Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/235

 BARON D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT For centuries past, long before the Hundred Years' War, France has passed from crisis to crisis, each one so terrible that it threatened to be the last. During the religious wars, after the death of Louis XIV., after the death of Louis XV., before and after the first empire, before and after the second empire, prophets of evil have invariably despaired of her, and yet they all proved wrong. Every time she resurrected, young, elastic, living, eager to be useful. To be useful, that is her admirable tho ungrateful mission. France is the country of peculiar fruits; her soil, her climate, her unique geographical situation, the originality of her national character and her combination of enthusiasm and reflection make her a land of predilection; nature has blessed her. But in exchange for her advantages, she has great duties to accomplish; she has to contribute a large share to the development of universal progress in every shape. That is the mission which seems to superficial persons to keep her in a state of perpetual agitation. In fact, she is aglow with vitality; what seems to be convulsions are but her labor pains, and in the agony of her conflicts between caution and enthusiasm, the generous ideas which torment her triumph with so much the more expansion. France is open to ideas: she loves them, she discusses them, she fights for them; she experiments with them; she conceives or she harbors them, whether they be the noble thoughts that inspired the great Revolution,