, where the fate of Nancy was decided in 1914; to the west, a
purple haze like a mourning wreath of violets hung over the valley of
the Meurthe, and the tragic little tributary river Mortagne; beyond, we
could picture with our mind's eyes the Moselle and the Meuse.

But Leomont was not a place where one could stand coldly thinking of
horizons. It drew all thoughts to itself, and to the drama played out
upon its miniature mountain. There was fought one of the fiercest and
most heroic single battles of the war.

We had to desert the cars, and walk up a rough track to the ruined
farmhouse which crowned the hill; a noble, fortified farmhouse that must
have had the dignity of a chateau before the great fight which shattered
its ancient walls. Now it has the dignity of a mausoleum. Long ago, in
Roman days when Diana, Goddess of the Moon, was patron of Luneville and
the country round, a temple of stone and marble in her honour and a
soaring fountain crowned the high summit of Leomont, for all the world
to see. Her influence is said to reign over the whole of Lorraine, from
that day to this, St. Nicholas being her sole rival: and a prophecy has
come down through the centuries that no evil may befall Diana's
citadels, save in the "dark o' the moon," when the protectress is
absent. Luneville was overrun in the "dark o' the moon"; and it was then
also that the battle of Leomont was fought, ending in the vast cellars,
where no man was left alive.

In these days of ours, it's a wonderful and romantic mountain, sacred as
a monument forever, to the glory of the French soldiers who did not die
in vain. The scarred face of the ruined house--its stones pitted by
shrapnel as if by smallpox--gazes over Lorraine as the Sphinx gazes over
the desert: calm, majestic, sad, yet triumphant. And under the shattered
walls, among fallen buttresses and blackened stumps of oaks, are the
graves of Leomont's heroes; graves everywhere, over the hillside; graves
in the open; graves in sheltered corners where wild flowers have begun
to grow; their tricolour cockades and wooden crosses mirrored in the
blue of water-filled shell-holes; graves in the historic cellars,
covered with a pall of darkness; graves along the slope of the hill,
where old trenches have left ruts in the rank grass.

An unseen choir of bird-voices was singing the sweetest requiem ever
sung for the dead; yet Leomont in its majestic loneliness saddened us,
even the irrepressible Puck. W