Your
action on the day of Zaraila was as brilliant in conception as it was
great in execution; and the courage you displayed was only equaled by
your patriotism. May the soldiers of many wars remember and emulate you.
In the name of France, I thank you. In the name of the Emperor, I bring
to you the Cross of the Legion of Honor."
As the brief and soldierly words rolled down the ranks of the listening
regiments, he stooped forward from the saddle and fastened the red
ribbon on her breast; while from the whole gathered mass, watching,
hearing, waiting breathlessly to give their tribute of applause to
their darling also, a great shout rose as with one voice, strong, full,
echoing over and over again across the plains in thunder that joined her
name with the name of France and of Napoleon, and hurled it upward in
fierce, tumultuous, idolatrous love to those cruel, cloudless skies that
shone above the dead. She was their child, their treasure, their idol,
their young leader in war, their young angel in suffering; she was all
their own, knowing with them one common mother--France. Honor to her was
honor to them; they gloried with heart and soul in this bright, young
fearless life that had been among them ever since her infant feet had
waded through the blood of slaughter-fields, and her infant lips had
laughed to see the tricolor float in the sun above the smoke of battle.
And as she heard, her face became very pale, her large eyes grew dim and
very soft, her mirthful mouth trembled with the pain of a too intense
joy.
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