The Forest of Swords | Page 2

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 republic. Look at the flying men, Lannes!"
Lannes glanced up where the aeroplanes hovered thick over Paris, and toward the horizon where the invisible German host with its huge guns was advancing. The look of despair came into his eyes again, but it rested there only a moment. He remembered his new courage and banished it.
"Perhaps I ought to be in the sky myself with the others," he said, "but