Both M. Mirman and M. Simon were appointed to their posts _ad hoc_ on the outbreak of hostilities, and Meurthe et Moselle and Nancy very soon found out that they had got the right men in the right places. M. Mirman had served his time in the ranks of the army as a Chasseur-à-pied, while he was the Député for Reims and still a very young man, and was known in his constituency and Paris as the _député soldat_. Before the war he was _Directeur de l’Assistance Publique_ in Paris, at the Ministry of the Interior, but resigned that post when fighting began in order to get as near to the front as possible. At Nancy he had his wish even without leaving the Préfecture. During part of August and September it was only five miles from the German lines, and just near enough to the Cathedral, supposing that the bombs of the enemy airmen missed one of their favourite targets by a short hundred yards, to be one of the danger-spots of the town. Madame Mirman came with him to Lorraine, and was followed soon afterwards by her daughters, all under twenty, and her young son. Their presence in Nancy greatly helped M. Mirman in a very important part of his work as Prefect. Apart from the compassionate services which they rendered to the wounded and the refugees, the mere fact of their being there was a constant encouragement to the townspeople in the dark and critical days at the beginning of the war. It meant, presumably, that the Prefect thought that the apparently imminent danger would be averted, or at least that he expected them not to run away from it. As a matter of fact, except the Post Office employés, who bolted in a body (I believe in obedience to orders), surprisingly few of the Nanceïens did run away, either after the Germans had rained shells on the town for an hour at the end of the fierce battle which poured streams of wounded into its hospitals day and night for three weeks, or later on when they had come to look upon Taubes and Aviatiks as a sort of gratuitous cinema show, and had further been roused from their sleep on Christmas Eve by the first Zeppelin that ever dropped bombs on an open town. [Illustration: Dufey, Nancy, phot. M. SIMON, MAYOR OF NANCY. ]