"You yield yourself too readily to the intoxication of glory," said Victoria, gravely reproaching him.
"Is not the glory of arms the most sublime of all?"
"Oliver, woe to those who, loving arms merely as arms, glory as glory, give way to such enticements. Their reason becomes clouded, their spirit becomes unsteeled, their patriotism falters. They grow ready to sacrifice right, liberty, dignity for that glory whose brilliancy oft conceals so much of mere low ambition, of abject servility, of shameful appetites, and vain and childish selfishness. Military chiefs are nearly all contemptible men, even under the republican regime."
"Victoria, how severe you are!" replied Oliver, sorrowfully. "Have I really merited this reproach?"
"When St. Just and Lebas came here to hold council with the Generals over to-morrow's battle, I noticed your hesitancy in giving, as customary, the military salute."
"Yes, I felt extreme repugnance toward saluting a commissioner of the Convention to the armies, because these people are in no way military. If some day I become a general, I shall never consent to submit my plans of campaign to a Representative of the people. No authority should precede that of a general in his army. That authority should be single, absolute, obeyed without discussion; he should be responsible to none for his acts. His soldiers should hear but one voice: his; know but one power: his."
"That is the language held by Dumouriez the eve of the day on which he betrayed the Republic," answered Victoria bitterly. Just then John Lebrenn and Duchemin entered, bringing in their prisoners.
John did not see his sister sitting with Oliver beside the door. But the young woman, doubly surprised by meeting at once both her brother and the Jesuit Morlet, whom she immediately recognized through his rustic disguise, made at first a move to rush after John. But fearing lest he, unable to master his surprise, might compromise the secret of a transformation which she desired to guard, she checked herself, and whispered to Oliver, who was no less stupefied than she at the sight of his former master: "My brother has gone with that country fellow and the little boy into the room of the aides-de-camp. Go tell the cannonier Duchemin to meet me in the courtyard." Tossing her sword under her left arm with military ease, the young woman started for the door; and designating by a glance the other soldiers, she added, "I do not wish my first interview with my brother to take place before our comrades; his emotion would betray me."
"I obey, Victoria," sadly replied Oliver. "My surprise at meeting your brother in the army prevents me from asking you in what I deserve the cruel words you have but just addressed to me."
"My attachment for you, Oliver, compels me never to conceal the truth, harsh as it may be. That is the only means of forestalling results of which you perhaps have no premonition. We shall resume the conversation later," she added, as she left the vestibule, the pavement of which rang under her spurred boots.