In two or three days the French returned victorious, to find the burnt and outraged village.  The Germans were forced, in their turn, to leave some badly wounded men behind, and the French poilus in their mingled wrath and exultation could not resist, some of them, abusing the German wounded through the windows of the hospital.  But then, with a keen dramatic instinct, Soeur Julie drew a striking picture of the contrast between the behaviour of the French officer going down to the basement to visit the wounded German officers there, and that of the German officers on a similar errand.  She conveyed with perfect success the cold civility of the Frenchman, beginning with a few scathing words about the treatment of the town, and then proceeding to an investigation of the personal effects of the Boche officers.

“Your papers, gentlemen?  Ah! those are private letters—­you may retain them.  Your purses?”—­he looks at them—­“I hand them back to you.  Your note-books? Ah! ca—­c’est mon affaire! (that’s my business).  I wish you good morning.”

Soeur Julie spoke emphatically of the drunkenness of the Germans.  They discovered a store of “Mirabelle,” a strong liqueur, in the town, and had soon exhausted it, with apparently the worst results.

Well!—­the March afternoon ran on, and we could have sat there listening till dusk.  But our French officers were growing a little impatient, and one of them gently drew “the dear sister,” as every one calls her, towards the end of her tale.  Then with regret one left the plain parlour, the little hospital which had played so big a part, and the brave elderly nun, in whom one seemed to see again some of those qualities which, springing from the very soil of Lorraine, and in the heart of a woman, had once, long years ago, saved France.

* * * * *

How much there would be still to say about the charm and the kindness of Lorraine, if only this letter were not already too long!  But after the tragedy of Gerbeviller I must at any rate find room for the victory of Amance.

Alas!—­the morning was dull and misty when we left Nancy for Amance and the Grand Couronne; so that when we stood at last on the famous ridge immediately north of the town which saw, on September 8th, 1914, the wrecking of the final German attempt on Nancy, there was not much visible except the dim lines of forest and river in the plain below.  Our view ought to have ranged as far, almost, as Metz to the north and the Vosges to the south.  But at any rate there, at our feet, lay the Forest of Champenoux, which was the scene of the three frantic attempts of the Germans debouching from it on September 8th to capture the hill of Amance, and the plateau on which we stood.  Again and again the 75’s on the hill mowed down the advancing hordes and the heavy guns behind completed their work.  The Germans broke and fled, never to return.  Nancy was saved, the right of the six French Armies advancing across France, at that very moment, on the heels of the retreating Germans, in the Battle of the Marne, was protected thereby from a flank attack which might have altered all the fortunes of the war, and the course of history; and General Castelnau had written his name on the memory of Europe.