I listened to Madame Chagué telling of the glad reception of those who entered Masevaux on that 7th of August, houses and hearts flung wide open, how everywhere the upper windows were crowded with women and children leaning out to see them come over the dark mountains and along the bright roads. Many left that same night, as they did from Thann and Bitschwiller and Moosch and all the towns about, marching on to Mulhouse, which they took only to be driven out, and since then many red-trousered ghosts walk the otherwise unmystical, industrial streets of Mulhouse. Three weeks later Mulhouse was again entered, and again, with many losses, other red pantaloons were driven out, since which the chimneys of Mulhouse have smoked a German smoke to a German heaven. Madame Chagué is very Catholic, too, and bristles at the bare idea of any government, even the “Tiger’s,” taking liberties with the ancient faith. They want a bishop of their own, an Alsatian shepherd—“_faut pas nous bousculer dans nos petites habitudes_”—she kept repeating. I wondered what the Tiger and all the imitation tigers would say when they come to learn just how they feel here. There’s the most Gordian of knots awaiting them, for it appears that the Germans gave three thousand marks a year to each curé, and the French government, less enamoured of the ministers of God, doesn’t give any. However, that is only one of a series of knots on a very long string, and patient and very deft fingers will be needed for the untying. In each of these comfortable houses authentic ancestors look from the walls, ancestors who knew the Thirty Years’ War, or the Napoleonic campaigns, or 1870, or ancestors-to-be who have seen the World War. And all the dwellers of these large-roomed, high-roofed, deep-windowed houses, having been delivered, in turn deliver themselves of their sensations, thoughts, emotions, acts, on being delivered. One might, I dimly foresaw, do to one’s breast what the wedding guest did to his when he heard the loud bassoon. That I may not seem unkind, I want to say another last word about the veterans, the so often toothless, bent, sightless, forgetful veterans. They would be all right in themselves, if they weren’t so horribly illustrative. They seem to be saying all the time, “If Mortality doesn’t get you one way, it does another,” till you think that short agony on the battlefield, and long glory, are greatly preferable to decay and no glory. And no veteran will keep this my little book on the table by his bed. He would know, too well, that I am right.