A heavenly evening. We walked in the dim old garden smelling of linden. No lights anywhere, of course, and, though the stars were beautiful, they didn’t seem to light up anything terrestrial; the only things blacker than the night were the giant cedars. At dinner was a youngish, much-decorated general, coming back for a night from the front; though born in Lunéville it was the first time he had been here since the war—always fighting in other parts of France. Besides the general there were Madame Saint-R. T., E. M., and Miss P., who appeared in some sort of dull-red tunic that she ought always to wear; the mayor and his wife (she is Gasconne, and very animated, though she said twenty years of Lunéville had somewhat calmed her); two or three women with husbands at the front bringing daughters; several young officers; and M. Guérin and his daughter—the usual war-time composition of dinner-parties in the provinces, I imagine. Excellent and very lavish repast, _maigre_, of course, but everything else except meat in profusion. I didn’t get to bed till after eleven. M. Guérin walked back to the hotel with us, and, while he and Mrs. C. P. talked, again I was accosted by ghosts of dead rulers and lovely ladies and philosophers as we crossed the vast, dim Place Léopold. They, too, had crossed it and been amorous and witty, pleased or having _vapeurs_, enveloped by linden scent, and the changeless stars had controlled their destinies. _Later._ This morning we visited the military hospital in one of the most charming edifices I have ever seen, an eighteenth-century convent-building. The first entry on the tableau in the hallway giving the names of the benefactors was 1761; the last, 1913. It is a two-storied, cloistered, rambling edifice, with several wide courtyards planted with trees and flowers, a fountain in the middle of one; in another a statue of the Virgin; beyond it a sun-baked vegetable garden; and still farther, behind a hedge, the inevitable little cemetery. [Illustration: AUTHOR AT VITRIMONT] [Illustration: CEMETERY, VITRIMONT] [Illustration: THE BRIDGE AT LUNÉVILLE] We went through the wards of the hospital, high-ceilinged, spotless, airy, with the _médecin-chef_, talking with the wounded and distributing cigarettes. One of the doctors, also mayor of Gerbéviller, said to us, when we told him we were going there in the afternoon, “But don’t you want to see the young German aviator?”