to the last farthing of extortion.

The most sacred spot in Paris to young Foch, in all the depression he
found there, was undoubtedly the great Dôme des Invalides, where,
bathed in an unearthly radiance and surrounded by faded battle flags,
lies the great porphyry sarcophagus of Napoleon I.

With what bitter reflections must the young man who had been nurtured
in the adoration of Bonaparte have returned from that majestic tomb to
the Polytechnic School for Warriors--to which, on the day after his
coronation as Emperor, Napoleon had given the following motto:

"Science and glory--all for country."

But, also, what must have been the young southerner's thought as he
lifted his gaze on entering the Polytechnic and read there that
self-same wish which was inscribed over the door of his first school in
Tarbes:

"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."

The edifice in which part of the Polytechnic was housed was the ancient
College of Navarre, and a Navarrias poet of lang syne had given to the
Paris school for his countrymen this quaint wish, repeated from the
inscription he knew at Tarbes.

France had had twelve different governments in fourscore years when
Ferdinand Foch came to study in that old building which had once been
the college of Navarre. Houses of cards rather than houses of