EDITH COUES O’SHAUGHNESSY. 33 RUE DE L’UNIVERSITÉ, PARIS, _January 19, 1918_. PART I CHAPTER I HOW ONE MAY HAPPEN TO GO TO THE FRONT PARIS, _Thursday, June 7, 1917_. Even personal events have their outriders, and this is how an unexpectant lady, still fiancée to Mexico, received from Destiny various indications that she was to go there where men, ten thousand upon ten thousand, lay down their lives _pro patria_. Like everything, it was simple when it had happened. At the Foire Saint-Sulpice, where I was serving at the tea-stall, I met E. M. C., whom I thought in California. After greetings (we had not seen each other since the fatal month of October, 1916) she said to me: “You must come down to Lunéville where I have a house, and visit the village of Vitrimont, that mother is rebuilding.” I answered: “My dear, I’m still tied to Mexico, and I can see my publishers frowning all the way across the ocean if the second much-promised, long-delayed book doesn’t arrive. I oughtn’t even to peep at anything else for the moment.” Then, tea victims beginning to crowd in, “business as usual” engaged us and we parted. When I got home I found that Joseph Reinach, met but once—Polybe of the delightful _Commentaires_—had sent me his brochure, _Le Village Reconstitué_. I still didn’t hear the outriders galloping down the street. In the evening I dined _chez Laurent_ with Mr. C., known in Mexico. When I got there I found that his sister, Madame Saint-R. T., Présidente de La Renaissance des Foyers, was going into Lorraine, to Lunéville itself, the next day; conversation was almost entirely of the practical work to be done in the devastated districts, and the deeply engaging _philosophie de la guerre_, of how one had not only to rebuild villages, but to remake souls and lives. _A quoi bon donner des chemises?_ Give tools and implements, or a brace of rabbits, that nature may take its course and the peasant can say, “Soon I will have a dozen rabbits, and twenty-five francs that I have earned.” Some one observed that it really would be the rabbits, however—it is any living, productive thing that is of account, beyond all else, in the dead and silent places of devastation, and gifts of twelve chickens and one cock are demanded rather even than shoes. As we were pleasantly dining in the garden, and philosophizing sometimes with tears, sometimes smiles, a terrific thunder-storm broke over Paris, and we all crowded into the big central room, with piles of hastily torn-off, muddy table-linen. We sat talking, however, till they turned both ourselves and the lights out. As we parted, Madame Saint-R. T.’s last words were, “But try to come down to Lunéville.” I thought to myself that night, “Things are getting hot.” I believe in signs from heaven, and signs from heaven are not to be neglected. [Illustration: VERDUN AND VICINITY]