But he looked on, his gaze held by the sublimity of the mountains and the powerful spell, cast by an historic imagination. He was not only gazing upon the heart of Europe, but upon the heart of great history. There, where that long black line led through the clefts the army of Hannibal was passing. He shut his eyes and he saw the dark Carthaginian with his deep eyes, his curly perfumed beard, a scarlet robe wrapped around him, its ends dropping upon his horse, his brothers and the captains riding just behind him, and behind them the Carthaginian sacred band, the Spaniards, the Gauls, the Celts, the wild Numidians shivering on their barebacked horses, the monstrous elephants, the women, and all the strange and heterogeneous elements which the fire and genius of the great leader fused into an army unconquerable by the bravest and best soldiers of antiquity, a great man holding a great nation at bay for half a life time.
Mind and eye ran down the long line of the ages. He saw Goths and Vandals, Germans and Gauls pouring through the passes upon Italy, and then almost in his own time he saw that other, the equal of Hannibal, almost exactly the same age, leading another army over the mighty mountains into the rich plains below. He watched the short figure of Napoleon, and behind him the invincible French youth, born of the republic, dragging their cannon through the snow to victory.
"Open your eyes, John, are you going to sleep?"
"I was never further from sleep, and my eyes were so wide open that I saw more than I ever did before in my life."
"And what did you see, my wise John?"
"I saw generals and nations crossing the mountains down there. I saw through a space of many centuries, and the last I saw was your Napoleon leading his troops over the Great St. Bernard to Marengo."
Lannes' eyes flamed like stars.
"And the great marshal whose name I bear was there with him," he said. "It was near Marengo that he won his Dukedom of Montebello. Napoleon cannot come back, but victory may perch again on the banners of France."
John understood him. He knew how Frenchmen must have writhed through all the years over Gravelotte and Sedan and Metz. He knew how deeply they must have felt the taunt that they were degenerate, and the prediction of their enemies that they would soon sink to the state of a second class power. He knew how Americans would have felt in their place, and, while he had never believed the sneers, he knew they had been made so often that some Frenchmen themselves had begun to believe them. He understood fully, and the ties that were knitting him so strongly to Lannes increased and strengthened.
"They were really republicans who won the victories of Napoleon," he said, "and you have been a republic again for forty-four years. Republics give life and strength."