The biting morning wind whistled cruelly through their cotton trousers, and I felt my teeth chatter with cold, but these brave Norman boys did not feel the cold. They marched on gaily, singing the Marseillaise, and when they passed our carriage they waved their felt hats in token of gaiety, as if they were going to a fête, and, carried away by enthusiasm, they cried, “_Vive la République! Vive la France!_” A tear fell from my eye--one of those bitter tears that run silently along one’s cheek, like the overflow of a great grief. I wiped my eyes and whispered, “_E pur si muove._” Such gaiety in the face of danger, such conviction, such sublime faith in the midst of so many ruins! Is not this the fundamental strength of the French character and its great superiority, in spite of the proverbial fickleness with which it has been reproached since the time of Cæsar? Is not this the secret of the immense resilience and strength of our country? “_E pur si muove!_” Yes, the cause of such a people could not be lost. It must force fortune to smile and victory to return to its banners. Everywhere I met the same enthusiasm and the same confidence in our final success, and certainly, had it been within the bounds of human possibility to repair the disasters of the terrible campaign, France would have accomplished the miracle and would not have succumbed. “_Si Pergama dextra Defendi possent: etiam hac defense fuissent._” But against physical impossibilities no struggle can succeed; all strength exhausts itself, the strong will weakens, and patriotism, courage and resistance to the last, every prodigy of flaming love for one’s country, is impotent to effect the impossible--impotent to do what is beyond human strength. Many have criticised the desperate efforts of a people who refuse to recognise that they are beaten, and do not acknowledge the evidence of defeat; but these are precisely the efforts which, in spite of final defeat, will be written in its history in letters of gold. All the victories and glories, all the past grandeurs of the nation, pale in the presence of the greatness, unique in history, of a vanquished people which would not despair and would not surrender, a people which, when its Government, its army, its generals, all had foundered around it, alone remained upright to save its honour, grasping in one hand its flag and in the other the hilt of its broken sword. * * * * * I was convinced, in the course of my journey across Europe, and particularly by my welcome in Austria and England, that France, who was detested at the beginning of the war for having suddenly lit such a formidable fire, had reconquered general esteem by the energy she showed in the midst of her disasters.