, and a big
+new church, at Guebwiller, now in German hands. But
+the Chapter had a short life there, and probably not a
+gay one, and during the Revolution it was suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>The vineyards round about have been renowned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+since time immemorial, and on Guebwiller’s southern
+slopes there is a wine celebrated even among the most
+celebrated of Alsace, which enlivens without making
+noisy, and inspires without depressing (evidently what
+the juice of the grape was meant to do when the vine grew
+on the first hillsides of the world). It is called “<i>Kitterle
+brisemollets</i>” (“Kitterle break your calves”), those
+whom it delights evidently not journeying far, except
+in fancy.</p>
+
+<p>A great book could be written about the wines of
+Alsace, the soft, gleaming, light-colored wines of this
+land of sunny slopes, which may become even as a Mecca
+for pilgrims arriving “dry” from over the seas. In
+fact, quite a delightful perspective opens itself out.</p>
+
+<p>From Wolxheim comes a wine, once the favorite of
+Napoleon, which was always found on the imperial
+table. There are the wines of Rouffach, “home town”
+of the husband of Madame Sans-Gêne; of Kaisersberg,
+known fashionably and pertinently as “Montlibre” for
+a short space during the Revolution, and by the “Rang”
+of Thann; Alsatians once swore, “<i>Que le Rang te heurte!</i>”
+(“May the Rang strike you!”) There is, too, an exceptional,
+ancient, red vintage called “<i>Sang des Turcs</i>,”
+whose name recalls the twilight days of Turkish invasions
+and Soliman the Great.</p>
+
+<p>But the Alsatian wines are mostly made from compact
+bunches of little, white, sweet grapes, with irislike
+colors shading them richly. The inhabitants, holding
+their <i>pinard</i> in great veneration, feel it a sacred duty
+to see that it is <i>good</i>. It is called colloquially “<i>thé
+d’Octobre</i>” (“October tea”) one of the officers told me,
+after the manner of the famous “<i>purée septembrale</i>”
+(“September purée”) of Rabelais, who, it appears, greatly
+appreciated the wines of these hillsides. But they are
+pitiless concerning poor wines, which they call “fiddlers’
+wines,” or “<i>Sans-le-Sou</i>,” or “<i>gratte-gosier</i>” (“throat-scratcher”),<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>
+and “<i>grimpe-muraille</i>” (“wall-climber”), as
+he who drinks them is apt to try that and other useless
+feats, instead of sitting and dreaming or joking and
+being happy. These bad wines are also known collectively
+and disdainfully as <i>vins des trois hommes</i>
+(wines of three men) because it appears it takes
+three men to accomplish the feat of drinking a single
+glass—the man who supports the drinker, the man
+who forces the treacherous liquid down his throat,
+and the third the unhappy victim. Now the once
+rich soil of the ancient mellow vineyards has got thin
+and stony; for the men who have grown them have
+been occupied with killing these past four years, and
+neglect for even a season can spoil the best and oldest
+vines.</p>
+
+<p>In times of peace there are many textile manufactories
+in these valleys, too. After the Napoleonic wars <i>la
+main d’œuvre</i> (labor) was scarce, just as it will be after
+our war, workmen being brought even from India,
+and to this day in the midst of modern machinery here,
+in the valley, there are places where they still keep to
+the ancient block system of stamping cloth, with the
+ritual hammer-stroke, this process giving more fadeless
+and beautiful colors than any machine-stamped, aniline-dyed
+stuffs that ever were. Such cloths are still called
+“<i>Indiennes</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>And all around here the Swedes did as tidy a bit of
+work as was ever done by invading armies, the seventeenth
+century being for the valley a century of ravage
+and desolation. In one of the books<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Mr. Helmer
+gave me last night I read that the cantons were so
+reduced during the Thirty Years’ War that places like
+Bitschwiller could register but four adults and eleven
+children, Moosch eleven adults and twenty-three children,
+St.-Amarin thirteen adults and forty-four children,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+and so on, the chief of their diet being acorns and roots
+and mice and other classic nutriment of epochs of
+destruction. There were moments when the Imperials,
+the Swedes, the French, and the Lorrains disputed the
+territory, and various troops camped on the Hartmannswiller
+and descended to the valley—and the <i>Roi Très
+Catholique</i> was the ally of the Swedes, and the Abbey
+and its territories were under the Holy German Empire.
+But whoever was momentarily in possession, it was
+always disastrous for the inhabitants of the valley—and
+of what the children suffered these fatal figures I
+have quoted evoke some dull perception.</p>
+
+<p>As we pass the pleasant villages of Fellering and
+Odern and Krüt, all shining in the radiance of a strong
+though intermittent sun, with here and there scarfs of
+rainbow-like mists draped about them, we foolishly
+mocked the weather wisdom of Mr. Helmer, who, on
+being asked as we started out, if the weather would
+hold, had regretfully said, “No.”</p>
+
+<p>At Krüt we start to ascend the Wildenstein. Gorgeous
+matutinal effects continued their prismatic play
+everywhere on soft and fathomless black hills, the
+yellow lights on the <i>mélèze</i> almost outshining the sun.
+On one mountain-side they made a line as would some
+procession of pilgrims bearing torches, and one almost
+thought one saw cowled heads and heard the chanting
+of a “<i>Pilgerchor</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The air we were breathing was strong yet tenuous,
+and I felt a great refreshment and exhilaration.</p>
+
+<p>In these wide days of bending the hills, of folding the
+valleys, there has been, as it were, some unpacking of
+my mind, some shaking out of my soul, things long
+hidden have come to light, and the patched lining of
+memory has been freshened. Almost every event has
+appeared, accompanied by its secret meanings, in its
+relationship to secondary, generally unapparent, significances.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span>
+I have had, too, a quickened sensitiveness to
+the beauty of the natural world. And can a journey
+do more for one than this?</p>
+
+<p>It was a stiff mount to Huss in a sort of distilled
+pine fragrance, with a continual looking back, where
+the billowing lightsome pink and yellow scarfs, woven of
+sun and mist, were flinging themselves more and more
+wastefully about the shining valleys. Near the top our
+motor’s <i>bougies</i> got clogged with oil, and a thin, white
+fog, now opaque, now sun-shot, began to close in on us.
+We arranged the <i>bougies</i>, but there was nothing for
+human hands to do about that white fog, and we found
+ourselves suddenly, at a turn in the road, tightly inclosed
+by it, and were seemingly alone on the heights,
+where the only thing that appeared to grow and thrive
+were the stretches of wire entanglements, like great
+patches of dried heather. Everywhere were groupings
+of black crosses, with their tricolor badges, above wind-swept,
+fog-enveloped, sun-bathed graves, dug on these
+treeless heights.</p>
+
+<p>But there, in that thin, high air, I suddenly became
+conscious of the volatilization of the spirit, and knew
+those graves indeed for empty....</p>
+
+<p>One last time, as we passed Camp Boussat, named after
+the colonel who fell here, and looking like a mining-camp,
+the mist shifted, showing the jeweled, gossamer-clad
+valley, and then we were again fog-locked, and I
+saw its beauty no more—only brown seas of wire
+entanglements losing themselves in those shrouds of
+cottony white, which lifted here and there to show some
+detail of the strange life on the bleak crests. There
+were dugouts everywhere, and very low buildings
+camouflaged in wood-colors and crisscross designs.
+In them were men washing, men cooking, men smoking,
+all in astonishment, which sometimes gave place to
+grins, and doubtless pleasantries in the best Gallic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span>
+manner, at the appearance of the weaker sex on their
+grim, bare mountain-tops.</p>
+
+<p>We passed endless gun-emplacements, and cemented
+munition-depots, barely visible through thick layers of
+pine branches, and near them heads would be sticking out
+of what seemed mere holes in the earth.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Captain Perdrizet, whose ardent spirit
+had been considerably dampened by the closing in of
+that thick, cold fog, began also to fear we should be late
+for <i>déjeuner</i> at Camp Wagram, from which, it appeared,
+we were separated by several valleys and a few hills
+of the eternal sort. The motor’s <i>bougies</i> got clogged
+again (what part of its being they are I know not);
+the chauffeur got moody, Captain Perdrizet more
+visibly vexed, Debrix quieter and more philosophic
+(he is a <i>littérateur</i> when there’s no war, and has written
+a beautiful poem about Thann); as for myself, knowing
+strange and enkindling things were behind me, others
+doubtless before me, and that whatever happened would
+be interesting, I felt myself sweetly detached from time
+and circumstances, which for one of deadly punctuality
+is saying much.</p>
+
+<p>A peculiarity of the motor’s ailment was that it
+couldn’t go down as fast as it could go up, so, a-limp,
+a-crawl, a-hump, we descended into a valley packed
+extravagantly with that thick, unspun cotton-like
+atmosphere, leaving the dead and living alike to their
+bare heights. At a certain village whose name I forget
+(I can hear the reader saying, “Thank God she has forgotten
+it, and we can perhaps get on to Camp Wagram
+for lunch”)—at a certain village, however, I repeat, two
+ravens went across our path, going to the left of the
+motor. Said Perdrizet, on taking in the dire occurrence,
+his color like to the white fog and his hair and mustache
+like to the raven’s, “We’ll never get there!”</p>
+
+<p>Now I am superstitious, too, and glory in it, for, though<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span>
+it gives me a good deal of otherwise avoidable worry, it
+colors life. From time to time friends and circumstances
+load me with a new one, and I go staggering on.
