ard, and rushed
to the head of the column. It was no longer a march. With a loud cry of
vengeance, the mass rushed forward, the men trying to outstrip their
officers, and come first in contact with the foe. Like tigers on the
spring, they fell upon the enemy, who, crushed, overwhelmed, and massacred,
lay in slaughtered heaps around the cannon. The cavalry of the Guard came
thundering on behind us; a whole division followed; and three thousand five
hundred prisoners, and fourteen pieces of artillery were captured.

"I sat upon the carriage of a gun, my face begrimed with powder, and my
uniform blackened and blood-stained. The whole thing appeared like some
shocking dream. I felt a hand upon my shoulder, while a rough voice called
in my ear, '_Capitaine du soixante-neuvieme, tu es mon frere!_'

"It was Ney who spoke. This," added the brave captain, his eyes filling as
he said the words,--"this is the sabre he gave me."

I know not why I have narrated this anecdote; it has little in itself, but
somehow, to me it brings back in all its fulness the recollection of that
night.

There was something so strongly characteristic of the old Napoleonist
in the tone of his narrative that I listened throughout with breathless
attention. I began to feel too, for the first time, what a powerful arm
in war the Emperor had created by fostering the spirit of individual
enterprise. The field thus opened to fame and distinction left no bounds
to the ambition of any. The humble conscript, as he tore himself from the
embraces of his mother, wiped his tearful eyes to see before him in the
distance the baton of a marshal. The bold soldier who stormed a battery
felt his heart beat more proudly and more securely beneath the cordon of
the Legion than behind a cuirass of steel; and to a people in whom the
sense of duty alone would seem cold, barren, and inglorious, he had
substituted a highly-wrought chivalrous enthusiasm; and by the _prestige_
of his own name, the proud memory of his battles, and the glory of those
mighty tournaments at which all Europe were the spectators, he had
converted a nation into an army.

By a silent and instinctive compact we appeared to avoid those topics of
the campaign in which the honor of our respective arms was interested; and
once, when, by mere accident, the youngest of the party adverted to Fuentes
d'Onoro, the old captain adroitly turned the current of the conversation by
saying, "Come, Alphonse, let's have