Here he registered, passed through a lobby filled with American officers and sergeants and corporals and privates—for in this one spot in all France military rank ceases to exist and men are not soldiers, but university men—and up-stairs to the Bureau of the University of Michigan.... In half an hour he was in a comfortable room with windows which opened upon a balcony facing toward the east.... He stepped out upon it and gazed into the darkness. Scarcely a hundred feet away, across a narrow street, was the dark bulk of a mammoth building, and the black silhouettes of a multitude of quaint chimney-pots.... It was the ancient Royal Palace. Kendall did not realize this, nor that his eyes were gazing at a spot rich in history, in intrigue, in romance—and not unbaptized with blood.... But one thing he knew—at last he was in the heart of Paris.... CHAPTER II Captain Ware felt singularly young, boyishly exhilarated, as he walked out early next morning for his first view of Paris. It was not yet eight o’clock, but the day was beautiful, promising warmth; the skies were clear; the whole appearance of things one of perfect peace and quiet. The city did not seem one threatened by war. The streets, as he walked up the rue de Rivoli, were almost deserted. It was early for Parisians to be abroad. The city astounded him, captivated him, gave him a feeling of humility. He was familiar with Detroit, had seen Chicago and New York, but Paris—Paris was different. His experience gave him nothing with which to compare it. Chicago and New York were unsightly upheavals; the fantastic work of tremendous industrial forces in irresistible motion. They reared. Paris did not rear; it reposed; it had not been upheaved tumultuously—it had been dreamed and dreamed by genius which comprehended beauty. The city affected him almost to breathlessness as it opened before him when he passed the ancient grayness of the Louvre. He turned to the left and stood between the wide jaws of the Louvre, the mouth of the Place du Carrousel, and, standing there, looked westward through the reaches of the Tuileries and beyond to where, silhouetted with massive grandeur, uprose Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe.... It was impossible—incredibly magnificent. At that instant began the first great change in his life. He might not consciously have dated it from that instant, and possibly he never dated it at all, but Paris had set the hand of her beauty upon him; her spell had touched him with its magic. “Why,” he said to himself, “anything could happen here!” And presently, “The Germans drop bombs on this ... they try to destroy this.”