At dessert I asked Commandant Poulet to drink to Sedan, the _new_ Sedan. I thought within myself, “Is it not even now as a temple being cleansed and glorified in the chalice of the blood of _my_ people, the blood of the khaki-clad youths from over the seas, whom Fate, since all time, had decreed to unseal it?” Tears came to my eyes, there was a deep beat in my breast. And it had been forty-eight years and two months and seven days since it was torn from a vanquished France. I scarcely remember what was said of the day’s events; feeling, rather than thought, was flooding about the table, and it was in gratitude, in wonderment, and rather silently, for a group of Frenchmen, that the luncheon proceeded. Each was thinking perhaps of his part of loss and grief making up the victory. Names of Americans who had visited Thann were spoken: Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, long the friend of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the god of the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John Weare; and others whom I don’t recall. There had been, too, a fair and fleeting vision of Mrs. Bliss one snowy winter day. Many beautiful words were said of my country, and in that hour I think it was, to them of the reconquered triangle, “_dulce et decora_” to have even the least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their board, that hers should have been among the feet bringing “the glad tidings of good things.” When coffee and _quetsch_ and cigarettes were passed around, the schoolmasters made ready to pour some of the heady white liqueur into the glasses of even the smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said, “No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I would put my hand in the fire (knowing I could draw it out unsinged) that it was not the first time they had puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When he had finished he was stood on a chair, from which he recited “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_,” the lines concerning the now extremely well-demonstrated “_La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure_,” being given almost at a breath, one word tightly tied to another in quite an ingenious way.