At eleven I start out with the commandant, Captain Sérin, and Lieutenant Laferrière to motor to Thann through a world of rust and green and gold-colored hills, under the whitest of heavens. So soft and shining is the beauty of the lovely earth, and so soon to pass into the winter, that I say to the commandant how like the transient beauty of a woman of forty-five are these delicate, hazy hills with their cashmere shawls still twisted about their shoulders, drawn up over their heads, dropping down to their green-valleyed feet. I mean the woman of forty-five who is still loved. Again we stopped on the crest between the valleys of Masevaux and of Thann, and again we stopped and peered through the wire-and-pine screen, out toward Mulhouse and the Rhine and the Black Forest. The valley was blue and shining. Even the windows of the great, white building of the _Idioten-Anstalt_, where the Germans are bivouacked, were visible. Beyond were the high towers of their potassium-works. As those three men stood looking out over the rich plain I thought, “Always will I remember the officers of the Mission like that, standing on the heights, shading their eyes with their hands as they looked down into the land of Egypt, wherein the Lord was to lead them....” New shell-holes were all about us, and there was a sharp, continual reverberation of cannon among the cashmere-shawled hills. At Thann we stopped for a moment by the fountain near the church (in peace-times, the old statue of St.-Théobald that I saw at Sewen surmounts the charming column), the commandant having been saluted by a young American officer, leading by the hand a little girl of seven or eight, in Alsatian costume—huge black bow, black velvet bodice, full white skirts. He was quite simply a young man whose parents had gone to America, he himself had fought on the Mexican border, got his commission, and was proudly—oh, so proudly and so smilingly—walking his native streets of Thann with his little niece. We are _en route_ to lunch with M. and Madame Galland, at Bitschwiller, who receive us as agreeable people of the world receive their guests in all quarters of the globe. They were of those who could have gone, yet remained, during the many bombardments of the town—_noblesse oblige_, and have been a blessing to the valley. [Illustration: THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL]