Long have I hesitated to give back to Life the legacy left me by Death. But at last, reflecting that Lieutenant Vignerte and She whom he loved have vanished into the eternal shades, I have decided that there is no longer any reason to keep silence about the tragic events staged in the German court of Lautenburg-Detmold in the months immediately preceding the Great War. P. B....

"Unpile Arms!" Of its own motion and by that force of habit which makes the word of command superfluous, the dark mass of the company rose and formed fours to the right. The darkness was falling, cold and cruel, slashed with long liquid streaks. It had been raining all day. In the middle of the clearing a grey-green sky looked up at us from shadowy pools. An order rang out: "Quick March!" The little body moved off. I was at the head. At the edge of the wood was a country-house, some eighteenth-c

Y OU are a University man, he began. You must forgive me if the opening of my story is not free from a suggestion of bitterness against the University of which I was never a member. No doubt my feelings are without justification, since to the fact that I was never admitted I owe memories which, after all, I would not exchange for a chair at the Sorbonne. I took the course marked out for those with some intelligence and no money, and went in for scholarships. That means I undertook, somehow, to g

The clear, cold star which had been shining in the steel blue sky had disappeared. Vignerte started. "What time is it?" I lit my electric torch. "Ten minutes to twelve," I said. I awakened the two runners. "Henriquez, go to the third section, tell the adjutant to see to the relief of the second platoon and report to Lieutenant Vignerte. Damestoy, go to the second section and tell the section officer to do the same for the first platoon. He mustn't forget the two o'clock patrol. It will be suppli

I should say palaces, rather than palace, as the residence of the Grand Dukes of Lautenburg-Detmold is a combination of a Renaissance castle, built on one side of a Gothic keep, and a Louis Quatorze palace shamelessly copied from Versailles. Taken separately, each of these components is not without architectural merit, but their combination presented enormous difficulties to the architect of the Grand Duke Ulrich, the present sovereign's grandfather, who was instructed to make a symmetrical whol

Two large panelled chambers on the first floor, in the northern wing of the castle, opposite the great court. The room in which I usually worked looked out on the terrace. Through the open window I could see the dark sea of foliage in a tawny sunlight. An overwhelming silence reigned. The other, less melancholy, had two windows looking out on the ravine where the Melna plunged and roared, and beyond that the Königsplatz, the barracks of the 182nd Regiment and the Cathedral, a garish eyesore. A w

The Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus had his apartments on the first floor. His bedroom, like that of Louis XIV., was in the centre of the main building, and there was a study on the right, overlooking the park. Thither Kessel led me at ten o'clock in the morning of the day after my arrival. The Grand Duke was working at a plain Louis Quinze bureau. He rose and held out his hand. "Monsieur Vignerte, I have no need to tell you all the compliments Count Marçais pays you in his letter. I know that you

I doubt whether I should say "Court" in speaking of the entourage of the Dukes of Lautenburg. The word is somewhat too heavy, but it fits in well enough with the rigid etiquette which reigned at the castle. I have already spoken of Major Count Albert von Kessel, of the 11th Prussian Artillery Regiment, stationed at Königsberg. He passed out top of the Kriegs Academie at Berlin, and is undoubtedly one of the best officers in the German Army. He's an officer to his finger-tips, and although devote

The former plays so considerable a part in my story, that I must devote a little space to a description of it. As for the latter, Professor Cyrus Beck, of Kiel University, it seems only just that I should say a few words in praise of the man of whose death I have been the innocent cause. The library had been fitted up in the dismantled chapel of the castle, a chapel somewhat in the Jesuitical style having been built in the palace. The beautiful ogival chamber which cuts the great hall and the ar

The Grand Duchy of Lautenburg-Detmold, one of the twenty-seven States of the German Confederation, is about sixty miles long from north to south. Its breadth varies between twelve and twenty-five miles. It has a population of two hundred and eighty thousand. The Schwarzhugel, a last buttress of the Harz, is the only orographical system which breaks the monotony of the Hanoverian plain. As regards its river system, the Grand Duchy is bounded by the Weser, and crossed by the Aller. The Melna is th

Four times a week I gave Duke Joachim his lessons, two of history, one of philosophy and one of literature. For this purpose I went to his room in the right wing of the palace. You will remember that his father occupied the middle portion, while the left wing was reserved exclusively for the Grand Duchess Aurora. The walls of Duke Joachim's study are hung with the best German maps made by Kiepert himself. There are two portraits, one of the Grand Duke, and the other of his first wife, née Counte

O NE morning in December I was snugly ensconced by my big log fire, preparing a lesson for the afternoon. There was a dry, cold snap in the air, and the pale winter sun was dissolving, the night's mist in opal drops on my windows. There was a knock at the door. "Come in." Outside stood Otto, an ex-non-commissioned officer and head-butler, in fact, the connecting link between the palace officials and the horde of valets, workmen and supers whom he had under his orders. His white shirt-front and r

W ELL, Raoul Vignerte! What are you after now? What's this new craze of yours? Why! only a few weeks ago you didn't know in the morning where your dinner was coming from. Your acme of happiness was to be certain of the next day's meals. Here you are certain not only of tomorrow's, but next month's, and even for years to come. You have only to devote yourself to your work—work, the only thing that brings no regret. And with all this you are unhappy, not merely unhappy, but actually miserable. You

P ETERMANN'S MITTHEILUNGEN is the most exhaustive. And also it must be confessed the best, geographical work in the world. Our Annales de Géographie is only a feeble reflection of it. The Russians have an excellent geographer, Woïkow. We have Vidal de la Blache, whose preface to Lavisse's Histoire de France is a masterpiece. But these are only fragments and do not cover the whole ground. The astonishing feature of Petermann's Mittheilungen is its universality. My tutors at the Sorbonne—I won't m

I T was on Saturday evening, May 16th, 1914, that the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg did me the honour of telling me the story of her life. Let me repeat that story to you, not only because certain of its incidents are absolutely indispensable to a proper understanding of the drama which is fast approaching its climax, but above all because it gives me an exquisite pleasure to open this jewel-case and handle the beautiful, barbaric stones it contains, gems which will always light me through my blac

O CCASIONALLY, perhaps once or twice a week, the Grand Duchess preferred to be alone, and on these evenings I used to resign myself to work. My study of the Königsmark had been virtually abandoned. I no longer found much pleasure in disturbing that ancient dust now that fate had summoned me to witness another drama, the actors in which lived and moved around me, and spoke to me every day. There had been a great storm on a certain July evening which Aurora's pleasure doomed me to spend alone. Thr

A dark form appeared at the entrance of our dug-out, through which the chilly morning air was now stealing. "It's five o'clock, sir." It was the soldier of the party whom I had told off to wake us without fail. "We've half an hour before the attack," said Vignerte. "Let's go out. I'll finish my story outside. I'm very near the end." The stars had all vanished. One alone still twinkled low down in the Eastern sky, waiting for daybreak to blot it out. We sat down on a ledge projecting from the sid

"My story is told," said Vignerte. He lapsed into silence and I respected his feelings. Then, little by little, we both felt our thoughts wandering from the tragedy he had just conjured up and concentrate on that other drama that was about to be unfolded before our eyes. It was a quarter to six. It was not yet light, though we felt that day was at hand. The four runners, one for each section, had silently come up behind. Six o'clock!... The hour fixed for the attack. A minute passed, a minute th