Although the city stood wholly in the sunlight a light haze formed on the rim of the circling horizon.  He now moved the glasses slowly over a segment there and sought diligently for something.  From so high a point and with such strong aid one could see many miles.  He was sure that he would find what he sought and yet did not wish to see.  Presently he picked out intermittent flashes which he believed were made by sunlight falling on steel.  Then he drew a long and deep breath that was almost like a sigh.

“What is it?” asked Bougainville who had stood patiently by his side.

“I fear it is the glitter of lances, my friend, lances carried by German Uhlans.  Will you look?”

Bougainville held out his hands eagerly for the glasses, and then drew them back a little.  In his new dignity he would not show sudden emotion.

“It will give me gladness to see,” he said.  “I do not fear the Prussian lances.”

John handed him the glasses and he looked long and intently, at times sweeping them slowly back and forth, but gazing chiefly at the point under the horizon that had drawn his companion’s attention.

John meanwhile looked down at the city glittering in the sun, but from which its people were fleeing, as if its last day had come.  It still seemed impossible that Europe should be wrapped in so great a war and that the German host should be at the gates of Paris.

His eyes turned back toward the point where he had seen the gleam of the lances and he fancied now that he heard the far throb of the German guns.  The huge howitzers like the one Lannes and he had blown up might soon be throwing shells a ton or more in weight from a range of a dozen miles into the very heart of the French capital.  An acute depression seized him.  He had strengthened the heart of Lannes, and now his own heart needed strengthening.  How was it possible to stop the German army which had come so far and so fast that its Uhlans could already see Paris?  The unprepared French had been defeated already, and the slow English, arriving to find France under the iron heel, must go back and defend their own island.

“The Germans are there.  I have not a doubt of it, and I thank you, Monsieur Scott, for the use of these,” said Bougainville, handing the glasses back to him.

“Well, Geronimo,” he said, “having seen, what do you say?”

“The sight is unpleasant, but it is not hopeless.  They call us decadent.  I read, Monsieur Scott, more than you think!  Ah, it has been the bitterness of death for Frenchmen to hear all the world say we are a dying race, and it has been said so often that some of us ourselves had begun to believe it!  But it is not so!  I tell you it is not so, and we’ll soon prove to the Germans who come that it isn’t!  I have looked for a sign.  I sought for it in all the skies through your glasses, but I did not find it there.  Yet I have found it.”

“Where?”