rendezvous rather than of the uncompromised and uncompromising lamp-post that finally got me, minus the light. Now I quite dislike getting up from this literally downy couch, with its dainty pink-lined, lace-trimmed, white-muslin covered eiderdown and its heaps of soft pillows, to investigate further their _amours_, and in general the _arts et talents_ of the eighteenth century, but so I willed it, and so it must be done. For some reason nervous energy is at a low ebb. There are moments when I throw my life out of the window, when nothing seems impossible and most things quite easy, but to-day the gray world outside, _l’élégante et mélancolique Lorraine_, I would consider well lost for converse with a beloved friend by my fireside. _October 12th._ Nothing to be found in Lunéville on an October night except your soul, and if you don’t keep it fairly bright, you won’t find even that. Oh, woe is me! about six o’clock mine was suddenly too dark and sad for words, so I betook me to the downy couch of the morning, with a batch of letters and various books given me by M. Guérin at lunch, some old, some new, concerning _l’élégante et mélancolique Lorraine_. The Hôtel des Vosges is ahead of any Ritz that was ever built, and, what’s more, in it your soul’s your own, even if it is a poor and dark and trembling thing. My “_Symphonie Pastorale_” letter to —— returned to me. Have just reread it and pinned it into the Journal. It’s all part of the same. AIX-LES-BAINS, _vendredi, 27 août, 1917_. ... The orchestra, pale, emasculated, having the minimum of strings—the musicians of France are dead or in the trenches—seemed without accent during the first part of the program. “_La Chasse du Jeune Henri_” of Méhul, “_Les Eolides_” of César Franck, something of Grétry, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, _enfin_, one of the usual war-time programs. But then followed the “_Symphonie Pastorale_” and the master’s voice suddenly swelled the thin sounds, triumphant in the beauty of his order and splendor. A.—(_Sensations agréables en arrivant à la Campagne. Allégro ma non troppo._) I felt myself invaded by a familiar but long-untasted delight as my ear received the gorgeous consonances, and the lovely theme of the violins drew me to an interior place. My fancy was set a-wandering in a world of green glades, and broad meadows covered with asphodel and belladonna and fringed by dark plantings of pines, such as the master had wandered in, and “upon my eyes there lay a tear the dream had loosened from my brain.” In deep serenity I found myself thinking on appearances of “things wise and fair,” feeling myself in some way included in a company of paradisaical beings.