+Two ravens crossing the road to the left <i>was</i> a novelty,
+and I see anxious days to come when motoring for
+engagements where one must be in time—or one thinks
+one must. And superstition has nothing to do with the
+processes of the brain, rather lodges itself elusively
+anywhere and everywhere in one’s being.</p>
+
+<p>The two officers consulted their timepieces again,
+finding a trifling and consoling difference of twenty
+minutes (looked at from one way). The chauffeur’s
+watch didn’t go, and I never carry one. As the motor
+stopped again, Perdrizet began to fidget extremely
+much, and to say that if it weren’t for me he’d kill
+the chauffeur, and decided that we couldn’t take in the
+village of Goldbach, almost entirely destroyed in this
+war, where Madame Sans-Gêne first saw the light of
+day, and later the duke.</p>
+
+<p>However, in spite of the two ravens and the <i>Erdwible</i>,<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+or other spirits of those forest-hills, we at last found ourselves
+twisting up the road to Camp Wagram, an hour
+late, and we began to sound noisily the horn of arrival.
+The commandant and his young captain had been long
+awaiting us on their hillside. With many apologies on
+our part because of the delay, and on theirs because
+of the fog, we went into the little, low mess-room built
+of rough boards, with its heavy camouflage of fresh
+pine branches on its low roof, its windows of oiled paper,
+and its sides painted like a green-and-yellow tiger.</p>
+
+<p>The commandant did something to his watch as we sat
+down, and then gallantly yet unblushingly remarked
+that it was just 12.30, but that even <i>had</i> we been late it
+would have only meant a longer anticipation of something
+pleasant. My companions both gave smiles of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span>
+satisfaction for that, on the Hartmann, where men
+are almost entirely concerned with killing or being
+killed, the commandant was living up to the French
+reputation in more ways than one. I thought, too,
+that it was a very happy beginning, looking well, so
+to speak, among the <i>hors d’œuvre</i>. Captain Perdrizet
+had told me the day before that if the commandant
+had to requisition every man and mule in the sector
+there would be an excellent lunch. Now the very good
+food was accompanied by a delicious, warm Burgundy
+from the commandant’s own part of the world, and at
+dessert a bottle of Pommery &amp; Greno, very cold, a
+souvenir of his service in Champagne, was poured. All
+drank sparingly of both, after the manner of Latins.
+Some asked delicately, even humbly, as one really
+wanting information, concerning the rumor that the
+United States were “going dry,” and wondered why
+it was to be. I rather wondered myself, up there on the
+Hartmann, forgetful for a moment of the unpleasant
+things I know about distilled liquors in the Home of the
+Free and the Land of the Brave.</p>
+
+<p>Said the commandant, puzzled, looking at his not
+large glass of ruby liquid, “<i>Un peu de vin en mangeant,
+tout de même?</i> ...” (“But a little wine at one’s
+meals?...”)</p>
+
+<p>Said another officer, with a quickly restrained gesture
+of distaste: “<i>Est-ce vrai qu’il faut boire seul et debout et
+entre les repas en Amérique?</i>” (“Is it true that one
+must drink alone and standing up and between meals
+in America?”)</p>
+
+<p>I was saved an answer to this question, which was a
+fairly near picture of some of the national customs, by
+the shaking, deafening sound of an exploding shell.
+Those paper windows didn’t seem to mind it, though
+everything on the table rattled. The commandant
+looked at the captain, who disappeared, returning almost<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span>
+immediately to say that an artilleryman with his horses
+had been killed—and the doctor, who had started to
+the door, sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, as we were beginning the <i>tournedos
+grillés, maître d’hôtel</i>, the telephone rang, and a
+radio was brought in hot and given to me for a souvenir.
+It was one sent by the German parlementaries saying
+that as they were unable to get back to Germany by
+road on account of broken bridges, they would be
+obliged to proceed by air, and that their ’plane would be
+marked by two white flames—<i>zwei weisse Flammen</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“It sounds safe, but all the same I don’t envy the
+officer detailed to accompany them,” said somebody;
+and they all smiled and seemed glad they weren’t in
+the airplane. I’ve noticed in the past two or three days
+that military men are beginning to prize life again.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting opposite the commandant, on my right
+was Doctor Lantieri with four stripes on his sleeve, and
+on my left was young Captain de Santis, who had met
+us. Curiously enough, both were of Corsican descent,
+and showed it so distinctly that when some one mentioned
+the great Italian bag of Austrian prisoners after
+the cessation of hostilities, and how the “Tiger” had
+said you simply couldn’t hold them back, I got a bit
+worried, though nobody else seemed to mind.</p>
+
+<p>The young captain took from his pocket a couple of
+proclamations dropped by German aviators on the Hartmann
+yesterday—and furthermore presented me with a
+large panoramic view of the Champagne sector, where
+he had fought. I thought it was something rightly
+belonging to his family, but there was that in his proud,
+Corsican gesture which forbade refusal.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="poster" style="max-width: 37.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/poster.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<div class="blockquote poster">
+
+<p class="center larger"><b>The German People Offers Peace.</b></p>
+
+<p>The new German democratic government has this programme:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>“The will of the people is the highest law.”</b></p>
+
+<p>The German people wants quickly to end the slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>The new German popular government therefore has offered an</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Armistice</b></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">and has declared itself ready for</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Peace</b></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">on the basis of justice and reconciliation of nations.</p>
+
+<p>It is the will of the German people that it should live in peace with all
+peoples, honestly and loyally.</p>
+
+<p>What has the new German popular government done so far to put into practice
+the will of the people and to prove its good and upright intentions?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="hanging">a) The new German government has appealed to President Wilson
+to bring about peace.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><b>It has recognized and accepted all the principles which
+President Wilson proclaimed as a basis for a general lasting
+peace of justice among the nations.</b></p>
+
+<p class="hanging">b) The new German government has solemnly declared its readiness to evacuate
+<b>Belgium</b> and to restore it.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">c) The new German government is ready to come to an honest understanding
+with France about</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Alsace-Lorraine.</b></p>
+
+<p class="hanging">d) The new German government has restricted the <b>U-boat War</b>.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>No passengers steamers not carrying troops<br>
+or war material will be attacked in future.</b></p>
+
+<p class="hanging">e) The new German government has declared that it will withdraw all
+German troops back over the German frontier.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging">f)—The new German government has asked the Allied Governments to
+name commissioners to agree upon the practical measures of the
+evacuation of Belgium and France.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>These are the deeds of the new German popular government. Can
+these be called mere words, or bluff, or propaganda?</p>
+
+<p>Who is to blame, if an armistice is not called now?</p>
+
+<p>Who is to blame if daily thousands of brave soldiers needlessly have to
+shed their blood and die?</p>
+
+<p>Who is to blame, if the hitherto undestroyed towns and villages of France
+and Belgium sink in ashes?</p>
+
+<p>Who is to blame, if hundreds of thousands of unhappy women and children
+are driven from their homes to hunger and freeze?</p>
+
+<p class="center larger"><b>The German people offers its hand
+for peace.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span></p>
+
+<p>After which, being the only woman who had ever
+lunched in the H.W.K. sector, I was photographed
+by the doctor with the four stripes. Then in a fog
+thickly enfolding us, as well as the mountains, we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>
+started out with gas-masks, compasses and pistols,
+plus an armed escort, toward the German lines, for they
+wanted to show me the ruins of the Castle of Freundstein,
+now an observation post, directly overhanging
+the great plain I had seen yesterday. Much banter
+between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet, their
+eyes very alert, as to the right road, the one that wouldn’t
+lead us into the enemies’ hands. Suddenly a firing of
+French guns began right over our befogged heads, with
+a near swish and crack, and answering duller German
+guns. In the thick fog, even those men accustomed to
+sensations seemed quite keyed up, and the commandant
+had become like some woodsman, looking closely at the
+trunks of battered trees, some with old scars, some with
+new, and other indications, invisible to me, along the
+path. Finally, at a certain crossroad, he stopped, saying:
+“<i>That</i> would lead us straight to them. Even
+now a pointed casque might appear, though, with the
+probable armistice in sight, they will be less venturesome.”</p>
+
+<p>I: “What would they do?”</p>
+
+<p>He: “Throw hand-grenades first and then”—he
+looked at the others—“there’d be a scuffle.”</p>
+
+<p>It didn’t sound attractive, I must say, the potentialities
+of the fog seeming even quite horrid, and I was
+entirely ready to hunt in the opposite direction for the
+path to the Freundstein, which, according to the compass,
+lay pleasantly due west. Dreadful, unexploded
+things, too, were lying about, in new and ancient shell-holes,
+and there was much careful stepping among
+broken tree-trunks and half-demolished barbed wire,
+and I got a horrid rip in the last of my American boots.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there was a black cross, and the possibility
+of being underneath one, instead of above one, if we
+<i>did</i> meet a German patrol, came before me. With all
+one’s poetizing or philosophizing, there <i>is</i> a difference,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+and one’s a long time dead—as I know Lieutenant
+Lavallée would agree.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the path began to rise, the commandant
+giving an exclamation of relief as he saw a steep ladder
+almost in front of us, apparently leaning against a
+wall of fog. Captain Perdrizet’s eyes began to shine
+again; he’d been quite subdued, not to say cast down.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s like a scene of opera, isn’t it?” he exclaimed.
