Afterward, dinner at M. Guérin’s. General and Mme. de Buyer, General ——, M. Guérin’s two sons, one a mitrailleuse officer for the moment near by at Blainville la Grande, the other the student and lover of the arts of whom I spoke, and whose every instinct is remote from killing. I sometimes wonder at the stillness of men like that—except that there is nothing to be done about it. General de Buyer told us of _lances-flamme_, of _flamme-snappes_, of the _obus asphyxiants_, which burst without odor or smoke, but are deadly, all the same. Then the conversation turned on _le conflit historique entre la race germanique et la nation gauloise_ which had begun before the Roman conquest. M. Guérin told us of places where still may be seen colossal walls and thick, crumbling towers, mysterious witness of those legendary conflicts, just as the Place des Carmes, or Place Brûlée, is witness of those of 1917. The younger Guérin son was preparing to go into diplomacy when the war broke out. I said, “Perhaps we will sometime be _en poste_ together,” and a strange look that the pleasant dinner scene did not allow me to interpret immediately came over his face. “_Peut-être_,” he answered, slowly. I knew a moment afterward that that young man who loves his life was thinking, “if I am alive.” He has seen so many fall. And suddenly came into my mind the lines of his poet brother, born and dead between two invasions: _Nous sommes, ô mon Dieu, plusieurs dans la cité,_ _A porter haut le lys de la mysticité, ..._ And for an infinitesimal moment, in spite of the pleasant evening meal, my thoughts, too, turned to invisibilities—his and my last end, and our veiled destinies. CHAPTER VII ACROSS LORRAINE LUNÉVILLE, _Tuesday, October 16th_. One last look at the church, whose warm and lovely towers with their _motifs_ of urn and scroll and angel were shining pinkly in the morning light. Then through the door of the Hôtel de Ville, built on the site of the ancient abbey of St.-Rémy, founded in the last years of the tenth century by Folmar de Lunéville for the repose of his soul and of his wife’s, and completely done over in the eighteenth century. As I turned in at the passageway leading through to the other street, old houses on one side, and on the other plantings of holly against the church walls, I thought of the saying of the Middle Ages, “_Il fait bon vivre sous la crosse_” (“It is good to live under the bishops”), and how the peasants would come in from their hamlets, through the fields and forests, with their tithes. The monks generally springing from the people showed themselves more understanding of their wants and their miseries, and were less apt to overtax them, having fewer needs, than the lords with their wars, their ambitions, and their grandeurs.