We went first to Gewenheim, a somewhat war-battered village and, as we entered it, Lavallée pointed out the iron plate on the sign-post, indicating the name of the village and the department. Like many others of the Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine), after 1870 it had been quite simply turned and marked in German. This proved most convenient and economical, for all the French Military Mission had to do when they came to Alsace in 1914 was to turn them back as they had been before 1870! The mayor’s house, one of the usual dwellings with a small door for humans and a big door for harvests, had been much damaged. Passing in through a sagging entrance, we found the mayor, the classic, horny-fisted, wrinkle-faced mayor of a village, with cobwebs and straw and other substances adhering to his coat, but possessed of a certain air of dignity and authority notwithstanding. There was a moment’s silence after the lieutenant gave him the invitation, pride visibly wrestling with parsimony, accompanied by the working up and down of a very prominent Adam’s apple. He accepted finally with a sort of “I am a man” expression, but there was a quite apparent melting of his being when he found that it was the State that would defray expenses. Then the wife of his bosom, who had helped him make and save his money, came in and showed us some of their “best” shell-holes, and a statue of the Virgin of Lourdes under a large glass bell which had not a scratch, even, though everything around had been shattered. There was also a lithograph of Henner’s red-headed “Alsatian Girl,” who hangs in every home and every railway station, and is used for loans and appeals and calendars and advertisements of complexion washes and hair-dyes; and she was once a charming creature, before familiarity bred contempt. The worthy couple then fell to a discussion in Alsatian German as to which of the veterans would be possible candidates for the trip to Paris. There seemed to be something the matter with every one mentioned. Rudler, Franzi, was nice and it was a pity that his rheumatism prevented his getting about, as he had lost his dung-heap, though not his house, in a recent bombardment and needed distraction. It wasn’t quite clear to me _how_ you _could_ lose a possession of that kind, but I wasn’t at the front to ask questions, so I let it pass. Handrupp, Hansi’s, eyes were giving him trouble. If he went, a boy would have to go to lead him about, and, even so, would he be welcome in Paris if it were known that his daughter, old enough to know better, had run away with a German?