ea of Coucy's importance, the French, in their first
astonishment and sorrow, proposed to make reprisals on Hindenburg,
should it take ten years. Of course, they will not; it is not their way.

Coucy is a mountain of blasted stones. Shoun Kelly, American, owned one
of the outer towers of the great castle and the story of its ownership
is the American antithesis of German ravage. Americans were always
faithful tourists to Coucy; but among them, one loved more than all the
glorious old ruin and its story which began with Enguerrand, the Sire
of Coucy, in the year 1210. This was the late Edmund Kelly, of New York
and Paris, international lawyer and for many years counsel of the
American Embassy in Paris. He meditated on the motto of old Enguerrand:
"I am not king, nor prince, nor duke, nor even count: I am the Sire of
Coucy!" In fact, the Sire made a record for standing off local kings.

"He was a good American ahead of his time," said Lawyer Kelly; and he
took to reading up the ancient chronicles, how Enguerrand's descendants
stood off royalty for some 200 years, until finally bought out by the
wealthy Louis of Orleans, and all the later glories of the place.
Mazarin dismantled Coucy, but left it standing in its beauty; and Lawyer
Kelly discovered it to be a State museum, impossible to be purchased, in
these latter days, even by a millionaire. Not being one, he preferred it
so, loving Coucy more than ever, the cultured American did the next best
thing.

A LITTLE TOWN REDUCED.

The little town, once so rich, had dwindled since Mazarin. On the castle
side stood two massive towers of the inner defense, belonging to the
town. Mr. Kelly asked Mayor and department legislature to make a price
on the nearest. As soon as he had bought his tower, he used loving care
restoring it. He pierced windows through walls 16 feet thick. He built
rooms in three stories, furnishing them in massive antique style. The
tower roof was his shady terrace, covered with a little grove of
century-old trees! From it he dominated Coucy. All its soul of beauty
lay beneath his view.

All was systematically blown up, the town, the towers, the castle, by
retreating Germans in their rage. Just masses of crumbled stones. The
German papers boast that it took 28 tons of high explosives, and any one
can see, this hour, the plain of Coucy covered with a white layer of
powdered limestone, for miles around.

What for? To clear a battlefield, they say. It is