"Vive la France! A bas l' Angleterre!" Everybody shouted at the top of his voice.
"What France does we all do," continued M. Roussillon, when the noise subsided. "France has clasped hands with George Washington and his brave compatriots; so do we."
"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!" shrieked Oncle Jazon in a piercing treble, tiptoeing and shaking his cap recklessly under M. Roussillon's nose.
The orator winced and jerked his head back, but nobody saw it, save perhaps Father Gibault, who laughed heartily.
Great sayings come suddenly, unannounced and unexpected. They have the mysterious force of prophetic accident combined with happy economy of phrasing. The southern blood in M. Roussillon's veins was effervescing upon his brain; his tongue had caught the fine freedom and abandon of inspired oratory. He towered and glowed; words fell melodiously from his lips; his gestures were compelling, his visage magnetic. In conclusion he said:
"Frenchmen, America is the garden-spot of the world and will one day rule it, as did Rome of old. Where freedom makes her home, there is the centre of power!"
It was in a little log church on the verge of a hummock overlooking a marshy wild meadow. Westward for two thousand miles stretched the unbroken prairies, woods, mountains, deserts reaching to the Pacific; southward for a thousand miles rolled the green billows of the wilderness to the warm Gulf shore; northward to the pole and eastward to the thin fringe of settlements beyond the mountains, all was houseless solitude.
If the reader should go to Vincennes to-day and walk southward along Second Street to its intersection with Church Street, the spot then under foot would be probably very near where M. Roussillon stood while uttering his great sentence. Mind you, the present writer does not pretend to know the exact site of old Saint Xavier church. If it could be fixed beyond doubt the spot should have an imperishable monument of Indiana stone.
When M, Roussillon ceased speaking the audience again exhausted its vocal resources; and then Father Gibault called upon each man to come forward and solemnly pledge his loyalty to the American cause. Not one of them hesitated.
Meantime a woman was doing her part in the transformation of Post Vincennes from a French-English picket to a full-fledged American fort and town. Madame Godere, finding out what was about to happen, fell to work making a flag in imitation of that under which George Washington was fighting. Alice chanced to be in the Godere home at the time and joined enthusiastically in the sewing. It was an exciting task. Their fingers trembled while they worked, and the thread, heavily coated with beeswax, squeaked as they drew it through the cloth.