The afternoon was hot, and the sun shone bakingly upon the round stones which paved the square. A drowsy calm hung over everything. Sara, pausing, looked around her, trying to choose some vantage-ground from which to sketch the _Dom_. She perceived that to the left of it, immediately under its wall, there were steps leading into a kind of small retired square, which looked shady and cool. Not a good position from which to make her sketch, but it was inviting. The ardour for work had left her. Ever since last night she had been longing intensely to be alone. She bent her steps towards the spot, ascended the low, broad flight of stone stairs, and found herself in a square, shady, gravelled space, in the midst of which rose a heavy, tasteless-looking stone monument, something between an ambitious tombstone and a grovelling obelisk. She walked up to it and looked at it. It bore a long list of names, and an inscription to the effect that the town of Lahnburg raised this humble _Denkmal_ to the memory of those of her sons who had died fighting for _Kaiser und Vaterland_, in 1870-71. There were the regiments to which the deceased had belonged, their ages, and the names of the engagements in which they had fallen—Sedan, Metz, Saarbrück, etc. And below all, _Auf Wiedersehen!_ Sara read it all, strangely moved by its homely simplicity, the confident expression of belief in a meeting again, and touched by the profound peace of this quiet _Ruheplatz_—so fitting for those brave hearts. At one side of the square there was a low wall, and some seats before it, on one of which she seated herself, and found that it commanded a glorious view of the low-lying country through which there the Lahn flows. The great, cool shadow of the cathedral was cast over her, while beneath her eyes the fertile land lay spread under a quivering veil of golden sun-pierced mist.