+And then he proceeded up the ladder, tipped, it seemed,
+at an angle of forty-five degrees the wrong way, I wondering
+how on earth I was to get down, unless I fell. Then
+we descend from a ledge over heaps of century-old, moss-grown
+mortar deep into the tower, and, passing through
+a long, subterranean passage, find ourselves in a tiny,
+closet-like room of ageless masonry. Stationed at an
+opening are two men with telephones over their ears,
+binoculars, compass, and charts lying on the sill of the
+opening in the masonry, which is shaped like this ⌓
+and looks to the northeast, toward the Hartmann and
+the Sudel, and other consecrated heights, as well as the
+great, covered German plain—whose contours were
+more impenetrably veiled than its future. I had had
+a feeling, crouching in the wet bushes the day before,
+gazing out on its wide splendors in shifting sun and
+shower, that I would look no more upon it, nor upon
+the little, worn, brown crest of the Hartmann, cut
+by the black line of the German trenches, running
+through the naked wilderness of branchless trees—though
+I had not known why.</p>
+
+<p>When we had blithely retraced our steps to the highroad,
+cracking many uncomplicated jokes, pleasing
+largely because we felt that kindness toward the universe
+so distinctive of the front, when no actual killing is
+going on, we suddenly encountered, almost bumping
+into them, two swearing, sweating, heavily laden <i>poilus</i>,
+who had got lost in the fog looking for their detachment.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span>
+On seeing us they threw down their accoutrement on a
+wet bank and expressions strong and classic began to
+cut the air. A sergeant, risen up from somewhere at
+the unmistakable sounds, ran toward them, calling and
+gesticulating wildly. But, wiping their brows, they
+continued. They had taken the last step they were
+going to on that so-and-so and so-and-so mountain,
+and if they found their detachment or not they <i>enfiché’d</i>
+themselves, only they didn’t use this elegant word to
+express their sentiments. The sergeant got more excited,
+and cried, “<i>Espèces de types</i>” and.... At this
+the commandant, foreseeing that the artillery exchange
+might get too loud for feminine ears, said to the biggest
+one (both were enormous), seeing his number: “You
+are looking for Camp Meudon, <i>mon ami</i>. It’s farther
+up; in an hour you are there. Follow the path up and
+always to the right.”</p>
+
+<p>On which, like lambs, they who had sworn not to move
+from that spot till the hill crumbled shouldered their
+accoutrement, thanked Perdrizet in the best French
+manner for the cigarettes he gave them, and disappeared
+quickly, the strains of “Madelon” being loudly borne
+back to us on the fog.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ce sont des enfants</i>” (“They are children”), said
+the commandant, with his kind smile, “and <i>good</i>
+children.”</p>
+
+<p>And that was the last word I heard concerning the
+war and “<i>les enfants de la Patrie</i>” on the Hartmann,
+for the hour of farewells had come.</p>
+
+<p>And how deep was the mutual well-wishing enfolding
+that moment those who have seen peace breaking over
+the graves of the Hartmann, as I and they saw it,
+alone can know.</p>
+
+<p>As we parted, they taking a higher path, disappearing
+almost immediately in the fog, and we the lower road
+back to the motor, I suddenly understood, too, the new<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span>
+look one sees in all men’s faces. Everywhere it is the
+same. It is that of men who have been ready to die,
+to “separate from the pleasant habit of existence, the
+sweet fable of living,” but who suddenly know they
+need not die, at least not now—nor <i>that</i> way.</p>
+
+<p>Coming down the heavily shrouded mountain-slope
+as quickly as possible, to be in time for my adieux
+to St.-Amarin before hastening over to Masevaux that
+same evening, Captain Perdrizet told me the legend
+of the “Phantoms of Freundstein.” I was then at a
+point of fatigue where present emotions were no longer
+possible, and time works such wonders that the most
+tragic tale of Freundstein, the Rock of Friends, was even
+as a poultice. And I could still be interested in hearing
+that to this very day there is a proverb, “<i>Er isch vom
+Freundstein</i>” (“He is from Freundstein”), which, said
+of a man, means so hospitable is he that his house
+belongs to his friends. And the legend runs after this
+fashion:</p>
+
+<p>The last of the lords of Freundstein, Count Jerome,
+had a beautiful daughter, Christine by name, whom he
+adored, and whom he took with him everywhere, even
+to the chase, for which purpose a gorgeous litter had
+been made wherein she might rest. The Lord of
+Geroldseck, passing by one day, saw her as she lay asleep.
+Struck by her loveliness, he swore then and there that
+he would make her his.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after he proceeded to Freundstein to ask her
+hand in marriage, but she answered that it was useless,
+as her heart already belonged to a certain very noble
+cavalier of Thann. Her father gave the same answer.
+One night a great noise was heard before the gates of
+Freundstein; it was the Lord of Geroldseck come with
+his vassals to take the castle and its lovely young
+châtelaine by assault. Freundstein resisted for three
+days. Then, seeing it was in vain, Christine and her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span>
+father took final refuge in the high tower whose ruins
+rise above the chamber where we found the men with
+the telephones strapped to their ears. There had once
+been a sloping stairway in the tower, so broad that a
+horseman might ascend it. Up this road the Lord of
+Geroldseck pursued them. Arrived at the top, he was
+about to seize the girl, but her father, taking her in his
+arms, leaped with her into space. The gesture that
+Geroldseck made to retain her whom he loved caused
+him to lose his own balance, and he, too, fell and was
+killed. And their ghosts forever haunt the spot, and
+the echo, no matter what words are cried to the hills,
+always gives back the last, despairing call of Geroldseck:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Je t’aurai, je t’aurai, je t’aurai.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">RETURN TO MASEVAUX</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 9th.</i>—I was received so warmly by the
+amiable Demoiselles Braun, who had my room ready
+for me; so kindly by Captain Bernard, who came a moment
+afterward to tell me he would call for me at seven-fifteen;
+so dearly by Laferrière, who also called for me,
+that I felt I had indeed got “home.” As we were walking
+along to the <i>popote</i> Captain Tirman joined us in the
+darkness and told us that Bavaria had proclaimed itself
+a republic, and that there was news (military news by
+radio) of the abdication of the Kaiser. Somebody cried,
+“<i>Demain, de quoi demain sera-t-il fait?</i>” as we entered
+the house where the little cat, the forgetful, unabashed
+little cat, who but three short days before had done
+such well-nigh disastrous things to my fur coat, also
+awaited me.</p>
+
+<p>Again a charming dinner, conversation about that
+first August of the war, the retreat from Mons, of
+Charleroi, and many, many other places; of forced
+marches and aching feet; of fatigue and hunger and
+thirst, now packed away gloriously in memory, though
+sometimes the strange look appeared on their faces as
+they talked. Stories were told of those who had gone
+to “<i>faire un bridge à Limoges</i>”<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> and remained there, and
+of others, like Mangin, who had come back, Mangin,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span>
+the booty of whose glorious Tenth Army now overflows
+the Place de la Concorde. And of Foch who had <i>nearly</i>
+gone there. And of the immense glory hanging over
+each and every battlefield, for, though black crosses
+were evoked, each was entwined with colors too bright
+for human eyes. And then we turned our thoughts
+from <i>tempus lachrymarum</i> to the New Day, in whose
+sun, though not like to the brightness of those fallen,
+we all shine. The <i>long</i> destiny is heavy and dark beside
+the light, bright way of heroes, and never did one
+realize till now how truly the gods love those whom
+they snatch young. We, after all, as one of the officers
+remarked, will die in our beds or by accident—and is it
+so desirable?</p>
+
+<p>Then Sérin told his oft-repeated, but now dearly
+loved, story of “<i>Bravo, Capitano</i>,” of the <i>Capitano</i> who
+thanked the Madonna for the thirteen trenches and
+the sea of barbed wire between himself and the enemy,
+but which I won’t tell. And Captain Antoni told the
+story of the wounded Boche who was given the <i>Croix
+de Guerre</i>, and how the French general said, as he entered
+the hospital ward:</p>
+
+<p>“Are these the brave men who so valiantly held their
+position on the twenty-fourth? With inexpressible pleasure
+I give each one his well-merited <i>Croix de Guerre</i>,” and
+then proceeded down the line of beds. On Number 33
+was lying a man with closely bandaged head, only one
+gleaming eye visible, and the <i>Croix de Guerre</i> was pinned
+also on his valiant breast, and if it was removed by the
+Angel of Death or by orders of the colonel I forget.
+Neither is it recorded if the German smiled.</p>
+
+<p>And I told of the swift passing of the autos, mine
+and the commandant’s, on the dark hills of the Route
+Joffre, when I was coming back from St.-Amarin and
+he going there. How sadly I had seen its kind lights
+rise along the heights and disappear, and there had been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+no friendly handclasp on the hills, nor words of thanks
+from me in the dim light of the blurred Pleiades and the
+young, half-veiled, white moon.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner some one hazarded the word “bridge,” but
+there must have been that in my eye making for solitude
+rather than companionship, for the next thing I heard
+from some Frenchman, perceptive as to woman’s looks,
+was:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Madame est sans doute bien fatiguée et nous jouerons
+demain.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And soon I was stumbling home on one or two or
+three blue-sleeved arms, in the inky darkness of a starless
+and moonless Masevaux.</p>
+
+<p>I had found St.-Amarin charming, and I left with
+deep regret, but at Masevaux I was experiencing the
+sensation, very agreeable, I must say, of one who, having
+wandered, returns to his or her first love; and any one
+who has done it will know exactly how I felt, and I
+don’t have to tell them. As for those who have never
+returned, they wouldn’t understand if I did explain.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>The Star is fall’n and Time is at his period</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>November 11th, 1 A.M.</i>—At ten-thirty Captain
+Tirman came back to the <i>popote</i> where we were
+playing bridge—Sérin, Laferrière, Toussaint, and I.
