PARIS. As we were sitting in the dining-car, idly wondering how on earth we were going to get from the station to our respective abodes once the train had deposited us at the Gare de l’Est, or planning to spend the night there, the Marquis de M. passed through the car. His motor was to meet him, and he gallantly offered transit, that can be above rubies and pearls _par le temps qui court_. When we got to Paris at 10.30 we saw in the dim light, as we stepped into the big motor, _voyagers_ departing with luggage on their backs, or, preparing to await the dawn, sitting on it. We got into the motor with Comte de ——, the Marquis himself sitting outside, “for the air,” as he said, and also because there was no more room inside. As we rolled along through the dimly lighted streets, the air dense and hot, a terrific hail- and thunder-storm suddenly deluged the town, and especially the generous Marquis outside, well punished (as usual) for his kind act. When, slipping and skidding, we finally pulled up at my hotel, a very wet gentleman, but remembering his manners, said, “_Au plaisir de vous revoir, madame_.” (He must really have wished me to all the devils, where he would never meet me a second time, hoping it was a last as well as a first meeting.) I had to laugh, also he, the pleasure was so evidently doubtful. It ended by his betaking his soaking person into the auto, and I came up-stairs to find my lamps trimmed and burning and my beloved mother awaiting me to hear “all about it.” So may one go to the front and return.... PART II CHAPTER I BY THE MARNE GARE DE L’EST, _Wednesday, July 25th_. No, it isn’t possible, even for one whose business is not that of stopping bullets, to go toward the combat a second time without a thrill. Few soldiers in the station; they are mostly at the front, at Craonne and Le Chemin des Dames and other sacrificial places, and in a week or two the empty beds in the hospitals will be full again. Some officers are hastening back from their _permissions_ with pasteboard boxes and other unwar-like accoutrements. One is sitting by me, a straight-featured young man with dark-ringed eyes, his _Croix de Guerre_ and _fourragère_,[7] reading _Brin de Lilas_. In forty-eight hours he may be dead. Another officer is reading _Cœur d’Orpheline_, and _Le Pays_. Miss N., with something of serene yet brooding in her being, plus a sense of humor, arrives with a telegraphic pass from army headquarters at Châlons, which may or may not “pass” the train conductor. _Later._ Chelles, where the arts of peace in the form of a vermicelli-factory testify to the arts of war by having every pane of glass broken; and once there was a celebrated abbey at Chelles which was destroyed, with a tidy amount of other things beautiful, at the time of the French Revolution.