As I approached ----, I saw a sad sight: a wood of young fir-trees, five or six feet high, felled and bound into faggots, a forest mown like grass. I have spoken of the cemetery of Lucerne, where the children's burials throng on one side. I never felt more keenly the need to end my wanderings, to die under the protection of a friendly hand laid upon my heart to interrogate it, when they shall say: "It has stopped beating." From the edge of my tomb I would like to be able to cast back a glance of satisfaction over my many years, just as a pontiff, on reaching the sanctuary, blesses the long line of the priests who have served as his retinue. Louvois[32] burnt down the Palatinate; unfortunately it was Turenne's hand that held the torch. The Revolution laid waste the same country, the witness and victim by turns of our aristocratic and plebeian struggles. It is enough to name the warriors to judge of the difference of the times: on the one side, Condé, Turenne, Créqui[33], Luxembourg, La Force[34], Villars[35]; on the other, Kellermann, Hoche, Pichegru, Moreau. Let us deny none of our victories; military glories especially have known only enemies of France and held only one opinion: on the battle-field, honour and danger level all ranks. Our fathers called the blood that flowed from a non-mortal wound "volatile blood:" a phrase typical of the contempt for death natural to Frenchmen in every century. Institutions can alter nothing in this national genius. The soldiers who, after the death of Turenne[36], said, "Let the _Pie_ loose, we shall encamp where she stops," would have been quite as good as Napoleon's grenadiers. On the heights of Dunkheim, the first rampart of the Gauls on that side, one discovers the seats of camps and military positions to-day empty of soldiers: Burgundians, Franks, Goths, Huns, Suevi, so many waves of the Barbarian deluge, have by turns assailed those heights. Not far from Dunkheim, one sees the remains of a monastery. The monks enclosed within that retreat had seen many armies passing round at their feet; they had shown hospitality to many warriors; there some crusader had ended his life, changed his helm for the frock; there were passions which called for silence and rest before the last rest and the last silence. Did they find what they sought? Those ruins will not tell. After the remnants of the sanctuary of peace come the fragments of the lair of war: the demolished bastions, mantlets, curtains, trunnions of a fortress. Ramparts crumble even as cloisters. The castle was ambushed in a rugged path to close it to the enemy: it did not keep time and death from passing.