This motto a part of the French soldiers bore proudly wherever they went. They carried it out of France with shoutings, and trailed it across the sea. They bore it into Newport amid booming guns, and to Lebanon amid the shouts of the heroic farmers. They planted it on Lebanon green. It should be put to-day among the mottoes of schools for Flag days and Independence days.
That day of review—it may well rise again in our fancy!
Spring is in the air. The birds in the woods are appearing again. There is new light and odors in the cedars.
The French heroes of Auvergne, the mountaineers, whose aid Lafayette had sought, assembled on the green. On one side of the green was the tavern, and on the other side rose the country village church. The hills everywhere were renewing their circle of green.
Rochambeau was there with the escutcheon. The Marquis de Chastellux was probably there—a man of genius, who wielded the pen of a painter. The gay, and perhaps profane, Duke de Lauzun was there—he who laughed at the Governor’s prayers at the table, and who died many years afterward on the guillotine. Men were there who had sought the animal delights of the glittering palaces of Versailles, Marley, and Saint Cloud. The heroes were there whose descendants made France a republic.
The sun rose high on the glittering hills. The bugles sounded again, horses neighed and pranced, uniforms glittered, and the band filled the air with choral strains.
The simple country folks gathered about the green, bringing “training-day” ginger-bread, women with knitted hoods, boys and girls in homespun.
The cedar of Lebanon was there—Governor Trumbull—and his wife, also, more noble than most of the stately dames of Trianon.
The American flag arose, and was hailed as the flag of the future.
A shout for honor went up in which all joined. The hearts of the French heroes and American heroes were one. Honor and liberty was the sentiment that ruled the hour, and here the pioneers of liberty of the two republics of the future clasped hands.