“You know he’s descended from the family of the famous Marshal, Lannes, not from Lannes himself, but from a close relative, and the blood’s the same.  They say that blood will tell, and don’t you think that the spirit of the great Lannes may have reappeared in Philip?”

“It’s altogether likely.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Napoleon.  There’s a wonderful picture of him as a young republican general in a room here.  Perhaps it’s the conditions around us, but at times I am sure the heroic days of the First Republic have returned to France.  The spirit that animated Hoche and Marceau and Kleber and Bonaparte, before he became spoiled, seems to have descended upon the French.  And there were Murat, Lannes and Lefebvre, and Berthier and the others.  Think of that wonderful crowd of boys leading the republican armies to victories over all the kings!  It seems to me the most marvelous thing in the history of war, since the Greeks turned back the Persians.”

Weber refilled his coffee cup, drank a portion of it, and said: 

“I have thought of it, Mr. Scott, I have thought of it more than once.  It may be that the Gallic fury has been aroused.  It has seemed so to me since the German armies were turned back from Paris.  The French have burned more gunpowder than any other nation in Europe, and they’re a fighting race.  It would appear now that the Terrible Year, 1870, was merely an aggregation of mistakes, and did not represent either the wisdom or natural genius of the nation.”

“That is, the French were then far below normal, as we would say, but have now returned to their best, and that the two Kaisers made the mistake of thinking the French in their lowest form were the French in their usual form?”

“It may be so,” said Weber, thoughtfully.  “Nations reckon their strength in peace, but only war itself discloses the fact.  Evidently tremendous miscalculations have been made by somebody.”

“By somebody?  By whom?  That’s why I’m against the Kaisers and all the secret business of the military monarchies.  War made over night by a dozen men! a third of the world’s population plunged into battle! and the rest drawn into the suffering some way or other!  I don’t like a lot of your European ways.”

Weber shook his head.

“We’ve inherited kings,” he said.  “But how did you find this place?”

“Accident.  Stumbled on it, and mighty grateful I was, too.  It kept me warm and dry after standing so long in the Marne I thought I was bound to turn into a fish.  Isolated little place, but the Germans have been passing near.  Before sleeping last night, I went out scouting and as I stood behind a hedge I saw a lot of them.  I recognized in a motor the Very High Born, his High Mightiness, the owner of the earth, the Prince of Auersperg.”

Weber took another drink of coffee.

“An able man and one of our most bitter enemies,” he said.  “A foe of democracy everywhere.  I think he was to have been made governor of Paris, and then Paris would have known that it had a governor.  I’ve seen him in Alsace, and I’ve heard a lot about him.”