complacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of their
youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and
curves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend popped
out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles through
all the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip whispering of
peace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees nodded assent, and
with the shadows of their outspread fingers stroked the frightened
facades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out of the fissured
walls that any one coming within their embrace heard the plashing of the
fountains above the thunder of the artillery; and the sick and wounded
men felt soothed and listened from their fevered couches to the
talkative night outside. Pale men, who had been carried through the town
on swinging stretchers, forgot the hell they had come from; and even the
heavily laden victims tramping through the place on a forced march by
night became softened for a space, as if they had encountered Peace and
their own unarmed selves in the shadow of the columns and the flower-
filled bay-windows.

The same thing took place with the war in this town as with the stream
that came down from out of the mountains in the north, foaming with rage
at each pebble it rolled over. At the other end of the town, on passing
the last houses, it took a tender leave, quite tamed and subdued,
murmuring very gently, as if treading on tiptoe, as if drowsy with all
the dreaminess it had reflected. Between wide banks, it stepped out into
the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almost
an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast their
shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of the
slothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves, as if the
garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumber
song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file,