the bridge; and Chateau Thierry, famous in the older history of France, where the right of the First Corps crossed after sharp fighting, and, in the course of “a gigantic man-hunt” in and around the town, took a large number of German prisoners, before, by nightfall, coming into touch with the left of the French Fifth Army under Franchet d’Espercy.  At Dornans you are only a few miles north of the Marshes of St. Gond, where General Foch, after some perilous moments, won his brilliant victory over General Billow and the German Second Army, including a corps of the Prussian Guards; while at Chalons I look up from a record I am reading of the experiences of the Diocese during the war, written by the Bishop, to watch for the distant cathedral, and recall the scene of the night of September 9th, when the German Headquarters Staff in that town, “flown with insolence and wine,” after what is described as “an excellent dinner and much riotous drinking,” were roused about midnight by a sudden noise in the Hotel, and shouts of “The French are here!” “In fifteen minutes,” writes an officer of the Staff of General Langle de Gary, “the Hotel was empty.”

At Epernay and Chalons those French officers who were bound for the fighting line in Champagne, east and west of Reims, left the train; and somewhere beyond Epernay I followed in thought the flight of an aeroplane which seemed to be heading northwards across the ridges which bound the river valley—­northwards for Reims, and that tragic ghost which the crime of Germany has set moving through history for ever, never to be laid or silenced—­Joan of Arc’s Cathedral.  Then, at last, we are done with the Marne.  We pass Bar-le-Duc, on one of her tributaries, the Ornain; after which the splendid Meuse flashes into sight, running north on its victorious way to Verdun; then the Moselle, with Toul and its beautiful church on the right; and finally the Meurthe, on which stands Nancy.  A glorious sisterhood of rivers!  The more one realises what they have meant to the history of France, the more one understands that strong instinct of the early Greeks, which gave every river its god, and made of the Simois and the Xanthus personages almost as real as Achilles himself.

But alas! the whole great spectacle, here as on the Ourcq, was sorely muffled and blurred by the snow, which lay thick over the whole length and breadth of France, effacing the landscape in one monotonous whiteness.  If I remember rightly, however, it had ceased to fall, and twenty-four hours after we reached Nancy, it had disappeared.  It lasted just long enough to let us see the fairy-like Place Stanislas raise its beautiful gilded gates and white palaces between the snow and the moon-light—­a sight not soon forgotten.