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