+He was very pale, but there was something shining
+about his face.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ça y est, l’armistice.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Dead silence; we don’t even drop our cards. In his
+excitement a very naughty soldier’s word escapes him.
+He turns away in consternation, and the others, somewhat
+appalled, too, at last drop their cards. I try not
+to smile. General recovery; they hope I didn’t catch
+it. It was sufficient, however, to break that strange
+feeling of <i>absence</i> of feeling that each one of us was
+experiencing.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Alors c’est fini, la guerre</i>,” some one finally said in a
+dazed way, and with the words the cruel thing seemed
+to drop heavily from us, as would some hideous, exhausting
+burden.</p>
+
+<p>Toussaint, with his far look of one who loves forests,
+very strongly marked, said, “To think that it has found
+us like this playing bridge at the <i>popote</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>Sérin: “I’ll not go to bed to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>I: “Oh, my friends!” and then nothing more—my
+knees suddenly as if broken.</p>
+
+<p>Laferrière (very quietly, after a pause): “I cannot
+but think of those who are not here.” And his words<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+evoked great shining bands of the dear young, pressed
+closely, one against the other, out of their flesh, crowding
+the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sérin, again with his <i>bon sourire d’enfant</i>, “<i>Il
+faut boire</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>A bottle of <i>Asti spumante</i> is produced by Laferrière,
+who in a dreamy way remembers that he is <i>chef de popote</i>.
+The stock of champagne is exhausted. Nearly every
+day, and sometimes twice a day for the past week, have
+not the radios, plucked out of the air by the commandant,
+plus the beauteous <i>communiqués</i>, necessitated the opening
+of bottles even unto the last?</p>
+
+<p>Sérin, as we drink, all of us paralyzed by the sudden
+cessation of the world-horror, tells how one of his
+gendarmes would keep referring to the armistice as “<i>la
+Mistie</i>,” in two words, and we drink to <i>la Mistie</i>. But
+in spite of the too, too simple joke, how still, yet stern
+was each one’s heart!</p>
+
+<p>About this time Toussaint seizes from the stove the
+marble “hunk” (it’s the only word for it), “<i>Amor
+condusse noi</i>,” and makes as if to throw it at the dead
+and gone Oberforster’s clock, stopped, as I said, some
+four years ago at 12.25.</p>
+
+<p>Sérin again, with his most childlike expression: “<i>La
+Paix a éclaté!</i> Peace has broken out, and I will break
+out worse than peace if I don’t do something!”</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, Masevaux at that hour—it had got
+to be eleven o’clock—was as lustrous as an ink-pot,
+and all being still the prey of a strange paralysis of
+feeling, nobody suggested anything.</p>
+
+<p>Peace, lovely, precious peace, dreamed of, desired
+through years of anguish, so <i>redly</i> bought in money of
+the heart’s blood, was ours! Those crowding hosts
+gone out into the “dateless night” seemed suddenly to
+return, the only moving things on a stunned earth. They
+had not renounced in vain the dear clothing of the flesh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span></p>
+
+<p>But how could we understand in one moment the
+immensity of what had happened? Never have I felt
+myself so small, so almost non-existent—an insect that
+had fortuitously <i>not</i> been crushed. But the soul’s great
+converging point <i>was</i> reached. The war was done and
+won. Men need no longer kill each other by the tens
+of thousands, nor need women by the millions, because
+of it, weep.</p>
+
+<p>We touched glasses again, but quietly, oh so quietly!</p>
+
+<p>Some one sighs and no one speaks. After a while
+Toussaint, standing by the stove, again fingers “<i>Amor noi
+condusse</i>,” but it is taken out of his hands by one of the
+officers. Then Sérin suggests waking up the curé,
+getting the keys of the church, and ringing the bells.
+Tirman, in authority in the absence of the commandant,
+still at St.-Amarin, is gripped by that conservatism
+known to each and every one in command at great moments,
+and becomes cautious, even suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Mais non, c’est peut-être tout de même une blague.
+Attendons jusqu’à demain.</i>” (He has quite recovered
+from his naughty word.)</p>
+
+<p>Some one insists, “But Headquarters wouldn’t joke
+about a thing like that.”</p>
+
+<p>Tirman, however, sits down at the piano, breaks out
+into the “Beautiful Blue Danube” and refuses to have
+the bells rung.</p>
+
+<p>Sérin: “But what can one do here at Masevaux,
+black as the ace of spades and everybody snoring! <i>A
+Paris, il y aurait moyen de fêter même si c’est une blague!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>I: “You are ready for anything.”</p>
+
+<p>He: “<i>Et comment!</i>” With a light in his straightforward
+<i>good</i> soldier’s eye, and somewhat as a child
+longing for the impossible, “Just think of them in
+Paris, the restaurants full, <i>et des femmes sentant bon</i>!”<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then four dazed officers accompanied by a dazed
+lady proceeded to awaken the postmaster from his
+slumbers. That heroic expression of rejoicing accomplished,
+we groped our way to the Place du Chapitre.
+In one of the <i>chanoinesse</i> houses Captain Bernard also
+dwells. Sometimes he has headaches on account of his
+wound, and to-night he had left us early to go home.
+On his not answering, some one hazarded the remark,
+“Perhaps he isn’t there” (Heaven knows there’s nowhere
+else to be but where one belongs, at Masevaux!), and it
+proved, indeed, to be pure defamation, for after a while
+he appeared at his window, or rather one heard him
+saying: “What’s the matter? I was sleeping the sleep
+of the just.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ça y est, l’armistice</i>,” some one cried out.</p>
+
+<p>Then that man, who had been through every campaign
+and would forever wear “Verdun” stamped on his brow,
+made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>And the night was dark, dark, the lovely moon too
+young to wait up, even for peace. We stumbled across
+the roughly paved square to my dwelling, and there we
+clasped hands with a strange, new clasp, and I, the
+woman and the American, wanted to say something,
+anything, but I had only begun, “<i>Mes chers amis</i>,” when
+I felt my voice break. I turned quickly and went in.
+What need to speak? Hearts lay open that night.</p>
+
+<p><i>2 A.M.</i>—Have been reading to quiet the heavily
+throbbing nerves. Picked out of the bookcase an hour
+ago <i>L’Histoire des Elèves de St.-Clément, Metz</i>, 1871.
+The names Gravelotte, St.-Privat, Malmaison, Sedan,
+confuse themselves in my mind with Ypres, Verdun,
+with Belleau Woods, with St.-Mihiel, Suippes, Eparges.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span>
+I remember being told that in a terraced cemetery at St.-Mihiel
+three thousand Germans sleep. Though friend
+or foe, this night I see them all arisen, standing each
+one by his grave, clad in horizon-blue, khaki—or field-gray,
+all those who at some word of command had
+left the “pleasant habit of living, the sweet fable of
+existence,” and I whispered in great need of consolation,
+“I know that my Redeemer liveth and at the last day
+we shall rise.”</p>
+
+<p><i>3 A.M.</i>—And how shall sleep come, lovely sleep,
+desired like the morning? I slept not that night of
+the 3d of August which held the whole war in its
+darkness, and now with the youth of the world lying in
+“the grave’s quiet consummation,” shall I sleep?</p>
+
+<p>Then slowly I became conscious of emanations from
+a giant, near people in defeat, not knowing what new
+thing to will, casting off the old fidelities, which once
+had given them the horn of human plenty. Thrones
+were shaking; “when <i>peoples</i> rage, <i>kings</i> must weep”;
+a world was to be remade out of empty places and
+blood.... I remembered how a poet<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> had cried out, as
+a prophet, after that other war:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ton peuple vivra,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mais ton empire penche, Allemagne!...</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And then I fell to thinking on love, I know not why,
+unless it was for the millions of lovers taken so suddenly
+from the world, or because of those yet left. How
+shall I say? But I knew that there were three things,
+not two—the lover, the beloved, and love. And of this
+last and separate thing one can have, in extremely
+sensitive states, impersonal cognizance, when for some
+reason (again what know I?) fancy has been set free,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>
+imagination stirred, and they go flinging themselves,
+not so much about the personal as about the common
+destiny. For a moment, so brief that it was gone
+even as it came, my soul caught the light that hangs
+over dear, persistent, far, illusory hills of fancy and
+inclination, and felt the mysterious break of feeling on
+the dim, shadowy lake of the heart. Vague, beaming
+forms passed along its shores, dissolving, lambent outlines,
+awakening desire for all the beauty of the wide
+earth, for things not in my personal destiny, and which,
+if they were to be, would be no better than that which is,
+not even so good. It was the greed of the human
+heart....</p>
+
+<p>And I cried out from my many-times-turned pillow,
+“O Life, O Love, O Death, O too, too fragile illusion
+of existence!”</p>
+
+<p><i>4 A.M.</i>—A soft, rich-toned bell is striking. A cold
+breath comes in at the window, a cock crows. There is
+the first sound of the click of sabots across the square;
+the Day of Peace is about to break over the world.
+But here in the bed of the young deserter from the
+German ranks, dead in Champagne, the war still has
+me in its arms and presses me close to its cold, oozing
+breast. The familiar odor of drying blood comes to me.
