It was a threat, an anticipation, that darkened London, while Nancy
knew fulfilment. Bombardment and bomb-dropping were nothing new
to Nancy. The spice of danger gives a fillip to business to the town
whose population heard the din of the most thunderously spectacular
action of the war echoing among the surrounding hills. Nancy saw the
enemy beaten back. Now she was so close to the front that she felt
the throb of the army's life.

"Don't you ever worry about aerial raids?" I asked madame behind
the counter at the hotel.

"Do the men in the trenches worry about them?" she answered. "We
have a much easier time than they. Why shouldn't we share some of
their dangers? And when a Zeppelin appears and our guns begin
firing, we all feel like soldiers under fire."

"Are all the population here as usual?"

"Certainly, monsieur!" she said. "The Germans can never take
Nancy. The French are going to take Metz!"

The meal which that hotel restaurant served was as good as in peace
times. Who deserves a good meal if not the officer who comes in
from the front? And madame sees that he gets it. She is as proud of
her poulet en casserole as any commander of a soixante-quinze
battery of its practice. There was steam heat, too, in the hotel, which
gave an American a homelike feeling.

In a score of places in the Eastern States you see landscapes with
high hills like the spurs of the Vosges around Nancy sprinkled with