She followed him about the fringes of the groups pressing into the great front room where a stringed orchestra was starting the first, glorious notes of the Marseillaise; and suddenly a man’s voice, in all the power and beauty of the opera singer and with the passion of a Frenchman singing for his people, burst out with the battle song:
MarseillaiseAllons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé....
It lifted her as nothing had ever before. “Go, children of your country; the day of glory is here! Against us the b****y standard of tyranny is raised!...”
She had sung that marvelous hymn of the French since she was a child; before she had understood it at all, the leap and lilt of the verse had thrilled her. It had beco
