his recent emotion,
had adopted a somewhat oratorical air toward his son. He forthwith
improvised a fragment of discourse in honor of that soldier of the
Republic bearing the glorious name of Lacour, deeming this an opportune
time to make known to these professional soldiers the lofty lineage of
his family.

"Do your duty, my son. The Lacours inherit warrior traditions. Remember
our ancestor, the Deputy of the Convention who covered himself with
glory in the defense of Mayence!"

While he was discoursing, they had started forward, doubling a point of
the greenwood in order to get behind the cannons.

Here the racket was less violent. The great engines, after each
discharge, were letting escape through the rear chambers little clouds
of smoke like those from a pipe. The sergeants were dictating numbers,
communicated in a low voice by another gunner who had a telephone
receiver at his ear. The workmen around the cannon were obeying
silently. They would touch a little wheel and the monster would raise
its grey snout, moving it from side to side with the intelligent
expression and agility of an elephant's trunk. At the foot of the
nearest piece, stood the operator, rod in hand, and with impassive
face. He must be deaf, yet his facial inertia was stamped with a
certain authority. For him, life was no more than a series of shots and
detonations. He knew his importance. He was the servant of the tempest,
the guardian of the thunderbolt.

"Fire!" shouted the sergeant.

And the thunder broke forth in fury. Everything appeared to be
trembling, but the two visitors were by this time so accustomed to the
din that the present uproar seemed but a secondary affair.

Lacour was about to take up the thread of his discourse about his
glorious forefather in the convention when something interfered.

"They are firing," said the man at the telephone simply.

The two officers repeated to the senator this news from the watch tower.
Had he not said that the enemy was going to fire? . . . Obeying a sane
instinct of preservation, and pushed at the same time by his son, he
found himself in the refuge of the battery. He certainly did not wish
to hide himself in this cave, so he remained near the entrance, with a
curiosity which got the best of his disquietude.

He felt the approach of the invisible projectile, in spite of the
roar of the neighboring cannon. He perceived with rare sensibility
its passage through the air, above the other