The _panache_ is an external quality which adds colour and brilliancy to internal things already worth having for their own intrinsic value. Its main justification is personal bravery. To take an example, the generals of the French Revolution, the marshals of Napoleon's army, all possessed personal bravery to a high degree. They were not all distinguished by the _panache_. Some of them, indeed, Marshal Davout, for instance, were strikingly devoid of it. The representative of the _panache_ among them was essentially Murat. The _panache_ is literally a high plume, or bunch of plumes, that waves high above a commander's head-gear. Murat was bravery itself. But he had to be as conspicuous as possible. He dressed as gorgeously as he could. He rode a superb charger, and rode it superbly. His fur cap was always surmounted by a high and richly coloured plume, which was always discerned just where the battle most fiercely raged. Not his the deeply laid and skilfully carried out plans, but the brilliant and heroic cavalry charge. His eyes, his very voice, irrespective of what he said, were an inspiration to his men, and dispelled all fear of death. There is magnetism in the _panache_, and readers may remember that a few years ago an American statesman whom his friends proclaimed to be magnetic if nothing else, was known throughout the land as the Plumed Knight. "Rally round my white panache," Henry the Fourth said to his soldiers; "you will find it always on the path of honour and duty." The _panache_, too, is essentially joyful. "Cyrano" is joyful, in spite of a life that would breed discouragement and bitterness in almost any heart but his. If reality denies him his share of happiness, then he will find it in the domain the ideal. He will not have to go without it. And here we strike another cause of "Cyrano's" success. It is not simply a play, it is a poem, and poetry always leads us towards the ideal. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons underlying the love of the French for a verse play. The very swing of its verbal development lifts us above the trivialities of daily life. One might almost say that the verse play is as characteristic of the French as the Wagnerian lyric drama is of the Germans. Corneille, Racine, Hugo, Molière himself in such a play as _le Misanthrope_, are idealists, and their message to the world at large, to which must now be added that of the brilliant author of "Cyrano," tells of things better than those we see around us, of things of beauty which it lies in every one of us to bring somewhat nearer to our touch, if we will only have the courage to live up to them.