I found waiting at the door of the hotel E. M., the _distingué_ young aviator, and Don Kelley, _en permission_ for twenty-four hours from Gondrecourt, strong and eager, since a week at Gondrecourt, since a month in France for the first time in his life. The young men took us to the station and deposited us in the train and made their adieux. For very special reasons at that moment I said to E. M.: “If you are going back to Lunéville on _my_ account, don’t!” The guard had closed the door of the compartment, had sounded his whistle, but I caught the look in her eye and out we jumped, returning to the hotel, where we gave what we hoped was a pleasant surprise party. _Dîner à quatre_ at seven o’clock. About a dozen Americans _en permission_ were dining among many Frenchmen, and we amused ourselves investigating the multicolored intricacies of the various uniforms, aviators, cavalry, infantry, artillery, and the many “grades.” Then again a dash for the station—Count de L. had to get to Paris, and Don Kelley to Gondrecourt. The latter said, as we stood in the dark, battered station: “I am where I would most want to be in the world, and, though I am an only son, I am where my parents would most wish me to be. When I get back to Gondrecourt and get into that long, dark shed and see the men rolled up, and if it is raining, the water dripping in, I shall know it is the real thing, and those of my generation who have known it and those who have not will be forever divided.” Permissions not being among things safely trifled with, we then saw them into their train, which was leaving first, and crossed the rails to where ours, dark, filled with returning officers, was waiting; and so out into the night with all curtains carefully drawn, the stars shining. It was a _nuit à boches_, one of the officers said, continuing, “It’s often an obsession with them—for a long time they won’t come near Nancy or Lunéville, and then every night when it is at all clear they appear.” The inhabitants can choose (in their minds) between good weather and _avions_ or bad weather and safety. Trains from Nancy to Lunéville seem to have a way of hunting up stations, threading them up, and what one does easily in three-quarters of an hour in a motor takes an hour and a half to three, according to the stops. At Blainville we descended to show our _sauf-conduits_, the guard standing just behind a convenient puddle that every one splashed into and then stepped out of. Finally, Lunéville, night-enveloped, lighted only with flashes from electric pocket-lamps, like great fireflies. And coming through the night from Nancy, I kept thinking how France had done enough, more than enough, the impossible, and what a cold and dreadful grind the war had become, and of untried young Americans sleeping in dim villages so near. And many other things that it is bootless to record. _Nous sommes dedans._ CHAPTER V VITRIMONT IN AUTUMN