Notre Dame. It seemed to rest on the corner of a building. The French flag was blowing steadily across its face. In the fleeting moments while this spectacle lasted, people knelt on the quay in prayer. I inquired the meaning of these prayers. The answer was that there is a prophecy centuries old that the fate of France will finally be settled upon the fields where Attila’s hordes were halted and driven back, and where many battles in defense of France have been won. And pointing up the Seine to the French flag outlined across the moon, people cried: “See! the sign in Heaven! It means the victory of French arms! The prophecy is come true as of old and France is once more to be saved on those chalky fields.”
Now when this boy of ours dropped unheralded from the sky and circling the Eiffel Tower came to rest as gently as a bird on the field of Le Bourget, I was seized with the same premonition as those French people on the quay that August night. I felt, without knowing why,
