Lorraine

End of chapter 2 III.

In Lorraine and the Vosges.

Nancy, May 13, 1915.

Beside me, on my writing-table, stands a bunch of peonies—the jolly, round-faced, pink peonies of the village garden.

the germans know it and hate him and as soon as the first soldiers reached crevique so obscure and imperceptible a spot that even german omniscience might have missed it the officer in command asked for general liott's house went straight to it had all the papers portraits furniture and family relics piled in a bonfire in the court and then burnt down the house as we sat in the neglected park with the plaintive ruin before us We heard from the gardener this typical tale of German thoroughness and German chivalry.

It is corroborated by the fact that not another house in Crevique was destroyed.

May 16.—About two miles from the German frontier an isolated hill rises out of the Lorraine meadows.

East of it a ribbon of river winds among poplars, and that ribbon is the boundary between empire and republic.