The Price of Victory

• 1911
• Other, Drama

In the south of France lived old Daudet, the keeper of an inn, and his son, a young man of eighteen years, the other a royalist, the son an enthusiastic patriot. One day Jean Daudet is called to battle. Eight weeks later the lad returns to the village dressed in all the wonderful trappings of a drummer boy, all of life and patriotism; and thus the old man bids him farewell. The news of the battle reaches the village, the old gray-haired father goes forth to search for his son. Back to the inn the heartbroken father brings his dear dead and simply and humbly lays the silent white figure upon the table, and placing two candles at his head, sits alone in the silent watches of the night beside his dead one. The Emperor and his staff stop at the inn for a few moments to write the dispatch heralding the news of the victory. Small wonder when the man of destiny calls for candles, so that he may see to write, that the old father refuses to give them up. By this means the Emperor and the dead drummer boy are brought together. The father, filled with hatred, springs upon Napoleon with an upraised knife, but the Emperor almost abstractedly brushes it away as well as the sword which flashes to his defense, quietly places the Cross of the Legion of Honor upon the dead boy's breast and silently covers the figure with the flag for which he died, thus doing all that lay, even in the power of the Emperor, to pay reverence to this simple little drummer boy.