d turned from him to the mountains of corpses, to the moaning wounded
men, the pools of blood which everywhere surrounded them, then gazed once
more at him whom they were wont to hail exultingly as their hero, their
earthly god, and whom to-day, for the first time, they execrated; whom in
the fury of their grief they even ventured to accuse and to scorn.

But he did not hear. He heard naught save the voices in his own breast, to
whose gloomy words the wails and groans of the wounded formed a horrible
chorus.

Suddenly he rose slowly, and turning toward Marshal Bessieres, who, with
his wounded arm in a sling, stood nearest to him, Napoleon pointed to the
river.

"To Ebersdorf!" he said, in his firm, imperious voice. "You will accompany
me, marshal. You too, gentlemen," he added, turning to the captured
Austrian General Weber, and the Russian General Czernitschef, who had
arrived at Napoleon's headquarters the day before the battle on a special
mission from the Czar Alexander, and been a very inopportune witness of his
defeat.

The two generals bowed silently and followed the emperor, who went hastily
down to the shore. A boat with four oarsmen lay waiting for him, and his
two valets, Constant and Roustan, stood beside the skiff to help the
emperor enter.

He thrust back their hands with a swift gesture of repulse, and stepped
slowly and proudly down into the swaying, rocking boat which was to bear
the Caesar and his first misfortune to his headquarters, Castle Ebersdorf.
He darted a long angry glance at the foaming waves roaring around the
skiff, a glance before which the bravest of his marshals would have
trembled, but which the insensible waters, tossing and surging below,
swallowed as they had swallowed that day so many of his soldiers. Then,
sinking slowly down upon the seat which Roustan had prepared for him of
cushions and coverlets, he again propped his arms on his knees, rested his
face in his hands, and gazed into vacancy. The companions whom he had
ordered to attend him, and his two valets followed, and the boat put off
from the shore, and danced, whirling hither and thither, over the
foam-crested waves.

But amid the roar of the river, the plash of the dipping oars, was heard
the piteous wailing of the wounded, the loud oaths and jeers of the
soldiers who had rushed down to the shore, and, with clenched fists, hurled
execrations after the emperor, accusing him, with angry scorn, of perfidy
because he le