front at a critical moment for the reserve troops.  Commandant Blumhardt had died at the very first, a shell of ’75 taking off his head.  Dead, too, were all the officers who had lodged in the castle.  His Excellency had had his jaw bone torn off by a fragment of shell.  He had seen him on the ground, howling with pain, drawing a portrait from his breast and trying to kiss it with his broken mouth.  He had himself been hit in the stomach by the same shell.  He had lain forty-two hours on the field before he was picked up by the ambulance corps. . . .

And with the mania of the University man, whose hobby is to see everything reasoned out and logically explained, he added in that supreme moment, with the tenacity of those who die talking: 

“Sad war, sir. . . .  Many premises are lacking in order to decide who is the culpable party. . . .  When the war is ended they will have to . . . will have to . . .”  And he closed his eyes overcome by the effort.  Desnoyers left the dead man, thinking to himself.  Poor fellow!  He was placing the hour of justice at the termination of the war, and meanwhile hundreds like him were dying, disappearing with all their scruples of ponderous and disciplined reasoning.

That night there was no sleep on the place.  The walls of the lodge were creaking, the glass crashing and breaking, the two women in the adjoining room crying out nervously.  The noise of the German fire was beginning to mingle with that of other explosives close at hand.  He surmised that this was the smashing of the French projectiles which were coming in search of the enemy’s artillery above the Marne.

For a few minutes his hopes revived as the possibility of victory flashed into his mind, but he was so depressed by his forlorn situation that such a hope evaporated as quickly as it had come.  His own troops were advancing, but this advance did not, perhaps, represent more than a local gain.  The line of battle was so extensive! . . .  It was going to be as in 1870; the French would achieve partial victories, modified at the last moment by the strategy of the enemies until they were turned into complete defeat.

After midnight the cannonading ceased, but silence was by no means re-established.  Automobiles were rolling around the lodge midst hoarse shouts of command.  It must be the hospital convoy that was evacuating the castle.  Then near daybreak the thudding of horses’ hoofs and the wheels of chugging machines thundered through the gates, making the ground tremble.  Half an hour afterwards sounded the tramp of multitudes moving at a quick pace, dying away in the depths of the park.

At dawn the old gentleman leaped from his bed, and the first thing he spied from the cottage window was the flag of the Red Cross still floating from the top of the castle.  There were no more cots under the trees.  On the bridge he met one of the doctors and several assistants.  The hospital force had gone with all its transportable patients.  There only remained in the castle, under the care of a company, those most gravely wounded.  The Valkyries of the health department had also disappeared.