invariably generous. The only return he exacted was that of homage. The
yoke was not heavy, for, after all, the homage was to Ideas, to large,
sagacious, and far-reaching Thought. It was in the year 1790 that he
broke Gideon Rand's resistance to his son's devotion to other gods than
those of the Rands. The year that followed that evening on the Albemarle
road found Lewis Rand reading law in an office in Charlottesville. A few
more years, and he was called to the bar; a little longer, and his name
began to be an oft-spoken one in his native county, and not unknown
throughout Virginia.




CHAPTER III

FONTENOY


In the springtime of the year 1804 the spectacle of human conduct ranged
from grave to gay, from gay to grave again much as it had done in any
other springtime of any other year. In France the consular chrysalis was
about to develop imperial wings. The British Lion and the Russian Bear
were cheek by jowl, and every Englishman turned his spyglass toward
Boulogne, where was gathered Buonaparte's army of invasion. In the New
World Spanish troops were reluctantly withdrawing from the vast
territory sold by a Corsican to a Virginian, while to the eastward of
that movement seventeen of the United States of America pursued the
uneven tenor of their way. Washington had been dead five years.
Alexander Hamilton was yet the leading spirit of the Federalist party,
while Thomas Jefferson was the idol of the Democrat-Republicans.