My Lorraine journal

It will be seen, by the first chapter, how fortuitous though inevitable was the writing of this little book, begun before the American troops came to France; yet it happens to c...

Even personal events have their outriders, and this is how an unexpectant lady, still fiancée to Mexico, received from Destiny various indications that she was to go there where...

No sign of E. M., no sign of anything familiar. Fortunately I was flanked by Brittany, and a stout heart did the rest. When we found that the next train for Lunéville would leav...

Dear old village life began at an early hour, but of course the Taube put the cocks and the carts and the geese and all the other usual auroral sounds quite in the background.

A merciless blaze of sun as we passed out through the town, badly battered at the end, through the Place Brûlée, leading to the road to Vitrimont, some three kilometers distant,...

As I put out my light and opened wide my window last night a rush of warm, linden-scented air came in, also the thick, soft, meridional voice of some soldier singing “_En passan...

We started out for Gerbéviller in a blinding sun, over a road leading through pleasant green meadows. That is one of the strange things of Lorraine—everywhere destroyed villages...

Scribbling in an indescribable brown-upholstered room, where one lies on the outside of a dark and menacing bed covered by one’s own coat, a strong odor of stable coming in at t...

_Verdun! The sound is like a clarion call. Verdun! It is shorty but gravely harmonious. It is satisfying to the ear, it is quickening to the soul. Verdun! It is for France the w...

Each, on comparing notes, was found to have spent the night on the outside of the bed. One of the party, who naturally wishes to remain anonymous, found a _cafard_, the classic...

We dashed into the train at Revigny during the hail-storm, an infernal kind that didn’t cool the air, and arrived at Châlons at six o’clock. No cabs, at least none for us, so we...

Few soldiers in the station; they are mostly at the front, at Craonne and Le Chemin des Dames and other sacrificial places, and in a week or two the empty beds in the hospitals...

_Bénis ceux qui sont morts simplement: en victimes,_ _Et n’ayant de la guerre éprouvé que l’horreur._ _Bénis ceux qui sont morts sans nourrir en leur cœur_ _La haine et tous ses...

Generals thick as leaves in Vallombrosa were there in a hemicycle about the stage, pressed close by the flood of _poilus_. Terrible heat in the great, glass-roofed auditorium, a...

Telegram that M. de Sinçay may be passing through. I would like to see his _grand seigneur_ contour decorate our 1860 establishment. Go to the _Bureau de la Place_, and nothing...

Yesterday, at 8.30 in the damp morning, Lieutenant Robin appeared with my military pass to return by auto instead of by train, and I said a special farewell to the gardener, car...

Passing Meaux. Square gray tower of its cathedral against a gray sky, the gray hemicycle of its lovely apse cutting in against reddish-gray roofs; gray houses with old towers bu...

Awakened at five o’clock to the sound of cavalry passing under my windows. I have three, and got the full benefit of the hoofs. I looked out into a bluish, late-night sky; endle...

We lunched at the Café Stanislas yesterday after the wildest of drives into Nancy, the Ford seeming like an autumn leaf in the high wind. We did ourselves well, even I, who care...

I spent yesterday a-wandering in the old streets of Nancy, between gusts of wind and rain and great bursts of sun. After much coaxing, _la Ford_ was cajoled into taking the road...

Out of Lunéville over the muddy Vesouze, through the Place Brûlée, and onto a pasty road, E. M. driving, and, on the back seat, newly wedded love. As we left the town a dwarf ma...

Soldiers are coming and going. The château has been for many years a barracks. One guardian of the park, of the now so-despised race of gendarmes, has walked by three times, for...

One last look at the church, whose warm and lovely towers with their _motifs_ of urn and scroll and angel were shining pinkly in the morning light. Then through the door of the...

Lodged at last with the “High Mother of God.” On arriving, dined in a low-ceilinged, dingy, dowdy room, but the acetylene lights, the uniforms and decorations of the officers, m...