"Do not mistake me, Uncle Ulrich. I do not hate the Germans, and in that I differ from you. I even admire them, for in some things they are admirable. Among them I have friends I esteem greatly. I shall have others. I belong to a generation which has not seen what you have seen, and which has lived differently—I have not been conquered!"
"Happily, not!"
"Only the more I know them, the more I feel myself different from them; I feel I am of another race, with another category of ideals into which they do not enter, which I find superior, and which, without knowing why, I call 'France.'"
"Bravo, Jean, bravo!"
The old dragoon officer bent forward—he also was quite pale—and the two men were only separated by the width of the table.
"What I call France, uncle, what I have in my heart, like a dream, is a country where there is a greater facility for thought."
"Yes——"
"For speech——"
"For laughter."