Chapter I: Front Matter

No Enemy

A TALE OF
RECONSTRUCTION

_by_ Ford Madox Ford

_Author of_
NO MORE PARADES
SOME DO NOT
_etc._

_New York, 1929_
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

_To_
ESTHER JULIA MADOX FORD

_Très, très chère petite Princesse_,

When you shall come to read English--which I hope will not be too soon--you shall find here adumbrated what the world seemed like to me just when you were preparing to enter it ..... a confused old world which your coming rendered so much clearer and dearer. And as these pages were written in the expectation of you--and for you!--I have thought better to leave them exactly as they were, bearing as they obviously do the traces of sufferings that, thank God, you never knew. And so, when you come to read them, give a tender thought to him to whom you have so often written--quitoubliejamé et qui t’aime de tou son coeur et encore beaucoupluss!

F. M. F.

New York, 21st June, 1929

What is love of one’s land?....
I don’t know very well.
It is something that sleeps
For a year, for a day,
For a month--something that keeps
Very hidden and quiet and still
And then takes
The quiet heart like a wave,
The quiet brain like a spell,
The quiet will
Like a tornado--and that shakes
The whole of the soul.

CONTENTS

Part One--Four Landscapes

CHAPTER PAGE

I TO INTRODUCE GRINGOIRE 9

II GARDENS AND FLATS 19

III BLUE OF SWALLOWS’ BACKS 39

IV THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH 47

V INTERMEZZO 88

VI JUST COUNTRY 118

VII PLAYING THE GAME 129

Part Two--Certain Interiors

VIII “MAISIE” 147

IX THE WATER MILL 176

X FROM A BALCONY 194

XI “ROSALIE PRUDENT” 222

XII THE MOVIES 258

ENVOI 293