Clermont was a village of one thousand inhabitants. Thirty-eight persons remained--old people, religious sisters and the Jacquemets. The Germans burned 195 houses. The credit falls equally to a corps of Uhlans with the Prince of Wittgenstein at their head, and to the XIII corps from Württemberg, commanded by General von Urach. The particular regiments were the 121st and 122d Infantry. We inquired of soldiers where we could find the Mayor. "He is up above," they said. We were glad to leave the hot little village, with its swarms of flies, its white dust that lay on top of the roadbed in thick, puffy heaps, and its huddles of ruined houses. Each whirring camion, minute by minute, grinding its heavy wheels into the crumbling road, lifted white mists of dust, which slowly drifted upon the leaves of trees, the grass of the meadows, and the faces of soldiers. Eyebrows were dusted, hair went white, mustaches grew fanciful. Nature and man had lost all variety, all individuality. They were powdered as if for a Colonial ball. The human eye and the eyes of cattle and horses were the only things that burned with their native color through that veil of white that lay on Clermont. We went up a steep, shaded hill, where the clay still held the summer rains. The wheels of our car buzzed on the slush--"All out," and we did the last few hundred yards on foot. We were bringing the Mayor good news. The Rosette of the Legion of Honor had just been granted him. We found him in a little vine-covered old stone house on the hilltop, where he took refuge after his village was burned. He wept when my friend told him that the emblem of the highest honor in France was on its way. "It means I have done something for my country," he said. He is a cripple with one leg short. He goes on crutches, but he goes actively. He has fulfilled his life. His sons are fighting for France, and he, too, has served, and his service has been found acceptable in her sight. He is bright and cheery, very patient and sweet, with that gentleness which only goes with high courage. But underneath that kindliness and utter acceptance of fate, I felt that "deep lake of sadness," which comes to one whose experience has been over-full. So we came through the dust of the plain and the clay of the climb to a good green place. It is a tiny community set on a hill. That hill was covered with stately trees--a lane of them ran down the center of the plateau, as richly green and fragrant as the choicest pine grove of New England. The head of the lane lost itself in a smother of low-lying bushes and grasses, lush-green and wild. But just before it broke into lawlessness, one stout tree, standing alone, shot up; and tacked to its stalwart trunk, this notice fronts the armies of France: "CANTONNEMENT DE CLERMONT. "IL EST FORMELLEMENT INTERDIT AUX VISITEURS OU AUTRES D'ATTACHER DES CHEVAUX AUX ARBRES. TOUTE DÉGRADATION AUX ARBRES SERA SEVÈREMENT REPRIMÉE. "ORDRE DU COMMANDANT DE CANTONNEMENT.