Thann itself is at the valley-head, in a neck between hills; a handsome old town, with the air of prosperous stability so oddly characteristic of this tormented region.  As we drove through the main street the pall of war-sadness fell on us again, darkening the light and chilling the summer air.  Thann is raked by the German lines, and its windows are mostly shuttered and its streets deserted.  One or two houses in the Cathedral square have been gutted, but the somewhat over-pinnacled and statued cathedral which is the pride of Thann is almost untouched, and when we entered it vespers were being sung, and a few people—­mostly in black—­knelt in the nave.

No greater contrast could be imagined to the happy feast-day scene we had left, a few miles off, at Massevaux; but Thann, in spite of its empty streets, is not a deserted city.  A vigorous life beats in it, ready to break forth as soon as the German guns are silenced.  The French administration, working on the best of terms with the population, are keeping up the civil activities of the town as the Canons of the Cathedral are continuing the rites of the Church.  Many inhabitants still remain behind their closed shutters and dive down into their cellars when the shells begin to crash; and the schools, transferred to a neighbouring village, number over two thousand pupils.  We walked through the town, visited a vast catacomb of a wine-cellar fitted up partly as an ambulance and partly as a shelter for the cellarless, and saw the lamentable remains of the industrial quarter along the river, which has been the special target of the German guns.  Thann has been industrially ruined, all its mills are wrecked; but unlike the towns of the north it has had the good fortune to preserve its outline, its civic personality, a face that its children, when they come back, can recognize and take comfort in.

After our visit to the ruins, a diversion was suggested by the amiable administrators of Thann who had guided our sight-seeing.  They were just off for a military tournament which the —­th dragoons were giving that afternoon in a neighboring valley, and we were invited to go with them.

The scene of the entertainment was a meadow enclosed in an amphitheatre of rocks, with grassy ledges projecting from the cliff like tiers of opera-boxes.  These points of vantage were partly occupied by interested spectators and partly by ruminating cattle; on the lowest slope, the rank and fashion of the neighbourhood was ranged on a semi-circle of chairs, and below, in the meadow, a lively steeple-chase was going on.  The riding was extremely pretty, as French military riding always is.  Few of the mounts were thoroughbreds—­the greater number, in fact, being local cart-horses barely broken to the saddle—­but their agility and dash did the greater credit to their riders.  The lancers, in particular, executed an effective “musical ride” about a central pennon, to the immense satisfaction of the fashionable public in the foreground and of the gallery on the rocks.