resolution not wavered by a hair's breadth, but it grows as steadily
as the national misfortune; and to-day, when this misfortune is
reaching its full, the national resolution is likewise attaining its
zenith. I have seen many of my refugee fellow-countrymen: some used to
be rich and had lost their all; others were poor before the war and
now no longer owned even what the poorest own. I have received many
letters from every part of Europe where duty's exiles had sought a
brief instant of repose. In them there was lamentation, as was only
too natural, but not a reproach, not a regret, not a word of
recrimination. I did not once come upon that hopeless but excusable
cry which, one would think, might so easily have sprung from
despairing lips:

"If our king had not done what he did, we should not be suffering what
we are suffering to-day."

The idea does not even occur to them. It is as though this thought
were not of those which can live in that atmosphere purified by
misfortune. They are not resigned, for to be resigned means to
renounce the strife, no longer to keep up one's courage. They are
proud and happy in their distress. They have a vague feeling that this
distress will regenerate them after the manner of a baptism of faith
and glory and ennoble them for all time in the remembrance of men. An
unexpected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human race
and from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly passed over
their lives and given them a single soul, formed of the same heroic
substance as that of their great king.


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