His anger grows so strong that he gets up from his chair. He cannot remain there. The woman has seen him, and might think that he is pursuing her, that he is waiting for her to come out, in order to entreat her. Never; he has had enough of certain humiliations which he does not care to remember.
He hurriedly says good-by. They will see each other again soon. Don Marcos has invited him to dinner at the little house in Beausoleil. The Colonel was sure that his visit would please the Prince.
He grasps Lubimoff's hand and does not seem to notice it is the wooden one. His eyes and his thoughts are on the café windows, ablaze in mid afternoon. Through them the cadenced murmur of the violins is passing. As he walks away he still repeats his protest.
"The poor Duchess up there forgotten.... And the other woman. What a scandal! I am glad I'm going away soon, and will never see her again."
On remaining alone, the Prince leaves his table. Don Marcos is doubtless telling the news of his arrival to every one he meets, and Michael is afraid that other less interesting persons will appear.
As he walks along he notices something which he had not seen before when he was with the Colonel. The United States flag is floating above all the buildings. In the city streets there are as many signs in English as in French. There are American soldiers everywhere. Lubimoff's uniform and that of the other French fighters are lost in the great flood of men dressed in mustard color. The light automobiles of the American army pass incessantly. They are everywhere. One meets them in the streets, on the roads along the coast and climbing the slopes of the Alps like buzzing, snorting ants. Everything seems animated by a robust, gay, self-confident life, the life of a twenty-year-old boy. The concert on the terraces is being given by an American band. The people walking in the streets absent-mindedly whistle dance tunes from across the ocean and marching songs of the soldiers from the States. People stop in the squares to admire the skill of the Americans in shirt sleeves throwing a ball and sending it back again after catching it in a kind of fencing glove.
Monaco seems to have been conquered by the troops of the Great Republic; a good-natured and kindly conquest, which makes the conquered smile. It is the same in Nice and everywhere on the Riviera. The Prince recalls his brief stay in Paris a few days before. There he saw Americans just as here. How many are they? What superhuman power has been able to create in a few months this army which though of recent birth, seems to fill all space?
A people has just risen above all the peoples of the earth. Never in history has such a rise been known. It dominates through friendliness, through its generous acts, and by the beneficent strength of its activities; not through terror, the base of all greatness in the past.
Lubimoff recalls his doubts of the year before. No one would have believed that a people without armies could improvise a military force equal to those of old Europe. And in only a few months the United States had organized and transported two million men to decide the outcome of the struggle, and the world's fate.
Arriving at the last moment, they had liberally given their share of dead. In five months of campaign a hundred and twenty thousand Americans had perished, a huge proportion compared to the losses of the other nations during five years of fighting.