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).