He came back with the young man and we had a most enjoyable repast. The chaplain knew all the things about Nancy that we didn’t. He was a huge, bearded man, who might have been with the hosts of Charlemagne, and was a native of Commercy, where Stanislas used to go with his court. The two Bretons were very Catholic and very royalist; when I remarked upon it, they said, simply, “Oh, we are all that way, _par là_,” and they spoke names of great men born in Brittany, and the _aumônier_ told tales of near yesterdays surpassing those of the heroic age. The gayest of the Bretons, he who had not just left his young wife and his child unborn, began to sing, “_Voici un sône tout nouveau_,” and suddenly it was a quarter before nine and we had time only for a dash to the station _d’une bonne allure militaire_, which left me breathless. The nine-o’clock train didn’t, however, leave till ten, as it was waiting for the Paris train, which didn’t arrive at all. Finally, in a strange heat, vagaries of lightning without thunder or rain—the thunder we _did_ hear wasn’t the old-time, pleasant, celestial sort, but something with an easily traceable, regular, decisive sound—we pulled out of the station, I not knowing where I was going—no address in the town of Lunéville. A thick, heavy, soft, enveloping night was about us. Groups of soldiers were lying, sitting, standing in the little stations. We stopped every few minutes, and I could distinguish them by the light of cigarette or lantern on their guns and equipment, waiting for motors to take them to the trenches. At one place I had to descend to show my _sauf-conduit_; it was inspected and stamped by the flickering light of a blue-veiled lantern, and I climbed in again. I was beginning to feel a bit tired, and the end was _not_ in sight. We descended at Lunéville in complete darkness, a motley crowd of military and civilians. My companions were due at different points at dawn—Baccarat and the Forest of Parroy. As I write, they are in the trenches. They put me into the hands of a _commissaire_ who said he lived opposite E. M.’s. I waited, standing by the door, while he locked up the station, looking out on the silhouette of a gutted, roofless house, showing dimly against the soft night sky. At last there was a sound of rattling of keys and the _commissaire_ picked me and my luggage up. We started forth, the only human beings visible, in what seemed a deserted town—no lights in streets or houses. As we passed a wide open space the scent of flowering lindens enveloped me, and with me walked the ghosts of lovely and too-amiable ladies, of witty rulers loving the arts as well as women—Duke Léopold and Madame de Craon, King Stanislas and Madame de Boufflers, and Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet.