In his new dignity he would not show sudden emotion.
"It will give me gladness to see," he said.

"I do not fear the Prussian lances." John handed him the glasses and he looked long and intently, at times sweeping them slowly back and forth, but gazing chiefly at the point under the horizon that had drawn his companion's attention.
John meanwhile looked down at the city glittering in the sun, but from which its people were fleeing, as if its last day had come.

It still seemed impossible that Europe should be wrapped in so great a war and that the German host should be at the gates of Paris.
His eyes turned back toward the point where he had seen the gleam of the lances and he fancied now that he heard the far throb of the German guns.

The huge howitzers like the one Lannes and he had blown up might soon be throwing shells a ton or more in weight from a range of a dozen miles into the very heart of the French capital.

An acute depression seized him.