“The twenty bayonets did their cruel work, and the boy died, a martyr to his convictions of right and of liberty.
“Joseph Agricole Vialla, a boy thirteen years of age, connected himself with a party of French Republican soldiers stationed on the Danube. One day an army of insurgent Royalists were discovered on the opposite side of the river, attempting to cross over on a pontoon. The only safety for the Republican soldiers was to cut the cables that held the bridge to the shore. Whoever should attempt to do this would fall within range of the Royalists’ guns, and would be exposed to what seemed to be certain destruction.
“Who would volunteer?
“Every soldier hesitated. The boy Vialla seized an axe, and ran to the bank of the stream. He began to cut the cables amid frequent volleys of shot from the other side, when a ball entered his breast. He fell, but raising himself for a moment, exclaimed,—
“‘I die, but I die for my fatherland!’
“In the Chant du Départ—an old French revolutionary song, once almost as famous as the Marseillaise—the deeds of these boy-heroes are celebrated in the following strain:—
“‘O Barra! Vialla! we envy your glory.
Still victors, though breathless ye lie.
A coward lives not, though with age he is hoary;
Who fall for the people ne’er die.
“‘Brave boys, we would rival your deed-roll,
’Twill guard us ’gainst tyranny then;
Republicans all swell the bead-roll,
While slaves are but infants ’mong men.
“‘The Republic awakes in her splendor,
She calls us to win, not to fly!
A Frenchman should live to defend her,
For her should he manfully die!’”
Wyllys Wynn seemed much impressed by these incidents of youthful heroism. He sometimes wrote poems, and on his return to the hotel he related the incident of the boy and the watch in these lines, which he read in one of the parlors to Agnes.