_En route_ to the Prefect’s we met the tall, good-looking blond young son of Jean de Reszke, “_très chic, cherchant le danger_”; “_en voilà un qui n’a pas froid aux yeux_,” the only and adored child of his parents. It’s not a very promising situation for them. But again I thought, “Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he play his part well,” and started to ponder on the incalculable growth of filial piety, and of the love of mothers, and their griefs, when, suddenly walking along the gray streets of Nancy, the scene shifted, and it was the Metropolitan Opera House that I saw—the lights, the red glow, the boxes, the jewels; the warmth, the stir of the orchestra, the quiet of the listening house, were about me. It seemed to be the second act of “Tristan and Isolde” after the duo, when King Mark makes his noble entry and in those unforgetable accents begins his broken-hearted apostrophe to Tristan, “_Tatest du’s in Wirklichkeit, wähnst du das?_” And all that unsurpassed and unsurpassable art of the great Polish brothers was again evoked; one now gathered to his rest in stress of war, the other knowing a greater fear than for himself. Then I found myself in the Place Stanislas under gray morning skies, instead of the gleaming twilight web. I felt suddenly and acutely the turning of the seasons and the inexorable advent of winter through which unsheltered flesh and blood must pass. That ravishing of the spirit I knew in the warm June sunset was mine no more. _Later._ Waiting for the motor to drive to Lunéville. Went with Madame Mirman, the wife of the _Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle_, to visit Molitor. It is a huge collection of barrack-buildings which for three years has contained that terrible precipitation of old men, women, and children from the devastated districts around about. They are received in every conceivable condition of hunger, dirt, disease, and distress of soul. They had been living in the woods and fields that first summer, and the children running the streets of half-ruined towns, before being brought to Molitor. [Illustration: SISTER JULIE] [Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF THE REFUGEES As they passed at Evian—but typical of any group anywhere.] We went first to the school-building, and into the kindergarten room where rows of children were making straight lines with beans on little tables. Very hot and stuffy in the hermetically sealed room, every child sniffling and sneezing and coughing. There are always faces that stand out, and in this room, as the children rose and sang a song with patting of the hands, there was one child of five with gestures so lovely and movements of the body so rhythmic that one realized afresh the eternal differences in the seasoning of the human _pâte_. She was between two clumsy, wooden-faced children, one with a peaked forehead, the other with a heavy jaw.