In between I kept looking out where against gray skies beings half child, half angel hold up stone flames, and _panaches_ leaning one against the other. The gilding of the _grilles_ has a dull gleam through the wet. The statue of Stanislas _le Bienfaisant_ was black and big. Everybody was talking about the unexpected visit of the German _avion_ in the bad weather the night before. The station was further devastated, a train moving out was wrecked and many _permissionnaires_ killed, a house near the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre was totally demolished, the _avion_ flying very low, not more than twenty-five meters above the town at one time. After lunch we went over to the prefect’s house, from where we were to motor with him to Toul. He could not go with us, as he was out investigating the damage of the night before, but one of his daughters was waiting for us in the Prefecture motor. _Le Grand Couronné_ was but a ridge of mist and clouds as we passed out of town, but it was there that the Germans were held up and Nancy was saved that first September of the war, there that was written the _paraphe de Castelnau_, and from there the German Emperor had looked into France. I never should have known Lorraine if I had not seen it gray and wet under its autumn skies, bands of lemon and amber at sunset finishing the garb of its gray days. As we sped along I could just distinguish the landscape—villages lost in the immense stretch of the plains, and great forests of beech and oak in which are strange, mysterious ponds (_étangs_), and before my mind passed for an instant images of those solitaries of the twilight centuries, slipping through them with staff and scrip, after the Romans, and bringing to the land the things Rome tried to destroy. A beautifully kept straight road leads to Toul. From time to time one sees rusty barbed-wire entanglements and camouflaged trenches, for, on this road, had the Germans taken Nancy, they would have come to Toul, as they did in 1870. Outside the town are double ramparts, where the guard stopped us, but the military chauffeur cried the magic words, “_Monsieur le Préfet_,” and we passed in through the Porte de Metz, dating from the time of Vauban, then skirted the town, to get to the barracks of Luxembourg, where hundreds of little children, first gathered together by Madame Mirman, are now being taken care of by the American Red Cross. It is conducted by Doctor Sedgwick, unfortunately in Paris. It seemed a dreary spot that afternoon, and it has since been confided to me that the weather is always dreadful there. The barracks are after the new model of groups of one-storied houses, which, it appears, have also disadvantages, as well as the large buildings they superseded.[16]