At all times of great national disaster he has risen before the people's eyes, like an omen of victory and glory, with his lustrous helmet and his sword.

He has appeared and has halted like a soldier-archangel over the flaming horizon of conflagrations or the dark mounds of battle and pestilence, leaning over his horse's winged mane, fantastically swaying as though the earth itself were inebriate with pride.

Everywhere he has been seen, reviving the ideals and the prowess of the Past.

He was seen in Austria, at the time of the eternal quarrel between Pope and Emperor; he was seen above the strange stirrings of Scythians and Arabs, and the glowing civilizations which arose and fell like waves around the Mediterranean.

Great Roland can never die." And after he had read these lines of a legend, the young man made me admire them, and looked at me.
He whom I thus see again, as precisely as one sees a portrait, just as he was that evening so wonderfully far away, was my father.