Somewhere and sometime all roads end, as must this wandering gossip of road-trees. It is good to jog on the footpath way and hent the stile even in war-time; when skylarks are mounted, why not out and listen, though from the same Sussex hill you faintly hear the great guns? The lyric blaze above persists, in spite of war. Is it unfeeling to forget the drumming streets, the drilling camps, and go listen how underwoods ring with wild hyacinths? That Death is Life’s fierce, Prussian neighbour we know more than ever, just now—but Life _has_ to be Death’s comrade in the whirling dream. The war will pass, though thick the lichen of it gather upon us meanwhile, sad-coloured and black. It is not heartless to look round the corner and over the hill meantime, and it is wisdom to lift up the heart in spite of all, as one plods towards the evening tent. _MONSEIGNEUR._ (Suggested by a Provençal _conte_ of Alphonse Daudet’s.) (_The scene is a bedchamber in MONSEIGNEUR’S palace in Provence, and the time is a morning in early spring, towards the close of the fifteenth century_. _Behind the closely-drawn, heavily-embroidered curtains of his vast state-bed, lies the little MONSEIGNEUR, most desperately ill. Notwithstanding the gay and brilliant sunshine that floods the palace, in the open fireplace of MONSEIGNEUR’S bedchamber there is a blazing scented fire of logs piled; while all the windows, with their stained armorial bearings, and all the heavy tapestry hangings over the narrow doorways that lead to garde-robe and oratory and corridor, are mercilessly closed. One would say, indeed, that the Doctor and Nurse who are in attendance were bent on killing the child, if only by depriving him of the faintest flutter of the revivifying spring air without. Yet they fully believe they are doing the best for their patient, and now are giving him the drink he cries for, faintly and fretfully, from within the tightly-drawn bed-curtains, putting the cup into the thin little hand that closes on it so feverishly._ _Then the heavy hangings at the back are drawn, rattling sharply on their iron rings, and the Bishop of Langres enters. Behind him, in the blazing sunshine of the corridor, BEPPO waits for permission to follow him; a ragged, sunburnt, Spanish-looking little boy, who carries a bird’s-nest with young thrushes in it, over which, as he stands there motionless, he seems entirely absorbed._) BISHOP (_as he enters_). Mother of God! The heat in this chamber!—Doctor Mabrise! (_at which the Doctor merely shrugs his shoulders, as if to say_: ‘What else can one do? In cases of fever!⸺’) But out of doors, my good Doctor, it is spring; the sun is hot enough already to split the stones. Is it really necessary? DOCTOR (_severely_). Of course! BISHOP (_in a low tone_). Tell me—how is the boy? DOCTOR (_gloomily_). Very bad. BISHOP. So?