The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the old Château de Marsilly, beautifully situated in the cleft of its own hill and restored not too cruelly. Close above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose castle was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war in the valley. Part of it lies like a great ring, and is called the “Eye of the Witch.” To our right as we mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides, on which lie in lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of _l’heureuse Alsace féconde en vignobles_. A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable by twenty years, dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose manners could not have been surpassed for ease by any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for the thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual life gives. I have seen in peasant cottages the rooms wherein they were born, these women of restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in conversation, of finished courtesy, and realize again that something invisible, imponderable, yet all-powerful, shapes the coarse block, polishes the rough surface, till there is no resemblance to that out of which it was hewn. As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking again through the V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue plain held by the enemy. “How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a silence, “it has seemed to me like the Promised Land, and how often during these four interminable years have I longed to look at these hills _from_ the plain.” “Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered. The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was fixed on the wide horizon. Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant place, as cemeteries go, with many trees, and fallen, rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming flowers. Many sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”; others had been but lately laid away. The two officers stood for a moment with uncovered heads by the graves of four comrades of the Mission, killed by a bomb in front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch. Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never as in this war has “death been made so proud with pure and princely beauty.” How can we so soon be engaged in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of these dead? Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly loved by those who dwell therein, inclosed by purple and dark-amber hills, but inclosed easily, widely, leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight.