Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/199

Rh simplicity suggests, especially when we consider that even now, thirty-five years afterwards, the same principles prevail. What will become of effete old Europe with its budgets of thousands of millions, when compared to a Republic governed so cheaply, that the Government appears to be done by contract, where even the President is obliged to represent the nation on a salary of 125,000 francs, and is the only man allowed to have a sentinel at his door?

Mr. MacHenry, the Secretary of War, recalled to my mind the name of a French ex-Minister of War, my old comrade, M. Duportail. I learned that my old friend was still in the United States, and that he had bought a little farm near the city, so I hastened to call upon him. I met him at a little distance from his house, and, judge of my astonishment, or rather inclination to laugh, at finding him dressed in full French fashion, with his hat under his arm, though he was eighteen hundred leagues from Paris. It was ten years since the Revolution broke out, but he appeared