As the word fell from his lips I nearly leaped from my saddle, and
mechanically raised my sabre to cleave him on the spot.

"Then follow me!" shouted he, pointing with his sword to the glistening
ranks before us.

"Come on!" said I, with a voice hoarse with passion, while burying my spurs
in my horse's flanks, I sprang on a full length before him, and bore down
upon the enemy. A loud shout, a deafening volley, the agonizing cry of the
wounded and the dying, were all I heard, as my horse, rearing madly upward,
plunged twice into the air, and then fell dead upon the earth, crushing me
beneath his cumbrous weight, lifeless and insensible.

The day was breaking; the cold, gray light of morning was struggling
through the misty darkness, when I once more recovered my consciousness.
There are moments in life when memory can so suddenly conjure up the whole
past before us, that there is scarcely time for a doubt ere the disputed
reality is palpable to our senses. Such was this to me. One hurried glance
upon the wide, bleak plain before me, and every circumstance of the
battle-field was present to my recollection. The dismounted guns, the
broken wagons, the heaps of dead or dying, the straggling parties who on
foot or horseback traversed the field, and the dark litters which carried
the wounded, all betokened the sad evidences of the preceding day's battle.

Close around me where I lay the ground was marked with the bodies of our
cavalry, intermixed with the soldiers of the Old Guard. The broad brow and
stalwart chest of the Saxon lay bleaching beside the bronzed and bearded
warrior of Gaul, while the torn-up ground attested the desperation of that
struggle which closed the day.

As my eye ranged over this harrowing spectacle, a dreadful anxiety shot
through me as I asked myself whose had been the victory. A certain confused
impression of flight and of pursuit remained in my mind; but at the moment,
the circumstances of my own position in the early part of the day increased
the difficulty of reflection, and left me in a state of intense and
agonizing uncertainty. Although not wounded, I had been so crushed by my
fall that it was not without pain I got upon my legs. I soon perceived
that the spot around me had not yet been visited by those vultures of the
battle-field who strip alike the dead and dying. The distance of the place
from where the great conflict of the battle had occurred was probably the
reason; and now, as th