xty-four killed and wounded."

"What was that? Who were they?" said I.

"Our fellows," replied he, frankly; "the Emperor ordered up two
twelve-pounders, and eight squadrons of lancers; they fell upon your light
dragoons in a narrow part of the high road. But suddenly we heard a noise
in front; your hussars fell back, and a column of your heavy dragoons came
thundering down upon us. _Parbleu!_ they swept over us as if we were broken
infantry; and there! there!" said he, pointing to the courtyard, from
whence the groans of the wounded still rose,--"there are the fruits of that
terrible charge."

I could not restrain an outbreak of triumphant pleasure at this gallant
feat of my countrymen.

"Yes, yes," said the honest quartermaster; "it was a fine thing; but a
heavy reckoning is at hand. But come, now, let us take the road."

In a few moments more I found myself seated upon a heavy Norman horse,
whose lumbering demi-peak saddle was nearly cleft in two by a sabre-cut.

"Ay, ay," said Monsieur Bonnard, as he saw my eye fixed on the spot, "it
was one of your fellows did that; and the same cut clove poor Pierre from
the neck to the seat."

"I hope," said I, laughing, "the saddle may not prove an unlucky one."

"No, no," said the Frenchman, seriously; "it has paid its debt to fate."

As we pressed on our road, which, broken by the heavy guns, and ploughed up
in many places by the artillery, was nearly impassable, we could distinctly
hear from time to time the distant boom of the large guns, as the retiring
and pursuing armies replied to each other; while behind us, but still a
long way off, a dark mass appeared on the horizon: they were the advancing
columns of Ney's Division.

"Have the troops come in contact more than once this morning?"

"Not closely," said the quartermaster; "the armies have kept a respectful
distance; they were like nothing I can think of," said the figurative
Frenchman, "except two hideous serpents wallowing in mire, and vomiting at
each other whole rivers of fire and flame."

As we approached Planchenoit, we came up to the rear-guard of the French
army; from them we learned that Ney's Division, consisting of the Eighth
Corps, had joined the Emperor; that the British were still in retreat, but
that nothing of any importance had occurred between the rival armies, the
French merely firing their heavy guns from time to time to ascertain by
the reply the position of the retreating forces. The rain