es, it is true."

"Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is complete:
When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch soldiers, under the
French flag, have won a barren fight or two a few years back, but I
am speaking of French ones. Since eight thousand Englishmen nearly
annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen a dozen years ago at Agincourt,
French courage has been paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day
that if you confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the
French will run."

"It is a pity, but even these things are true."

"Then certainly the day for hoping is past."

I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could not
fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that there
was no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and disappointed
also. She said, without any doubt in her tone:

"France will rise again. You shall see."

"Rise?--with this burden of English armies on her back!"

"She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!" This with
spirit.

"Without soldiers to fight with?"

"The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march."

"March to the rear, as usual?"

"No; to the front--ever to the front--always to the front! You shall see."

"And the pauper King?"

"He will mount his throne--he will wear his crown."

"Well, of a truth this makes one's head dizzy. Why, if I could believe
that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken
and the French monarch's head find itself hooped with a real crown of
sovereignty--"

"Both will have happened before two years are sped."

"Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?"

"God."

It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.

What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept
running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I
should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such
things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that
strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms--yes, that must be it.

But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear
and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No,
there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in
the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for
others, sacrificing herself for othe