In addition to his extraordinary ability in the air he has
courage, coolness, perception and quickness almost without equal.
There's something Napoleonic about him."
"You know he's descended from the family of the famous Marshal, Lannes,
not from Lannes himself, but from a close relative, and the blood's the
same. They say that blood will tell, and don't you think that the spirit
of the great Lannes may have reappeared in Philip?"
"It's altogether likely."
"I've been thinking a lot about Napoleon. There's a wonderful picture of
him as a young republican general in a room here. Perhaps it's the
conditions around us, but at times I am sure the heroic days of the
First Republic have returned to France. The spirit that animated Hoche
and Marceau and Kleber and Bonaparte, before he became spoiled, seems to
have descended upon the French. And there were Murat, Lannes and
Lefebvre, and Berthier and the others. Think of that wonderful crowd of
boys leading the republican armies to victories over all the kings! It
seems to me the most marvelous thing in the history of war, since the
Greeks turned back the Persians."
Weber refilled his coffee cup, drank a portion of it, and said:
"I have thought of it, Mr. Scott, I have thought of it more than once.
It may be that the Gallic fury has been aroused. It has seemed so to me
since the German armies were turned back from Paris. The French have
burned more gunpowder than any other nation in Europe, and they're a
fighting race.
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