Perhaps it would be well to anticipate so far as to speak of this young lady more fully, for all through you will know her as my faithful Antoinette--Antoinette Margot, Swiss by birth, French by cultivation, education, and habit. The two national characteristics met and joined in her. The enthusiasm of the one, the fidelity of the other, were so perfectly blended and balanced in her, that one could never determine which prevailed. No matter, as both were unquenchable, unconquerable. She was raised in the city of Lyons, France, an only daughter, and at that age an artist of great note, even in the schools of artistic France. Fair-haired, playful, bright, and confiding, she spoke English as learned from books, and selected her forms of expression by inference. One day she made the remark that something was “unpretty.” Observing a smile on my face, she asked if that were not correct. I replied that we do not say “unpretty” in English. “No. But you say unwise, unselfish, unkind, and ungrateful--why not unpretty?” “I do not know,” I answered. I didn’t either. There was something in that face to be drawn to “at sight,” and to her astonishment and delight I told her she might accompany me. Scarce was this arrangement completed when breathless messengers rushed to tell us that the French still fled before the troops of the Prince Royal, that the Prussians were marching direct upon the Rhine, if indeed it were not already crossed, and that the French had destroyed their railroad to Strassburg, that the rolling-stock of the road had been run off to save it, and that even the station was closed. This was after dark--the news was not of a nature to favor delay. Instead of five o’clock by train next morning, I would start at daybreak by private carriage. At length a _cochère_ was found who would undertake the journey--the task of driving to Mülhausen for a consideration which, under the circumstances, it was quite possible for him to obtain. At the appointed hour, with some small satchels, the requisite supply of shawls and waterproofs, with my quiet, sensible young companion, I set off once more, shall I say--for “_the front_”? That expression was very strange after a lapse of five years, and I had thought never to hear it again in connection with myself. Arriving at Mülhausen, Miss Barton found there was no present need of her services. She determined to set forth for Strassburg. With great difficulty she made her way thither. Through rain and mud, with conveyance almost impossible to obtain, she finally arrived, a distance of seventy-two miles, which journey she completed in a single day. She was received with honor at Strassburg. The United States Consul and Vice-Consul were both Germans, but both had fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union, and they both knew of Clara Barton. The Consul had been a surgeon and the Vice-Consul a chaplain. Both welcomed her to the Consulate and to their homes.