none of what he himself calls
"that kind of affliction which alone can unfold the profundities
of the human spirit."

It was in Paris that he produced most of the "Juvenilia". He included
only a few of the pieces which he had written at Harvard and in New York.
Thus all, or nearly all, the poems ranged under that title, are, as he said --

Relics of the time when I too fared
Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.

Paris, however, did not absorb him entirely during these years.
He would occasionally set forth on long tramps through the French provinces;
for he loved every aspect of that gracious country. He once spent some weeks
with a friend in Switzerland; but this experience seems to have left no trace
in his work.

Then came the fateful year 1914. His "Juvenilia" having grown
to a passable bulk, he brought them in the early summer to London,
with a view to finding a publisher for them; but it does not appear
that he took any very active steps to that effect. His days were mainly spent
in the British Museum, and his evenings with a coterie of friends
at the Cafe Royal. In the middle of July, his father came to England
and spent a week with him. Of this meeting Mr. Seeger writes:

==
We passed three days at Canterbury--three days of such intimacy
as we had hardly had since he was a boy in Mexico. For four or five years
I had only seen him a few days at a time, during my hurried visits
to the United States. We explored the old town together,
heard services in the Cathedral, and had long talks in the close.
After service in the Cathedral on a Monday morning,
the last of our stay at Canterbury, Alan was particularly enthusiastic
over the reading of the Psalms, and said "Was there ever such English written
as that of the Bible?" I said good-bye to Alan on July 25th.

==

Two days earlier, the Austrian Ultimatum had been presented to Serbia;
on that very day the time limit expired, the Serbian reply was rejected,
and the Austrian Minister left Belgrade. The wheels of fate
were already whirling.

As soon as it became evident that a European war was inevitable
Alan returned to Paris. He took Bruges on his way, and there left
the manuscript of his poems in the keeping of a printer,
not foreseeing the risks to which he was thus exposing them.

The war was not three weeks old when, along with forty or fifty
of his fellow-countrymen, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France.
Why did