Continuing east beyond Nancy toward the Rhine, then, the maps depicted twenty or thirty leagues of jumbled and confused territory: an archipelago of small isolated counties and bishoprics, crumbs of land that belonged to the Holy Roman Empire until the Thirty Years' War. Eventually one reaches Strasbourg, which is on the Rhine. Louis XIV seized it some years ago. In some sense this event created me, for the plague and chaos of Strasbourg drew Jack there, and later the prospects of a fine barley-harvest and its inevitable result – war – drew him to Vienna where he met me. I wonder if I will complete the circle by journeying as far as Strasbourg now. If so, I shall complete another circle at the same time, for it was from that city that Liselotte crossed into France seventeen years ago to marry Monsieur, never to return to her homeland.