Broke to every known mischance, lifted over all

By the light sane joy of life, buckler of Gaul;

Furious in luxury, merciless in toll,

Terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil;

Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of man's mind,

First to face the Truth and last to leave old Truths behind--

France, believed of every soul that loves or serves mankind!

Vag hadn't meant to read that poem when he picks up his Kipling. And now he thought of young John Kipling of the Irish Guards, lying under a white wooden cross in his same "tireless soil." How did it go? "There is some spot on foreign ..." Vag checked himself. He wouldn't think about that. The hand of death had lain heavily on France, but there were parts it had not touched, parts where there were laughter and bright lights and crowded busses, parts where people danced all through the night and the sky was pink from the neon below.

Yes, Vag was thinking of Paris, and all the teeming wards of Genevieve; whom he knew, whom he loved. People who lived and let live, people who could make dirty jokes seem clean, people who knew more than Carlyle about "the imperishable dignity of mankind."

Vag sighed. He would resort to his perennial remedy for his perennial nostalgia. Tonight he would wander up to the Geographic Institute and see Sacha Guitry in "Perles de la Couronne." He would pretend he was in his little "theatre du quartier." He would sit back in the beguiling darkness and, full of the "light sane joy of life," he would wink knowingly at some bespectacled Radcliffe girl.