In the little preface I found that the poet, in his old age, was wont to say of _Hermann und Dorothea_ that of his long poems it was almost the only one that gave him pleasure. I seemed to understand what he meant. By reason of its complete objectivity, he could have had no consciousness of that inadequacy familiar to mortals contemplating anything formed from themselves. No suffering had attended its birth; rather it would seem to have formed itself spontaneously on the heights out of some plastic stuff, light and bright as summer air, imperishable as granite. It did not recall to Goethe (nor does it to one who reads) that night of personal anguish, that day of emptiness, that hour of longing, nor even some glimpsing, vistaed moment wherein personal fulfilment held out its shining, shadowy hand. In spite of the sound of cannon and the smarting of my eyes from the strain of the tiny Gothic print, for a moment within myself an almost equal feeling of harmony arose, taking a form of Peace, like an antique statue, free yet restrained, noble yet persuasive; bearing no one’s mark, nor any signs of workmanship, except that stamped by its own beauty. Then it vanished, leaving the little book to throb between my hands to the beat of my own times. Though generations had passed on and other wars were being fought, and the word “freedom” was again on every lip, as always, the women, the children, the old, were paying the heaviest tithes of invasion. Had I not seen like streams of fugitive populations flooding into Paris that hideous spring of 1918, heard the cries of anguish from those fleeing before an enemy army? Then also death and birth waited not on circumstance, and love and hate, fear and hope, hurry and exhaustion, were at work in strange commingling. I had seen deeds of succor, too, like unto those of the lovers, proffered in boundless devotion, by nameless, uncounted men and women, coming from the world’s ends to minister to its woe. A vision of _toux ceux qui ont bu à la coupe amère de cette époque_ passed before me. Deeply sighing, I at last put out my light, thinking “war is war,” needing no adjectives, and of the changelessness of the human heart, however the formulas may be multiplied and renewed; and forever _Væ victis_! VII THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES THE COMMANDANT TRACES THE RECONQUERED TRIANGLE ON MY MAP. THE MILITARY MISSION