+Old groans strike on my ear. Those who, dying, are not
+dead crowd about me, and the “blue-black cloud”
+envelops me. I am weary unto dissolution. And
+Sleep, darling Sleep—not even a brush of your wings
+against me!</p>
+
+<p>In this early morning, in the “little hour before dawn,”
+the grief of the world sits tight about my heart—the icy
+hurt for things dead and gone, and the heaviness of
+those who awaken to a world empty of what was once
+the heart’s concern and desire.</p>
+
+<p>Old distastes, too, press on me, old distastes, I say,
+not hates. How hate any one like unto myself, hurrying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>
+along the night-path to the grave, mutual, frightened
+possessors of a shadowy, urgent immortality?</p>
+
+<p>For these last few years I have entered, as it were,
+into some knowledge of charity, not that I like everybody,
+but I have come to realize that the distaste is
+often in myself and not due to some fault or lesser
+excellence in others. Truly in this whole journey I
+have encountered but two whom in an idle, hazy way
+I did not like; one was of an amorphic species and the
+other had judgments too violent, and at the same time
+too conventional and platitudinous, to permit interest.
+But even of these I shall ultimately think with indulgence.</p>
+
+<p><i>5 A.M.</i>—Closed the book recording the deeds of
+those young, long, long fallen of St.-Clément’s school,
+and I pass to thinking how the word now on the lips
+of the world is freedom.</p>
+
+<p>But is not the deepest wish of the human heart for
+love which is never free, but always in bond to that
+which is its hope and its desire? And I cried out concerning
+freedom what once in the world’s greatest hour
+was cried out concerning truth, “What is it?” and
+begged that it might show its true form and aspect,
+above all to one who, invested with incredible power
+by a great people, would seem to hold even the lightnings
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>More sabots click across the square, and a pale light
+sifts in at the top of the curtains. It’s the eighth day
+of Creation. Innumerable men have stood (and so near
+me) their last night through in the trenches....</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday with its happenings seems a thousand
+years ago. I had motored with Laferrière to lunch at
+Dannemarie across a rich plain, through Morzwiller,
+where Alan Seeger spent a week with the Foreign Legion,
+and spun who knows which of his young and gorgeous
+fancies?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now, as then, the long street of Morzwiller was
+crowded with a highly colored, exotic regiment, and
+we were stopped a moment by a detachment passing.
+In front of the red-roofed, cream-colored inn, with its
+yellowing grapevine clinging close and flat, a young
+officer in the strong, mustard-tinted khaki and red
+<i>checchia</i> of the Moroccans was getting off his horse, a
+blooded, white, long-tailed beast of Araby; on his
+breast was a blaze of decorations and there was something
+implacable in his young glance as he looked about,
+and something very straight in his mien—a man who
+had been at his enemy’s very throat, or drawn the
+sucking bayonet out all red. Two or three men of his
+regiment, wearing also their crimson <i>checchias</i>, were
+sitting at a table drinking a light-yellow wine. A
+woman came out, emptied a pail, called to a cat. A
+very young girl behind her made a slight sign to one of
+the men sitting at the table. In another minute we
+had passed on.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere in the rich fields were great brown
+stretches of barbed-wire entanglements, repeating the
+rusty tones of the beech forests which fringe them. I
+asked Laferrière what would become of those thousands
+upon thousands of kilometers of barbed wire. He answered
+indifferently, as one does of things past, “Little
+by little the peasants will use the poles for their kitchen
+fires and the wire for their hedges.”</p>
+
+<p>And we continue through that flat yellow and green
+and brown world to Dannemarie, one of the “territories”
+of the reconquered triangle, drawing up before
+some sort of government building, known to German and
+to French administrators, in and out of which American
+soldiers are now passing. I ask one of them where
+their officers are quartered, thinking to pay my respects
+after lunch. There is a vagueness as he asks of a
+passing comrade, “Say, ’ain’t we got a major somewhere<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+here?” The flooding Americanism of my soul
+is for a moment stemmed; then we go over to the
+<i>popote</i>, where we are to lunch with Lieutenant Ditandy,
+in charge at Dannemarie. Laferrière, always ready to
+praise his comrades, tells me that he is possessed of much
+energy, good sense, and decision (rather in our American
+way, I found later) and the “territory” has flourished
+under him.</p>
+
+<p>Pleasant lunch, enlivened by some last German salvos,
+which shook the windows and caused the glasses on the
+table to ring. Much and easy conversation—as we
+ate the classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut, boiled potatoes,
+and pork, and the equally classic pancakes—mostly
+about the irrealizable and irreconcilable dreams of small
+and penniless nations, springing up like poor and unthrifty
+relations at the day of inheritance. And how
+amusing, even, the adjustments might become, once the
+blood-letting had ceased, though everybody felt more
+or less of a pricking in the thumbs at the thought of
+<i>l’après-guerre</i>. One could not then foresee that the
+movement of the Peace Conference would be about as
+rapid as that of the notoriously timeless glacier. Nor
+was it given to prophets to foretell the exceeding glitter
+of its generalities, nor how those same small nations,
+without a cent in their pockets, some even without
+pockets, like the Zulus and Hottentots, would multiply
+a hundredfold in its dewy shade. The metaphors are
+mixed, though not more so than the theme, and unfortunately
+it <i>won’t</i> “be all the same in a hundred years,”
+everything having been taken into account except the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch we start out in the motor driven by the
+swift yet careful chauffeur, accompanied by a doctor
+<i>à deux galons</i>, who speaks English very well, but
+doesn’t understand a word I say—and my English
+is generally intelligible, though perhaps one wouldn’t<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+know right away if I came from England or the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>We passed the high, broken, pink viaduct of the
+railway, looking, against the near Swiss hills, like a bit
+of aqueduct in the Roman Campagna, though without
+any beauty of light. It had been destroyed the first
+days of the war, rebuilt, again destroyed, and then
+abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>We were running straight toward the trenches,
+through that green and gold and brown autumn world,
+the road screened by wire netting interwoven with
+pine branches and broom, and there were kilometers of
+cloth screening, too, torn and flapping. The lines are
+but a few yards distant, and everywhere between us
+and them are the brown lakes of barbed wire.</p>
+
+<p>At St.-Léger an infantry band is playing the terrible,
+the gentle, the dolorous, the gorgeous, the human, the
+superhuman “<i>Sambre et Meuse</i>,” which will forever
+evoke those seventeen hundred thousand sons of France
+who to its beat marched to their death. We stop to
+listen. A veteran of 1870 (no village seems to be complete
+without one or more) comes out, his green-and-yellow
+ribbon in his rusty buttonhole, and gives Lieutenant
+Ditandy a toothless, palsied salute. Black-clad
+women are grouped about the blue-clad band, under
+a great yellow chestnut tree. The mustard-tinted
+khaki and red <i>checchias</i> of a passing Moroccan regiment
+give a last deep accent to the color of the scene. And
+for a long way our road runs like this:</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="plan2" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/plan2.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p>
+
+<p>We continue swiftly through villages shot to bits
+and deserted save for the troops, <i>Quatrième Zouaves
+mixtes</i>, they mostly are, quartered within their crumbling
+walls. There are tattered cloth screens for camouflage
+hung across the streets, as electioneering signs
+would be hung, or the banners of festivities and welcome.
+Open-mouthed, the soldiers see the auto pass where
+for two years no wheeled thing has rolled. If men went
+there they slipped silently behind the screens and under
+cover of night, with food and munitions or carrying
+wounded men.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I begin to feel like a cross between Joan
+of Arc and Madame Poincaré.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Ditandy points out “<i>le Bec de Canard</i>,”
+the duck’s bill, a long tongue of Swiss territory that
+juts in comfortingly between the French and German
+lines, and is greatly beloved by everybody.</p>
+
+<p>On the outskirts of the battered village of Seppois
+we pause; a few more turns of the wheel and we would
+be in full sight of the German lines. I make good my
+woman’s reputation for lack of sense of responsibility
+and beg to proceed. Lieutenant Ditandy, however,
+caps daring by a somewhat belated prudence (there is
+something bold and hard in his eye when it’s turned
+toward the enemy), saying:</p>
+
+<p>“We ought not to be here; as it is, our safe return
+depends on whether a German officer sees us and,
+seeing us, thinks he might as well turn the mitrailleuses
+on. The first man to be killed in the war was killed
+near here—it would be too stupid to be the last.”</p>
+
+<p>Laferrière: “Not to speak of the incident it would
+create, and if the colonel sees us—well, the prison at
+Seppois isn’t inviting.” So we turned toward the
+Swiss frontier instead, and I thought deeply, sweetly
+on her so dear, so near, as I looked toward these hills
+enfolding her, the best loved of my heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then we turned another way, passing again through
+Seppois. Arab troops are quartered there, and we were
+held up by the sentinel, who wanted to see our papers.
