_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.