“One cold night he was standing near Washington in the marquee, and Washington, the great Washington, put his own cloak about him, and the two stood under the same cloak, and some officers gathered around him. And I heard him say, the young Frenchman: ‘When you shall hear the bugles of Auvergne, the cause of liberty will have won the battle of the world.’ What did he mean?”
“I do not know,” said Madam Robinson; “it seems like a prophecy; like John Howland, the pilgrim, singing in the night-storm on the shallop of the Mayflower. The bugles of Auvergne!—the words seem to ring in my ears. What was the young Frenchman’s name?”
“Lafayette.”
The next day Peter went to Dennis and related the same story, and said:
“America will be free when she shall hear the bugles of Auvergne.”
“So she will; I feel it in my soul she will—the bugles of Auvergne! That sounds like a silver trumpet from the skies. But where are the bugles of Auvergne?”
“I do not know, but we will hear them—Lafayette said so.”
“But who is that same Lafayette?”