le with the dreadful concussion of the artillery; sometimes the
din would die away for a few seconds, and then, as the wind freshened,
it would swell into a thunder so loud as to make me think the battle
was close to where I stood. Hour after hour did this continue; and now,
although the little street beside me was thronged with many an anxious
group, I no longer thought of questioning them. My whole soul was
wrapped up in the one thought--that of the dreadful engagement; and as
I listened, my mind was carrying on with itself some fancied picture
of the fight, with no other guide to my imaginings than the distant
clangour of the battle. Now I thought that the French were advancing,
that their battery of guns had opened; and I could imagine the dark
mass that moved on, their tall shakos and black belts peering amidst
the smoke that lay densely in the field. On they poured, thousand after
thousand; ay, there goes the fusilade--the platoons are firing. But now
they halt; the crash of fixing bayonets is heard; a cheer breaks forth;
the cloud is rent; the thick smoke is severed as if by a lightning
flash; the red-coats have dashed through at the charge; the enemy waits
not; the line wavers and breaks; down come the cavalry, like an eagle on
the swoop! But again the dread artillery opens; the French form beneath
the lines, and the fight is renewed.

The fever of my mind was at its height. I paced my room with hurried
steps, and springing to the narrow casement, held my ear to the wall to
listen. Forgetting where I was, I called out as though at the head of my
company, with the wild yell of the battle around me, and the foe before
me.

Suddenly the crowd beneath the window broke; the crash of cavalry
equipments resounded through the street, and the head of a squadron of
cuirassiers came up at a trot, followed by a train of baggage-waggons,
with six horses to each; the drivers whipped and spurred their cattle,
and all betokened haste. From the strength of the guard and the
appearance of the waggons, I conjectured that they were the treasures of
the army--an opinion in which I was strengthened by the word 'Bayonne'
chalked in large letters on a chest thrown on the top of a carriage.
Some open waggons followed, in which the invalids of the army lay, a
pale and sickly mass; their lack-lustre eyes gazed heavily around with a
stupid wonder, like men musing in a dream. Even they, however, had arms
given them, such was the dread of f