that befoul the human name, and make one despair of a world in which
they can happen.

At luncheon in a charming house of old Lorraine, with an intellectual
and spiritual atmosphere that reminded me of a book that was one of the
abiding joys of my younger days--the _Récit d'une Soeur_--we heard from
the lips of some of those present an account of the arrival at Lunéville
of the fugitives from Gerbéviller, after the entry of the Bavarians into
the town. Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had
escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen
kilomètres that separate Gerbéviller from Lunéville. No intelligible
account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the
nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their
extremity of fear. And when, an hour later, we ourselves reached
Gerbéviller, the terror which had inspired that frenzied flight became,
as we listened to Soeur Julie, a tangible presence haunting the
ruined town.

Gerbéviller and Soeur Julie are great names in France to-day.
Gerbéviller, with Nomény, Badonviller, and Sermaize, stand in France for
what is most famous in German infamy; Soeur Julie, the "chère soeur" of
so many narratives, for that form of courage and whole-hearted devotion
which is specially dear to the French, because it has in it a touch of
_panache_, of audacity! It is not too meek; it gets its own back when it
can, and likes to punish the sinner as well as to forgive him. Sister
Julie of the Order of St. Charles of Nancy, Madame Rigard, in civil
parlance, had been for years when the war broke out the head of a modest
cottage hospital in the small country town of Gerbéviller. The town was
prosperous and pretty; its gardens ran down to the Mortagne flowing at
its feet, and it owned a country house in a park, full of treasures new