Miss P. motored us into Nancy, straight into the setting sun. My eyes were so tired that I didn’t try to pierce the hot glaze, but there’s a memory of running through green fields, with black crosses, saline installations (Rosières aux Salines), manufacturing towns (Dombasle-sur-Meurthe), and Gothic towers (St. Nicholas du Port), and a dash through the new factory suburbs of Nancy into the delicate and perfect loveliness of the Place Stanislas. Neither E. M. nor I had a permit to go to Bar-le-Duc, the point of departure for Verdun, but Mrs. P. had, so she was deputed to order dinner at the Café Stanislas, while we went to the Hôtel de Ville to try to find the _Secrétaire Général_, Mr. Martin, a special friend of E. M.’s, and do what I call “cutting barbed wire.” It seemed at one time as if the high adventure of Verdun might have to be abandoned, as the _Secrétaire Général_, who alone could give us the necessary permission, had been called to Pont-à-Mousson to investigate the results of a raid of German _avions_ there and at Pompey that morning. However, when fate has made up its mind that things shall happen, any deadlock is cleared up by the puppets themselves, literally on a string this time, for as we were standing there in the room with the impotent substitute of the _Secrétaire Général_, the telephone rang, and who was it but the so desired gentleman calling up about something on the long-distance wire. E. M. literally grabbed the receiver, explained the situation, and he gave the necessary authority to his substitute, and we in turn gave the oft-repeated story of our lives from the cradle to the present moment, and finally could depart with papers in order for dinner at the Café Stanislas. Again as we walked across the lovely Place my soul was stirred with memories of peace, love, and the arts of peace. I seemed to understand anew those words, “The arts of peace,” and in a half-dream I looked up at the heavens. Again pale, charming faded tints of blues and grays and pinks were the background for the urns and figures of the sky-line of the pure and lovely buildings that surround it, and a crescent moon with something untouched and virginal flung a last charm about it all. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF AMPHITRITE BY JEAN LAMOUR, PLACE STANISLAS, NANCY] We found Mrs. C. P. waiting at the same table at which I had sat two nights before with the sons of Mars and the man of God. We were just beginning our dinner when, looking out of the window, we saw something strange and for a moment unclassifiable, in an almost impossible juxtaposition of ideas. No one’s mind would be sufficiently mobile to grasp what it was without blinking a bit. The great, portentous black cross on its wings was what started the mind working properly. It was the Taube brought down at Pont-à-Mousson that morning, being drawn on a _camion_ through the delicious, delicate tracery of Jean Lamour’s wrought-iron gate! 1755-1917!