happiest duty of my life. In
conveying to you the expression of the Emperor's approval of your noble
conduct in the present campaign, I express the sentiments of the whole
Army. Your action on the day of Zaraila was as brilliant in conception
as it was great in execution; and the courage you displayed was only
equalled by your patriotism. May the soldiers of many wars remember you
and emulate you. In the name of France, I thank you. In the name of the
Emperor, I bring to you the Cross of the Legion of Honour."

As the brief and soldierly words rolled down the ranks of the listening
regiments, he stooped forward from his saddle and fastened the red
ribbon on her breast; while from the whole gathered mass, watching,
hearing, waiting breathlessly to give their tribute of applause to their
darling also, a great shout rose as with one voice, strong, full,
echoing over and over again across the plains in thunder that joined her
name with the name of France and of Napoleon, and hurled it upward in
fierce tumultuous idolatrous love to those cruel cloudless skies that
shone above the dead. She was their child, their treasure, their idol,
their young leader in war, their young angel in suffering; she was all
their own, knowing with them one common mother--France. Honour to her
was honour to them; they gloried with heart and soul in this bright
young fearless life that had been among them ever since her infant feet
had waded through the blood of slaughter-fields, and her infant lips had
laughed to see the tricolour float in the sun above the smoke of battle.

And as she heard, her face became very pale, her large eyes grew dim and
very soft, her mirthful mouth trembled with the pain of a too intense
joy. She lifted her head, and all the unutterable love she bore her
country and her people thrilled through the music of her voice:

"_Francais!--ce n'etait rien!_"

That was all she said; in that one first word of their common
nationality, she spoke alike to the Marshal of the Empire and to the
conscript of the ranks. "Francais!" that one title made them all equal
in her sight; whoever claimed it was honoured in her eyes, and was
precious to her heart, and when she answered them that it was nothing,
this thing which they glorified in her, she answered but what seemed the
simple truth in her code. She would have thought it "nothing" to have
perished by shot, or steel, or flame, in day-long torture, for that one
fair sake of France.