+He was dark of color, delicate of hand, straight of nose,
+and wore his military coat buttoned by one of its top
+buttons in such a way that it fell with an effect of
+burnous. He couldn’t read French characters, so he
+called to another thin, small-handed, straight, coffee-colored
+man, who might have been his twin, who couldn’t
+read them, either, and finally they both threw up their
+slender hands, resembling those of some antique bronze
+of an adolescent, after which we passed on. And I
+told Sérin’s story of the Arab guard who held him up
+one dark night, in the trenches, but generously gave him
+the countersign, saying to him, “<i>Si tu ne dis pas
+tire-lire, tu ne passes pas!</i>” (“You can’t pass unless
+you say tire-lire!”)</p>
+
+<p>They’re cold, these Arabs, they’re gray with cold, and
+they don’t know why they fight, nor whom, but they
+follow their officer to the death, and, if he falls, lose
+heart under these gray skies with which Allah seems
+only remotely connected.</p>
+
+<p>And then we turned back and went through young
+woods where countless thousands, no, millions of shells
+were piled on shelflike receptacles, as one would pile
+bottles of wine on cellar shelves. Everywhere were the
+words “<i>Route interdite</i>,” “<i>Défense de passer</i>,” and we
+passed, until we came to Faverois, with its old, old
+church on the top of a tiny hill, over which the town
+spilled. The broad, low steps of the church were made
+of ancient tomb slabs, and, stooping, I saw, on one of
+them, half obliterated, “<i>in pace</i>,” and “16—.”</p>
+
+<p>There was much that was unspoiled, or more likely
+forgotten, in the interior. A suave-expressioned St.-Sebastian,
+with dimpled limbs, so evidently unfit for
+the arrows that transfixed them, and something yearning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>
+and earthly about his eyes, was above the Louis XV
+altar; quite unmistakably he was of the gay century.
+In another niche was an unknown saint, dressed like a
+personage of opera; three plumes were on his head and
+he wore a golden shirt of mail and high, fringed boots.
+At the side-altars were charming, very pure models of
+angels, and bow-knots and shells (I mean, for once,
+<i>sea</i>-shells). As we came out we noticed that the roof
+of the church was painted a silver-white and that of
+the old house nearby, with the round tower, was
+painted the same way, and other houses, too, and
+when we asked why they told us it shone like crystal
+at night and was to warn airplanes of their nearness to
+the Swiss frontier.</p>
+
+<p>A blue group of <i>poilus</i> was standing on the crest of
+the street, looking at a newspaper. One cried out in a
+loud voice, “<i>Guillaume a ——</i>,” only one can’t write the
+word. And going up we saw the news of the Kaiser’s
+abdication in letters quite American in size.</p>
+
+<p>Then in a very understandable zeal that I should miss
+nothing, the doctor <i>à deux galons</i>, espying a khaki figure,
+said, “There comes an American,” and I saw approaching
+a blond, round-faced young man with spectacles.
+Something leaped within me as I turned to him. But
+he answered me in the stiffest German accent possible,
+“Ja, pig news”; and when I said, “Yes, we’ve won
+the war!” he answered, “Well, I do t’ink we god ’um
+shust now.” Unreasonably, the thing that had leaped
+within me lay down. I said, “Good-by.” He said, “So
+long.” And so much for American meeting American
+on the hill of the village of Faverois.</p>
+
+<p>Laferrière had marched all through this country,
+<i>sac-au-dos</i>, and in one place he buried a comrade, and
+in another he knew hunger and thirst, and in another
+he had watched the day break after a night battle.
+There is a history to Faverois, too, but I don’t know it,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>
+and it’s just as well, for I would be sure to tell it in this
+long vigil, and I <i>must</i> finish with the war.</p>
+
+<p>Back to Dannemarie, the chauffeur driving like the
+wind, and Lieutenant Ditandy finds out where the
+American officers have their headquarters. There is a
+battalion<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> attached to the Seventh French Army. I
+am conducted over a muddy street, past two classic
+dung-heaps, the kind so evidently handed down from
+father to son, and go up some dark backstairs, and there
+Colonel Wing and Major Griffiths are rung up by an
+orderly. I give my name, and they all know of me.
+In a moment appear, young and slim and untried and
+eager, the colonel and the major, glad to see an American
+woman in Dannemarie. And then they took me
+to their more than simple quarters out through another
+door and another court, where there was the usual mud,
+but only the scent of a vanished dung-heap. How many
+good American dollars they had “planked down” for
+this priceless compound I know not. After a while we
+walked back to the motor waiting in the square, and
+I presented them to the French officers. One of them
+said he had been at Plattsburg with my husband that
+first historic summer, and spoke of General Wood,
+whose aide he had then been, saying, with a flush, “He
+is the greatest man in the United States, as well as the
+greatest general,” and there in the square of Dannemarie
+I thought, “<i>Magna est veritas</i>,” and then, “Too late, too
+late.”</p>
+
+<p>On our way home, not far out of the town, we come
+across a group of Americans and French colonials standing
+by the road. Lying on the embankment was a young
+man with a fractured skull, his face deathly pale, except
+for the contusions, already swollen and blue. His hair
+was matted with blood and his red <i>checchia</i> lay in the
+ditch. The stern young officer of the many decorations<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+(there were three rows of them) that I had seen descending
+at the inn at Morzwiller, was there, on his beautiful
+mare, and he held the halter of another very good beast,
+the one that had just unhorsed his rider. We got out
+and the young man was placed carefully in our motor
+to be taken to the hospital at Dannemarie, after which
+we started to walk back to Masevaux—about thirty
+kilometers. In war-time you don’t wonder “can you
+do it,” you just start out; sometimes you get there alive,
+sometimes you don’t. This turned out all right, for
+shortly after our motor, which had met an ambulance,
+came back for us.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus10" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>AMERICA AND ALSACE</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>And then we found ourselves passing through a sunset-world,
+cut by a bar of level light, so strangely thick
+where it touched the golden earth that it was almost
+like a ledge or a wall over which we looked into wind-still,
+purple forests, and above us, like the tarnished
+gilt ceiling of a temple, was the pale, amber sky. We
+talked somewhat of hope, somewhat of life, from which
+the red thing had so suddenly gone, as they alone can
+talk who have laid their heads close against the cruel,
+beautiful, full breast of war.</p>
+
+<p>As we drove into the Place du Chapitre a delicate
+white moon, seen through the nearly bare lindens, was
+hanging in a deepening sky, close above the soft, dark
+roofs of the houses of the <i>chanoinesses</i>. There was no
+breath of wind. No cannon sounded. One’s heart, too,
+I found, was very still. Millions of men waited face
+to face in dark lines, and that same moon touched their
+bayonets, their helmets, and their drinking-cups. The
+sun had set upon the last day of the World War....</p>
+
+<p>The maid who brings my breakfast as I lie half dead,
+but not asleep, after the burning, consuming night,
+opens my blinds.</p>
+
+<p>French and American flags are flying from many windows.
+Something wets my eyes. Then—if in my flesh<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span>
+or out of it I know not—I see a strange brightness filling
+the Place du Chapitre, and a further glory bathes my
+being in such sweet and cooling waters that I again am
+strong to pass, with the Sons of Victory, into the New
+Day.</p>
+
+<p>In the old house are sounds of feet running to and fro.
+From our windows also blue and white and red flags
+are being hung. In the street are heard, “<i>Ça y est</i>,” and
+“<i>L’armistice est signé</i>.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">DIES GLORIÆ</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>O Eastern Star! Peace, peace!</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And I arose and went to the church where there was a
+great ceremony, for it was the feast of St.-Martin,
+patron of Masevaux, as well as the end of the war....</p>
+
+<p>Afterward I stood outside on the wide rose-gray
+steps, under a sky of matchless silver-blue, among
+groups of villagers, soldiers, and officers. A blue infantry
+band, grouped under that blue vault against
+the pink church, played the “Marseillaise” and “<i>Sambre
+et Meuse</i>,” with a great blare of trumpets, quickening
+the heart-beats, then “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and
+many eyes were wet with tears of hope and loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>Amid the throng I noticed some new silhouettes,
+always in groups. They were those of husky young men
+in civilian holiday garb; flat, black hats, short, black
+jackets coming only to the waist, long, tight, black
+trousers, pink vests, and high, white collars. These
+young men, who looked no one straight in the eye, were
+strange-souled ones who had burned with no fever of
+combat; the lamp of no cause had shone before their
+faces; they had known no country for whom ’twas sweet
+and fitting to die. Free not to serve in the French army,
+out of reach of the German authorities, they had passed
+from adolescence to manhood during the World War
+unsplashed by blood. And they will be a generation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span>
+apart. Even as they appeared on the day of victory
+in groups, apart. Later, in tribulation of maturity, in
+weakness of old age and fear of death, they may sigh
+that they were not among those who “dying are not
+dead,” and would exchange the worn drapery of their
+couches for the “blue-black cloud.” And those who
+have not known a hot youth will know a cold old age.</p>
+
+<p>A motor was standing under the lindens of the Place
+du Chapitre and by it a black-bearded, giant chauffeur
+who might have been among the hosts of Louis le
+Débonnaire on the Field of Lies. I got in with Laferrière
+and he took me up on a hillside, and from the height
+showed me a last time the kingdoms and principalities
+into which his race had come. The plain shone in a
+blue and exceeding beauty; we ourselves were caught
+in a glistening web of air shot with color by the low-arching
+November sun. Marking the course of the
+great river was a line of mist shimmering in the
+same warm-tinted sun of Indian summer. “<i>L’été de
+St.-Martin</i>” indeed. Here and there villages shone
+brighter than day, and the hills were deep-colored, yet
+soft and unsubstantial. Victory, like a shining, soft-rolled
+ball whose tangles were hidden, was in our hands—or
+like to a crystal sphere as yet undarkened by
+events.</p>
+
+<p>The grass of our hillside was dew-wet in the sun,
+white and frosty in the shade. Each fallen, rust-colored
+beech leaf, each scarlet cherry leaf, was set with something
+glittering. All, all was a-shine. Even the heart,
+too, after the dark years.</p>
+
+<p>I cried within myself, though I might have said it
+aloud, “O beauty of life, why art thou so often hidden?”
