arm of La Belle Alliance Wellington and Bluecher had met and shaken
hands, and had thanked God for the great and glorious victory.

But the sleep-walker went on in pursuit of his dream--he walked with
measured steps beside his weary horse, his eyes fixed on the horizon far
away, where the dull crimson glow of smouldering fires threw its last
weird light upon this vast abode of the dead and the dying. He walked
on--slowly and mechanically back to the scene of the overwhelming
cataclysm where all his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked
on--majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room
of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial
crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on--silent,
exalted and great--great through the magnitude of his downfall.

And to right and left of him, like the surf that recedes on a pebbly
beach, the last of his once invincible army was flying back to
France--back in the wake of those who had been lucky enough to fly
before--bodies of men who had been the last to realise that an heroic
stand round a fallen eagle could no longer win back that which was lost,
and that if life be precious it could only be had in flight--bits of
human wreckage too, forgotten by the tide--they all rolled and rushed
and swept past the silent wayfarer . . . quite close at times: so close
that every man could see him quite distinctly, could easily distinguish
by the light of the moon the grey redingote and the battered hat which
they all knew so well--which they had been wont to see in the forefront
of an hundred victorious charges.

Now half-blinded by despair and by panic they gazed with uncomprehending
eyes on the man and on the horse and merely shouted to him as they
rushed galloping or running by, "The Prussians are on us! _Sauve qui
peut!_"

And the dreamer still looked on that distant crimson glow and in the
bosom of those wind-swept clouds he saw the pictures of Austerlitz and
Jena and Wagram, pictures of glory and might and victory, and the shouts
which he heard were the ringing cheers round the bivouac fires of long
ago.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST THROW

I

It was close on half-past nine and the moon full up on the stormy sky
when a couple of riders detached themselves out of the surging mass of
horses and men that were flying pell-mell towards Genappe, and slightly
checking their horses, put them to a slower gallop and finally to a