* * * * *

Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this,
France has been able to fight on, and will be able to fight to the
end. Because the women of France have been all this and have done all
this, the soldiers, in the mud of the trenches, revere them as
Madonnas.

The historian Tacitus tells somewhere how, on a hot spring day, a
slave, panting and worn out, entered one of the gates of the Eternal
City. He crossed the Forum without stopping and, in his course,
mounted the Hill of Mars. Finally he came to one of the greatest
houses of the patrician section of the city. His cries and shouts
filled the house:

"Alas, alas!" he cried.

A lady hastened to him. She was the mistress of the house, the famous
Cornelia Graccha.

"What news do you bring?" she asked.

"Alas, alas," repeated the slave, "in the battle down there in Umbria,
two of your sons have been killed."

"Fool," was the reply, "I do not ask that. Have the Barbarians been
conquered?"

"They have, Cornelia."