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?