It was dusk when we entered the city of Lunéville for the second time. Whole blocks lay in ruins; others only showed where shells had crashed into walls. It is hard to estimate just how much damage shell-fire has done to a town, for you see the effects only where they have struck on the street sides and not when they strike in the centre of the block. But Lunéville has certainly suffered as much as Louvain, only we did not hear about it. Grim, sad Louvain, with its sentries among the ruins! Happy, triumphant Lunéville, with its _poilus_ instead of German sentries! “We are going to meet the mayor,” said the major. First we went to his office. But that was a mistake. We were invited to his house, which was a fine, old eighteenth-century building. If you could transport it to New York some arms-and-ammunition millionaire would give half a million dollars for it. The hallway was smoke-blackened and a burnt spot showed where the enemy had tried to set it on fire before evacuating the town. An ascent of a handsome old staircase and we were in rooms with gilded mirrors and carved old mantels, where we were introduced to His Honour, a lively man of forty. “I have been in Amerique two months. So much English do I speak. No more!” said the mayor merrily, and introduced us in turn to his wife, who spoke not even “so much” English, but French as fast and as piquantly as only a Frenchwoman can. Her only son, who was seventeen, was going up with the 1916 class of recruits very soon. He was a sturdy youngster; a type of Young France who will make the France of the future. “You hate to see him go?” I asked. “It is for France!” she answered. We had cakes and tea and a merrier--at least, a more heartfelt--party than at any mayor’s reception in time of peace. Everybody talked. For the French do know how to talk, when they have not turned grim, silent soldiers. Foreigners say we do. Maybe it is a democratic weakness. I heard story on story of the German occupation, and how the mayor was put in jail and held as hostage, and what a German general said to him when he was brought in as a prisoner to be interrogated in his own house, which the general occupied as headquarters. Among the guests was the wife of a French general in her Red Cross cap. She might see her husband once a week by meeting him on the road between the city and the front. He could not afford to be any farther from his post, lest the Germans spring a surprise. The extent of the information which he gave her was that all went well for France. Father Joffre plays no favourites in his discipline. Happy, happy Lorraine in the midst of its ruins! Happy because her adored tricolour floats over those ruins. XIV A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW