Dutrex enters with a martial stride. “I say, Riou, here are the latest orders from headquarters: ‘The purveyors and the workmen employed at the fort must be accompanied by a soldier of the guard; the prisoners are forbidden to approach them. The sale of food and drink to prisoners is strictly forbidden. The commandants are responsible for seeing that these orders are carried out.’” “Very well, the slopes are also forbidden. I will immediately go for a walk there.” I linger on the ramparts. The sun is about to rise. The air is pure, like that of the high mountains. Beyond the huge Danubian plain I catch sight for the first time of the blue serrations of the Tyrolese Alps, crowning the delicate lines of the middle distance. To-day is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The air is filled with the sound of bells. The deep notes of those of Ingolstadt mingle with the brighter chimes of Hepperg, Wegstetten, and Lenting. The cocks are crowing. The crows are flying at a great height, and the harmonious silence is broken from time to time by their croakings. Everything glistens. The sky is superb. The earth rejoices. The soul finds refreshment and delight in the elysian dawn. Over there, towards the rising sun, upon the Warthe and in the Carpathian defiles, men are killing one another. In the opposite quarter, beyond the gentle undulations dotted with white farms and beyond the magnificent barrier of the Swabian Jura, men are killing one another in Alsace, in Lorraine, and in Flanders. The villages of Europe are filled with truncated limbs, wooden legs, broken lives. Poor world of men! HE GOES AWAY _December 13, 1914._ He leaves this evening. Every one is sad. Who will replace him? If only it is not a man belonging to the school of the _Münchener Neueste Nachrichten_,[31] which has been summoning the government to take reprisals against the French prisoners. “_Geduld genug!_” exclaimed the official journalist; “We have been patient long enough!” He demanded the head of Colonel Grey, Sir Edward Grey’s brother, and also that of Delcassé’s son, both of whom had been wounded and taken prisoner. The _Ingolstädter Zeitung_ has been even more drastic than the Munich journal.