high price the land on which Hannibal's victorious army was camped, when
it lay before Rome!"

"It's so! And France has her glorious traditions, too! We won't give up
until we're beaten--and not then!"

The gray eyes of Lannes flamed, and his figure seemed to swell. All the
wonderful French vitality was personified in him. He put his hand
affectionately upon the shoulder of his comrade.

"It's odd, John," he said, "but you, a foreigner, have lighted the spark
anew in me."

"Maybe it's because I _am_ a foreigner, though, in reality, I'm now no
foreigner at all, as you've just said. I've become one of you."

"It's true, John, and I won't forget it. I'm never going to give up hope
again. Maybe somebody will arrive to save us at the last. Whatever the
great one, whose greatest monument stands there, may have been, he loved
France, and his spirit may descend upon Frenchmen."

"I believe it. He had the strength and courage created by a republic,
and you have them again, the product of another republic. Look at the
flying men, Lannes!"

Lannes glanced up where the aeroplanes hovered thick over Paris, and
toward the horizon where the invisible German host with its huge guns
was advancing. The look of despair came into his eyes again, but it
rested there only a moment. He remembered his new courage and banished
it.