No sign of E. M., no sign of anything familiar. Fortunately I was flanked by Brittany, and a stout heart did the rest. When we found that the next train for Lunéville would leave at nine o’clock, I asked them to dine with me and take a little walk about the town. Our luggage—we were all traveling light, I with a hand-bag and flat straw valise, they with two iron helmets—was given to the _consigne_ and, after my _sauf-conduit_ had been stamped in three separate places, we departed. The square before the station was surging with the usual pale-blue waves, and as we crossed it the odor of leather and tired feet and hot men was a good deal stronger than the linden scent. We passed a very banal statue of Thiers, _Libérateur du Territoire_, and some horrors of _art nouveau_. A construction with colored-glass windows and unnatural cupolas and gilding and mushy outlines protruded from a corner, and its name, for its sins, was Hôtel Excelsior. But we were searching for the celebrated Place Stanislas. After asking a passer-by, we were directed to a street whose name I have forgotten, and we started down its rather distinguished length of gray, well-built houses of another century, many of them having the double Lorraine cross in red to indicate cellar accommodations, with the number they could shelter. [Illustration: PLACE STANISLAS, NANCY] When, suddenly, we stepped into the Place Stanislas, I almost swooned with joy. I was in full eighteenth century, in the midst of one of its most perfect creations, with the low boom of the twentieth-century guns in the distance. Quickly my spirit was ravished from the world of combat into the still, calm, beautiful world of art, within the enchantments of the _grilles_ of Jean Lamour. A sensation sweet, satisfying, unfelt since the beginning of the war, invaded me. I gazed entranced upon that delicate tracery of wrought iron, like some rich guipure, at the four corners of the square of buildings, its lovely gilding reflecting a soft light; and, outlined against a heaven colored especially for them—pale blue, with threads of palest pink, and a hint of gray and yellow—were urns and torches and figures, half human, half divine, supporting them. The beautiful fountains in the corners were banked with sand-bags, but their contours were in harmony with the other _grilles_, and one was surmounted by an Amphitrite, the other by a Neptune. It was all a symbol of a state of mind, a flowering of feeling, to which had been vouchsafed a perfection of expression.