When that was accomplished we decided to say good-by to the proud world, sent regrets to Mlle. Guérin, and had a much more modest repast served in my room by the deft maid, whose husband got typhoid fever in the trenches and died at Epinal last year. Later the mistress of the house came up to know if we were comfortable, and told us her husband, too, had died of it in hospital at Toul. And then I read _Les Vieux Châteaux de la Vesouze_, a modern _Etude lorraine_, and _Promenades autour de Lunéville_, printed in 1838, to the accompaniment of rattling windows and the heavy boom of distant cannon. All else was quiet. Near my room is a device plastered on the wall, _Qui tient à sa tranquillité sait respecter celle des autres_. Isn’t it nice? It makes one steal in at night, get into slippers immediately, and ring gently in the morning. It is still raining, hailing, blowing—dreadfully discouraging weather to investigate the amours of the eighteenth century, and I have a couple of twentieth-century idyls right under my eyes, too. I had planned a stroll in the park to trace the steps of Léopold and Stanislas to the doors of the fairest of ladies, and Panpan and St.-Lambert and the Chevalier de Boufflers, and all the other _charmeurs_. I’ll either have to leave them out of the Journal or do them in some half-dream when I’m back in Paris and warm! What _they_ did in this sort of weather I don’t know, except that when they knocked at a door or tapped at a window they were sure of tender welcomes, they and the easy verses that accompanied them. CHAPTER IV A STROLL IN NANCY _October 15th._ I spent yesterday a-wandering in the old streets of Nancy, between gusts of wind and rain and great bursts of sun. After much coaxing, _la Ford_ was cajoled into taking the road at 9.30, but as we got to Nancy and into the Place Stanislas suddenly her front wheels spread apart. E. M. gave one glance, but not at all the glance of despair she would have given had it happened on the road, and then flew to seek her waiting bridegroom at the Hôtel Excelsior et d’Angleterre, while I, less enthusiastically, sought the blond chauffeur of the coreless heart. He seemed quite human, as, unscrewing the bar in front, which crumbled softly like a piece of bread, he held up a piece and said, “_C’était fait pour vous casser le cou_.”