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.