in my mouth. It's
shameful, it's shameful! Blush for me, Pierrot!... But we shall be well
punished! There is going to be no place for us in that factory of the
State, without rest and without truce, which the earth will be soon....
Luckily we shall not be here!"

"Yes, what happiness!" quoth Pierre.

"If in thine arms, O Lady of my heart,
I die, to greater fame I'll not aspire,
Content upon thy bosom to expire
Whilst kissing thee and thus from living part...."

"Well, little darling, what sort of a fashion is that?"

"Nevertheless it is after a good old French mode. It's by Ronsard," said
Pierre:

"...else I would only claim
A century hence, sans glory and sans fame
Slothful to die upon thy lap, Cassandra...."

"A hundred years!" sighed Luce. "He doesn't ask much!..."

"Or I mistake, or more delights are heaped
In death like that than all the honors reaped
By Caesar great or firebolt Alexander."

"Naughty, naughty, naughty little scamp! have you no shame? In this
epoch of heroes!"

"There are too many," said Pierre. "I would rather be a little fellow
who loves, a babe of a man."

"The babe of a woman who still has on his lips the milk from my breast,"
cried Luce, seizing him round the neck. "My babe, my own!"

* * * * *

SURVIVORS of those days who, since then, have been witness to the
dazzling change of fortune, will have forgotten doubtless the menacing
heavy flight of the dark wing which, during that week, covered the Ile
de France and touched Paris with its shadow. Joy does not take further
stock in past trials.--The German drive reached the line of its summit
between Holy Monday and Holy Wednesday. The Somme traversed, Bapaume,
Vesle, Guiscard, Roye, Noyon, Albert carried. Eleven hundred guns taken.
Sixty thousand prisoners.... Symbol of the land of grace trampled upon,
on Holy Tuesday died Debussy the harmonious. A lyre that is snapped....
"Poor little expiring Greece!" What will remain of it? A few chiseled
vases, a few perfect stelae which the grass will invade from the Path
of Tombs. Immortal vestiges of ruined Athens....

As from the height of a hill, Pierre and Luce watched the shadow that
moved upon the town. Still wrapped in the rays of their love, they
waited without fear for the end of the brief day. Now they would be two
in the night. Like to the evening _Angelus_ there rose up to them,
conjured up, the voluptuous melancholy of the