+And I had in mind the eternal years, though the newborn
+hour of victory was so passing sweet upon the
+hillside.</p>
+
+<p>And looking at the splendid river whose course was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span>
+marked by the shining band of mist, I thought how
+deep the Lorelei was hidden in its timeless waters,
+though ’tis said she betrays but once those listening to
+her song. And long since, for the noise of battle, the
+hypnotic chanting of the Rhine-maidens lulling their
+nation to dreams of boundless might had not been
+heard. I thought, too, how the blood of the world’s
+armies had put out the circle of fire about Brünnhilde,
+though whence it was first kindled it may be again
+rekindled; and for all our dead—and theirs—in the
+middle of Europe there are, I know not how many,
+tens of millions to whom the fire-music is their light and
+heat, the river the symbol of their strength; and what
+to do with it all? Walhalla has been destroyed in the
+greatest roar of sound mortal ears have ever heard,
+but that which wrought its pillars and its walls is still
+there, and in other wide-doored mansions Wotan’s
+warriors may drink again deep cups of hydromel.</p>
+
+<p>Siegfried lies dead upon his bier, but Brünnhilde’s
+candle throws a light upon his face, and though Loge
+seems no longer at his post, it is believed he waits somewhere
+unseen, protecting, as best he may, the Walkyries’
+unquiet sleep, until they wake and ride again, crying,
+“<i>Je ho, je te ho!</i>” inciting to battle and to sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>And as nations always have the governments their
+mystical qualities create, in spite of the great defeat
+in the West and the solvent forces in the East, I thought,
+“Is anything really changed in Germany of that which
+makes each nation like only unto itself?” Old things
+may take new names, but, the blood-madness past, they
+will walk again the banks of their great river—listen
+once again to the Rhine-maidens, and Lorelei, combing
+her hair, will sing once more for them, while the wonder-working
+music that has so scorched us will draw again
+its circle. And the German people may be more portentous
+in defeat than when their armies were spilling over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>
+Europe—only, one who says this too soon will be stoned
+and one who thinks it not at all be deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Then from some distant church tower softly sounded
+the first noontide of peace, and, turning, I left the Germanies
+to their predestined fate. “He beheld and
+melted the nations,” and truly of them may be said
+“<i>Glück und Unglück wird Gesang</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>For to each one his own, and the power of rhythmic
+sound over the world’s will can no more be separated
+from that nation’s destinies than can certain inborn
+qualities of the French be separated from theirs. That
+pervading sense of style, that illuminating, stimulating
+art, their conversation, that incomparable arrangement
+of words, their prose; or, in the mystical realm, that
+bright and singular thing they denominate “<i>la Gloire</i>,”
+which one of my countrywomen<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> has written of in
+golden words, and that other peculiar and essential
+translation into habit and custom of the word “<i>honneur</i>,”
+and many more deathless qualities that make France
+what she is and not something else....</p>
+
+<p>Then I found myself following Laferrière over another
+diamond-set path of rustling autumn leaves, and we
+got into the motor and went down the hill into the
+beflagged and crowded town, drawn so brightly, yet so
+transiently, out of its antique obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>At the <i>popote</i> many guests were assembled, among
+them three men of the Anglo-Saxon race, come to eat
+in Masevaux the first-fruits of victory, and later, not so
+very much later, perhaps that very night, they were
+to tell of it to the world, each seeming to have, as it
+were, the end of a telegraph wire cuddled in his pocket
+by his stylographic pen.</p>
+
+<p>Many, I knew not who they were, came in after lunch
+to salute the commandant, whose house and heart were
+wide open that day. Black-robed, tremulous women,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>
+youngish officers with very lined faces on which, over
+night-loss and night-grief, was written something at
+once soft and shining and eager; but, with all the
+coming and going, a strange new quiet pervaded
+everything. Noise had, for a time, gone from the
+border-world.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward we were taken up to see the room once
+lived in by Anna, the wife, or rather widow, of the
+Oberforster. In it was the most extraordinary piece of
+furniture, designed to occupy two sides of a corner,
+that I have ever seen. It was a divan, a narrow, hard
+divan, at right angles with itself and upholstered in
+mauve rep. Above the narrow seat and reaching nearly
+to the ceiling was a series of mirrors set in woodwork
+like many panes of glass, the mirror parts too high to
+see oneself in. On the floor near it was a hard, tasseled
+cushion of old-gold satin on which I am sure no foot
+had ever rested, for it seemed rather to belong to the
+dread family of bric-à-brac. On the divan was a small,
+woolen-lace cushion bearing the words “<i>nur ein Viertelstündchen</i>”
+in shaded silks.</p>
+
+<p>Voluptuous the divan was not, neither was it respectable,
+nor comfortable, nor practical, nor anything
+natural to a divan, but it doubtless represented some
+dim longing of the soul of her who bought and installed
+it, some formless inclination toward beauty,
+out of the daily round of the good housewife; perhaps
+even a “soul storm,” after the Ibsen manner,
+had so externalized itself. Who knows, or ever will
+know, or cares?</p>
+
+<p>The wide bed was of the newest and horridest of
+<i>art nouveau</i>, and over it was a spread of many pieces
+of coffee-colored machine-made lace put together with
+colored wools. There was a writing-table near the
+window at which you couldn’t write, for all the writing
+space was taken up with little drawers or tiny jutting-out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span>
+shelves, and an imitation bronze vase, holding some
+faded artificial roses, was built into it, where the hand
+would naturally slip along when writing. Over it, between
+the windows, hung an illuminated verse, “<i>Allein
+soll ich denn reisen? die Heimat ist so schön.</i>” From the
+Oberforster’s album some one took and presented to
+me a photograph of Anna, which I couldn’t connect
+with that room, a rather sharp-nosed, mild-eyed woman
+whose head was leaning against her husband’s head.
+And the husband is one among millions of husbands
+who lie in their graves, for whom the pleasant habit
+of existence is no more.</p>
+
+<p>Downstairs on their upright piano, in the corner of
+the dining-room, are those high piles of music of the
+masters, and much of it is arranged for four hands.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon a great weariness came upon me,
+and the light of victory seemed to pale, but I knew that
+it was only within myself, because of the long vigil in
+which I had burned both oil and wick. I stood listening
+for a while to the military bands in the Halle aux Blés
+and the Place du Marché, but the gorgeous fanfare of
+the trumpets reached me only dully, as from a great
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>Then many little boys, after the eternal manner of
+little boys, began to set off firecrackers, and the sudden
+noises hurt my ears.</p>
+
+<p>I went to my room, but was too wearied to compose
+myself to rest, and soon came out, chilly and wandering.
+The sun had set upon the square and something cold
+had began to come up from the earth; I seemed to have
+finished both joy and mourning. I thought that perhaps
+forever I would be alone, unable to partake of
+the world’s gladness.</p>
+
+<p>I could not remember, in that afternoon ebb of vitality,
+that with the evening hours would come rushing in
+the tide of nervous strength, bringing again warmth to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>
+my heart, light to my spirit, and that buoyantly I
+would be treading the <i>Via Triumphalis</i> of this borderland.</p>
+
+<p>A little later in a blue twilight, bluer close to the earth
+where those many Sons of Victory pressed, I walked
+out with Laferrière past the ancient, evocative Ringelstein,
+along the Doller, and we called on a very charming
+woman who had also seen the war of 1870—Madame
+Caillaux. She gave us a perfect cup of tea and was
+flanked by no veteran, and she, the portion of whose
+youth and age had been war, was calm with the pleasant
+calm of those who harmoniously have sewed together
+the ends of life.</p>
+
+<p>When we came out a pale white moon had arisen
+over some black cedars planted near the door, and as
+we walked slowly back, saluted by blue-clad men, or
+standing aside to let munition-wagons rattle by, Laferrière
+told me of some of the glorious deeds of his comrades
+of the <i>popote</i>, though no word of himself.</p>
+
+<p>In the Place du Chapitre the populace was already
+gathered about the fountain of the stone flame. It was
+like looking at an old print, recording old victories and
+old rejoicings, together with the eternal hope of the
+people that new victories, unlike the old, may mean
+new things for them.</p>
+
+<p>I felt through my single being the surge of the generations,
+and against my hand the beat of the changeless
+human heart, forever quickened or retarded by the same
+things. Loving, hating, desiring, forgetting, and finally
+relinquishing its beat, because it must. Though I
+remembered that in all times there are men who prefer
+something else to life....</p>
+
+<p>In the evening Madame Mény gave a great dinner for
+the officers of the Mission, to which I was also bidden.
