The Tabor independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1913-19??, 1914-06-04
CHAPTER w.
COMING no HIS OWN.

Possibly the greatest human quality
Is effectiveness. It Is an echo Of the
most characteristic divine quality. Ma
poIeon I was essentially q creator. He
breathed into France the breath of a
life not before there; he took dtsor-
vincible armies. He. clipped territories
from countries and made OF them king
doms; beyond all, he made men. A
hero Is often crisis-born; Napoleon
made the crises and shaped heroes to
at them. Again and again he drew out
from the mass OF common clay q lump
in which his master glance saw the
Ieayen OF possibility; he breathed HIS
own conQuering, limitless spirit into 1t,
and in a turn the automatom was q
great general, ready to do his work.
bound to him for life by a chain OF de-
votion unbreakabie. -unreasoning, self
sufficient, a mystery OF that astound-
ing personality.
He made great men and then in his
lordly way he set them In frames which
suited his fastidious n OF fitness.
Out OF old Frances domains he helped
himself to lands and castles and gave
them with a free hand to his marshals
SIX q ago. before waterloo, he
had given the new chateau OF Vicques
and it's lands to General the Baron
Gaspard Gourgaud, whom he had be-
fore then fashioned into a very good
pattern OF q soldier out OF material left
over from the old aristocracy. Vicques
was a village when "all Gaul was di-
a village much the same in 1920. It lay
in the Valley Delesmontes-"of the
m~ountains"--a league from the little
city Delesmontes, whose 5000 inhabit-
ants constituted. 1t the chief city Of this
valley or the Jura. Over VicQues hung
- IT, nAaA AAA1~1 "a
Rose doomed that greater
called Le Raimeu; back OF LIE Raimeu
rolled the fur range The ancient road
OF the days OF Julius Caesar ran
through Vicques, runs now, the main
road straight to Rome. It Is kept up at
present by the government and one
Inay see q man working On IL any day.
"A little river cuts across the hamlet
the Cheulte; over II arches, steep, like
a crooked finger, unbelievably steep,
the Roman bridge built in those same
times before France was, and used now
every hour Of every day. Solid and
age defying and dignihed, II goes about
its business OF holding the land to-
gether from one day TO another as 1t
has done for 1000 years, as II nay DO,
\ to all appearances, for 1000 more. The
| old road passes over the old bridge high
into air and makes an "elbow" as the
villagers put II, at its foot, swinging
| down stream dI n E1BHa nSt0 tSahA
OF horses rafting owl the slope
| gathers such an impetus that often
they bump nto the barn OF Pierre
| Beaurame, built stolidly at the turn OF
THE elbow, before their driver q stop
them. One wonders why the grand
father OF the grandfather OF Pierre
built his bar at this place, but there II
stands. and the horses must accustom
themselves.
1t is a quaint old village sitting un-
der ita mountains, gay with It's gardens
and poppy fields, strung on It's little
river and its old, old highway. tied to-
1 gether with Its steep-archcd bridge
The general looked about him with ap-
prevail when ne drove down OF q morn
ing from the new chateau on the nil
The new chateau. the castle, Is LOCO
years old, built before the crusades, ~
the time OF CharlemagI1e, but yet nab
table. n stands not distant from and