The Forest of Swords | Page 2

more, and the government had
fled already to Bordeaux. It seemed that everything was lost before the
war was fairly begun. The coming of the English army, far too small in
numbers, had availed nothing. It had been swept up with the others,
escaping from capture or destruction only by a hair, and was now
driven back with the French on the capital.
John had witnessed two battles, and in neither had the Germans stopped
long. Disregarding their own losses they drove forward, immense,
overwhelming, triumphant. He felt yet their very physical weight,
pressing upon him, crushing him, giving him no time to breathe. The
German war machine was magnificent, invincible, and for the fourth
time in a century the Germans, the exulting Kaiser at their head, might
enter Paris.
The Emperor himself might be nothing, mere sound and glitter, but
back of him was the greatest army that ever trod the planet, taught for
half a century to believe in the divine right of kings, and assured now
that might and right were the same.
Every instinct in him revolted at the thought that Paris should be
trodden under foot once more by the conqueror. The great capital had
truly deserved its claim to be the city of light and leading, and if Paris
and France were lost the whole world would lose. He could never
forget the unpaid debt that his own America owed to France, and he felt
how closely interwoven the two republics were in their beliefs and
aspirations.
"Why are you so silent?" asked Lannes, half angrily, although John
knew that the anger was not for him.

"I've said as much as you have," he replied with an attempt at humor.
"You notice the sunlight falling on it?" said Lannes, pointing to the Arc
de Triomphe, rising before them.
"Yes, and I believe I know what you are thinking."
"You are right. I wish he was here now."
John gazed at the great arch which the sun was gilding with glory and
he shared with Lannes his wish that the mighty man who had built it to
commemorate his triumphs was back with France--for a while at least.
He was never able to make up his mind whether Napoleon was good or
evil. Perhaps he was a mixture of both, highly magnified, but now of all
times, with the German millions at the gates, he was needed most.
"I think France could afford to take him back," he said, "and risk any
demands he might make or enforce."
"John," said Lannes, "you've fought with us and suffered with us, and
so you're one of us. You understand what I felt this morning when on
the edge of Paris I heard the German guns. They say that we can fight
on, after our foes have taken the capital, and that the English will come
in greater force to help us. But if victorious Germans march once
through the Arc de Triomphe I shall feel that we can never again win
back all that we have lost."
A note, low but deep and menacing, came from the far horizon. It
might be a German gun or it might be a French gun, but the effect was
the same. The threat was there. A shudder shook the frame of Lannes,
but John saw a sudden flame of sunlight shoot like a glittering lance
from the Arc de Triomphe.
"A sign! a sign!" he exclaimed, his imaginative mind on fire in an
instant. "I saw a flash from the arch! It was the soul of the Great
Captain speaking! I tell you, Philip, the Republic is not yet lost! I've
read somewhere, and so have you, that the Romans sold at auction at a
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