+Madame Mény is the daughter of Madame Chagué and
+lives next door to her mother in an ancestral home with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>
+high, sloping roof and deep windows, giving on the Place
+du Marché, overlooking the fountain, which I can’t see
+from my window. The officers wore all their decorations
+and even gloves, and I felt as a wren might feel
+among the birds of paradise, and I wished again that
+I had brought a good dress and something sparkling
+for my breast. When dinner was half through came
+Captain Bacquart from Paris, belated on that Belfort
+train, still at its old tricks. He was slightly condescending,
+as one might be coming from the City of Light to
+the dusky provinces, but everything he had to tell,
+even the things he had heard in the greatest solemnity
+from Ministers of State, had been grabbed by the Mission
+out of the air before he left Paris, and in addition
+everybody knew a lot of things he didn’t know, that had
+happened while he was on the way. But we did smile
+at the story of the routing out of a station-master, whose
+trust was train-schedules and lost articles rather than
+events, to be asked whether he knew if the armistice
+had been signed, by the species every station-master
+hates even in peace-times—that is to say, travelers—and
+“<i>Saperlotte!</i>” and “<i>Nom de Dieu!</i>” rose to the station
+vault when he found that <i>that</i> was what they wanted
+him for!</p>
+
+<p>After dinner there was music and for a last time I
+heard Lavallée sing of “<i>la douce Annette</i>.” Then another
+officer whom I had not seen before, Lieutenant Ruchez,
+sang in a veiled but flooding voice many of Schumann’s
+songs. It began by the commandant asking for the
+“Two Grenadiers,” and for a time the old wounds
+ceased to burn, even though we thought of those many
+whose prayer had been “Bury me in the earth of
+France.” On that night of victory he sang, too, in his
+musician’s voice, “<i>Du meine Seele, du mein Herz</i>,” and
+“<i>Ich grölle nicht wenn auch das Herz mir bricht</i>,” and
+nobody found it strange. They knew how for all time<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>
+lovers will tremble at the words, “<i>Ewig verlor’ nes Lieb</i>,”
+or in ecstasy cry out, “<i>Du meine Seele, du mein Herz</i>,”
+to the impulse of the immortal music.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward we sang the “Marseillaise” with further
+and deeper thought of those hosts who to its sound
+had gone up to a death of glory.</p>
+
+<p>Then M. Mény opened more champagne and each one
+drained a last time the red-gold hanap of victory.</p>
+
+<p>And many, many shades haunt these borderlands,
+the clash of spear on armor mingling with the roar of
+75’s and 420’s.</p>
+
+<p>When we came out midnight was striking. The
+ancient square was dark and still where all the evening
+distorted forms had gesticulated in the flare of torches,
+crying of victory and, too, of freedom, the word I scarcely
+dare breathe, so strange and terrible may be its meaning....
+Though what shall more deeply move us than the
+hope that the unborn inclination of our soul toward
+love in freedom shall find its being and its breath?...</p>
+
+<p>The commandant and his staff accompanied me a
+last time across the starless, moonless square to my
+dwelling, where there was a close handclasping of friends
+in victory, for had I not been caught up in the apotheosis
+of the Mission? I felt for a moment, as I stood on the
+broad steps, like a figure in the background of some
+great allegorical painting.</p>
+
+<p>For these men, as for me, the “moving finger having
+writ, was moving on.” Soon they would go from the
+hillside to the plain they had so long looked down upon.
+And the scroll of their history there is tightly rolled,
+nor can any man say what is written on it.</p>
+
+<p>But this they knew, and with a point of sadness,
+that their work of intimate companionship, of trust, of
+hope and dolor shared in the valleys of St.-Amarin,
+Masevaux, and Dannemarie was already in the past.
+And all endings are sad, even those of victory.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next morning, in a pale, chill, shifting fog, through
+which I had glimpses of <i>camions</i> full of shivering, velvet-bodiced,
+black-bowed children <i>en route</i> for the Belfort
+train to Paris, and huddled veterans bound the same
+way, I passed forever from Masevaux, as a wind that
+goeth and returneth not.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">THE END</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Permission.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> “We’ll get them,” and “we’ve got them.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> <i>Prisonnier de Guerre</i> (Prisoner of War).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <span class="smcap">Note.</span>—As far back as the end of the sixteenth century, there is, in
+the annals of Masevaux, mention of the tanneries of the Braun family.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Officers’ mess.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">And the forgetful trooper</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Who lets the hour pass</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And dallies too long, alas!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Will be punished by his under-officer.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> The word “ballon” comes from the patois, <i>bolong</i>, <i>bois long</i>, which
+took its name from the great forest, “La Selva Vosagus,” once covering
+the Alsatian plain and its mountains.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Like to the hawk</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">That on auroral clouds</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Doth rest his velvet wings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Looking for prey,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">So hovers my song.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> Hilaire Belloc, <i>The Road to Rome</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> A letter from Laferrière of November 20th, recounting national events,
+and the breaking up of the little group, says also: “<i>La cafetière, la fameuse
+cafetière a une large felure qui fait craindre sa fin prochaine. Ce serait un
+symbole?</i>”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> In spite of the Tower (Turenne was a La Tour d’Auvergne) the Roses
+will bloom.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> After the signing of the armistice and the French occupation of the
+two provinces in their entirety, another reorganization became necessary.
+To each of the three divisions of Alsace-Lorraine was sent a <i>Commissaire
+de la République</i>—the Commandant (I had almost said my Commandant)
+Poulet was given charge of Upper Alsace with residence in the ancient
+and comely town of Colmar. To Lower Alsace with residence at Strasbourg
+was appointed M. le Conseiller d’Etat Maringer with the title of
+High Commissioner, and to M. Mirman, the celebrated Mayor of Nancy,
+was given Lorraine with residence at Metz.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> Edouard Schuré, <i>L’Alsace Française, Rêves et Combats</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p class="center">AMERICAN COMMUNIQUÉS</p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tuesday morning.</i></p>
+
+<p>This morning the First Army resumed the attack. In spite of desperate
+opposition our troops have forced a crossing of the Meuse at Brieulles
+and at Cléry-le-Petit. They are now developing a new line in the
+heavily wooded and very difficult terrain on the heights east of the river
+between these two points.</p>
+
+<p>On the entire front the enemy is opposing our advance with heavy
+artillery and machine-gun fire, notwithstanding which we are making
+excellent progress. The west bank of the Meuse, as far north as opposite
+Pouilly, lies in our hands.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of several successful raids in the Voivre, detachments of
+the Second Army have penetrated the enemy’s trenches, destroying
+material, dugouts, and emplacements, and capturing prisoners.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Tuesday evening.</i></p>
+
+<p>The First Army under Lieut.-Gen. Liggett has continued its success.
+Crossing the river south of Dun-sur-Meuse under a heavy artillery fire
+which frequently wrecked the new constructed bridges, the troops of
+Maj.-Gen. Hines’s Corps fought their way up the slopes of the east bank.</p>
+
+<p>Breaking the enemy’s strong resistance, they captured Hills 292, 260,
+Liny-devant-Dun, and drove him from the Bois de Châtillon.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon our gains in this sector were extended northward;
+Dun-sur-Meuse was captured and our line pushed forward a
+mile beyond that town, as far as the village of Nièlly. The troops of
+Maj.-Gen. Sunmerall’s Corps reached the river at Cesse and Luzy and
+mopped up the forest of Jaulnay.</p>
+
+<p>The important road center of Beaumont fell before our victorious
+forces, who pushed on to the Bois de l’Hospice, two miles north of that
+town, capturing in their advance the village of Létanne.</p>
+
+<p>At Beaumont we liberated five hundred French citizens, who welcomed
+our soldiers as deliverers.</p>
+
+<p>The advance of the past two days has carried our line to points within
+five miles of the Sedan-Metz railroad, the main line of communications
+of the German armies. Between Beaumont and Bar Maj.-Gen.
+Dickman’s Corps, in close liaison with the French Fourth Army on its
+left, pushed forward under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire through
+the rugged forest areas beyond Stonne.</p>
+
+<p>The villages of Yoncq, La Basace, and Stonne were taken.</p>
+
+<p>We have taken to-day west of the Meuse 51 additional guns, making
+a total of more than 150 since November 1st.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty of our bombing planes executed a successful raid on Mouzon
+and Raucourt this morning, dropping over two tons of bombs with good
+effect. Reconnaissance and pursuit squadrons carried out many successful
+missions, machine-gunning enemy troops and greatly assisting the
+advance of our troops.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen enemy planes were shot down and two enemy balloons
+burned. Seven of our planes are missing.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, the
+place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian
+may be feared no more.—<span class="smcap">St. Augustine</span>, <i>Upon the Barbarian
+Persecution</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> “S’Strassburger Münster isch s’höschet, s’Friburgers’ dickscht,
+aver S’Thanner s’fienecht.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> Some of the jokes that were Hansi’s undoing were exceedingly harmless,
+as, for instance, the domestic revelations of Frau Professor Kugelberg,
+who answers to the correspondence column the following: “No, I
+never throw away the old trousers of my husband. I have had great
+success with cutting them skilfully and employing the least worn parts,
+in constructing for my young daughters charming and dainty corset-covers,
+which have the merit also of being very inexpensive. Trimmed
+with white ribbons, these corset-covers have quite a virginal air, but also
+with apple-green and cherry-red bows they can be made most attractive.”
+As for “Professor Knatschke” he is now a classic. The Alsatians have, in
+a very marked degree, what one might call the wit of border peoples,
+the tongue often being the only weapon left them.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Gilles Sifferlen, <i>La Vallée de St.-Amarin</i>, 1908.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> Fairies: kindred to the “green people” of Ireland.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> “I will have thee, I will have thee, I will have thee.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> “To play bridge at Limoges” means that an officer is temporarily—or
+permanently—retired before the age limit. “<i>Être limogé</i>,” to be
+limoged, is another familiar form.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> The next morning I learned that Sérin, who had been “ready for anything,
+<i>et comment</i>,” had gathered together, being chief of the Gendarme
+Service, those of his men who were watching over the slumbers of Masevaux
+and quite simply “opened wine” for them, drinking solemnly
+again to “<i>la Mistie</i>,” while they as solemnly drank to the health of their
+respected chief. So do great hours fulfil themselves in little ways.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> Victor Hugo, <i>Alsace et Lorraine</i>, 1872.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Thy people will live,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But thine empire topples, Germany!...</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> Battery B, 42d Artillery C.A.C.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> Edith Wharton.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #75745 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75745)