, to take note of."

"And you," shouted old Morestal, bursting out at last, "I accuse you of
being impelled by some horrible sentiment against your father, against
your country, by I can't say what infamous ideas...."

"My ideas are outside the question...."

"Your ideas, which I can guess, are at the back of your conduct and of
your mental aberration. If I love France too well, you, you are too
ready to forget your duty to her."

"I love her as well as you do, father," cried Philippe, passionately,
"and better, perhaps! It is a love that sometimes moves me to tears,
when I think of what she has been, of what she is, so beautiful, so
intelligent, so great, so adorable for her charm and her good faith! I
love her because she is the mother of every lofty idea. I love her
because her language is the clearest and noblest of all languages. I
love her because she is always marching on, regardless of consequences,
and because she sings as she marches and because she is gay and active
and alive, always full of hopes and of illusions, and because she is the
smile on the face of the world.... But I cannot see that she would be
any the less great or admirable for admitting that one of her officials
was captured twenty yards to the right of the frontier."

"Why should she admit it, if it is not true?" said Morestal.

"Why should she not admit it, if peace should be the outcome?" retorted
Philippe.

"Peace! There's the great word at last!" sneered Morestal. "Peace! You
too have allowed yourself to be poisoned by the theories of the day!
Peace at the price of disgrace: that's it, is it not?"

"Peace at the price of an infinitesimal sacrifice of self-esteem."

"That means dishonour."

"No, no," Philippe answered, in an outburst of enthusiasm. "It is the
beauty of a nation to raise itself above those miserable questions. And
France is worthy of it. You do not know it, father, but since the last
forty years, since that execrable date, since that accursed war the
memory of which obsesses your mind and closes your eyes to every
reality of life, a new France has come into existence, a France whose
gaze is fixed upon other truths, a France that longs to shake off the
evil past, to repudiate all that remains to us of the ancient barbarism
and to rid herself of the laws of blood and war. She cannot do so yet,
but she is making for it with all her young ardour and all her growing
conviction. And twice already, in ten years--in the h