Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk, dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic, remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter of 1915. Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling forms. Later the cheerful _popote_. And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13] At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley, Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the Merovingian kings. He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither pagan divinities nor the one God. He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter, according to the custom of the time. Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him: “Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me a son and heir.” At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in spite of Atalric’s impatience. When at last the holy man arose, he said: “No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end the dove will vanquish the lion.” Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged, but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the accompaniment of his choicest maledictions. When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded. The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor, and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own hands make away with it.