We two American women found ourselves threading our way through it all in a Ford which E. M. was driving herself, the Ford which in the afternoon had allowed itself caprices only permissible to lovelier objects, and there, close behind the French lines, we talked of love and marriage, and the Church. And these things had been and are for one, and for the other all to come. Among its various imperfections, the Ford was one-eyed, and our little light did not cast its beams very far. We got tangled up into a long line of _camions_, with blinding headlights, quite extinguishing us as we hugged the right side of the road. Finally we reached the outpost of Lunéville, where the guard stopped us, dark and disreputable-looking as we were, flashed his lantern, saw the lettering on the auto. We cried, “Vitrimont,” and then passed on. The chill night had completely fallen, but in the dark fields rose darker crosses that only one’s soul could see. Peace to them that lie beneath! Into town safe; drew up at the door of the house that was once an old Capuchin monastery, groped our way through a dark garden to find a warm welcome from Mademoiselle Guérin, a shining tea-table, an open fire, many books, things seemed _too_ well with us. CHAPTER II EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EMANATIONS _October 11th, 7.30._ Awakened at five o’clock to the sound of cavalry passing under my windows. I have three, and got the full benefit of the hoofs. I looked out into a bluish, late-night sky; endless shadowy lines of men that I knew were blue-clad were defiling, and there was a faint booming of cannon. Everything that the pitchy blackness of the streets of Lunéville prevents the inhabitants from doing between 5 and 8 P.M. they do between 5 and 8 A.M. The hour was set back on the 7th, which is why we have suddenly so much morning and these chopped-off afternoons. It makes the streets of the old town “hum” in the early hours. No Taubes; the sky too threatening. Again _chic atmosphère de guerre_. My big room is charming. The doors have panelings of the great epoch of Lunéville, but on the walls is a fresh papering of a pinkish _toile de Jouy_ design, in such good taste, an abyss between it and the _Jugend-Stil_ of the “Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre”; over each door is a lunette containing a faded old painting.