, 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 d