The post-office of modern Teutonic origin still wears, high up and indifferently, the Double Eagle, though the more accessible _Kaiserliches Post-Amt_ has been removed. A little farther down the street is the old inn of the “Golden Eagle” whose historic sign dates from Napoleonic days, and which, as was pointed out to me, turns its golden back disdainfully to the black, double face of the once proud eagle of the post-office. And this inn of the “Golden Eagle” hangs its charming sign out on a corner of the square called “La Halle aux Blés” (the Grain Market), surrounded by sloping-roofed, roomy houses. In the center is a rose-colored fountain, with three diminishing rose-shaped basins around a carved central column. And the cobblestoned square with its good fountain and its comfortable houses—there’s even a stable and a garage on one side—has something cozy about it, its atmosphere that of a place long used by human beings for the homelike customs of “the simple life,” which last bears no resemblance to that occasionally practised at great expense and inconvenience by those who “need a change” and can afford one. American troops passed through the Halle aux Blés on the 30th of May of this year, again on the 4th of July, and on the 14th, too, always drawing themselves up at last in the Place du Marché, one end of which is my Place du Chapitre. There, under the lindens, General Hahn and General Boissoudy watched them deploy, while gaily attired Alsatian girls grouped about the fountain acclaimed them, and from every window hung the Stars and Stripes. Then I found myself wandering out on the road to Belfort, past the high, grassy eminence known as the “Ringelstein,” once crowned by the proud castle of Duke Mason, founder of Masevaux. Traces of ancient walls embowered in ivy are still to be seen, and at its base are many old outbuildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, once dependencies of the Abbey and the Chapter, and when you are not expecting it you find old inscriptions and bits of carving plastered into them. On one high-roofed outhouse was a large crown and three fleurs-de-lis. Blasted through one end of the great rock of the Ringelstein rims the railway. And there is a near view of the red and green and yellow roofs of the houses of the _chanoinesses_ confounding themselves with the autumn foliage of the trees which embower them. I begin to know a little of the early history of Masevaux, enveloped in legends and many contrary tales—Masevaux, ruled now by abbots, now by feudal lords, belonging sometimes to the House of Austria, sometimes to the House of France. And the first legend is that of its foundation. How the lord of the country, by name Mason, a nephew of Saint-Odile, was feasting in his castle of this same Ringelstein, and the wines of Burgundy and Alsace and of the Rhine were flowing, and a troubadour was reciting a tale of war and love, when suddenly Duke Mason cries out: