pulse, spring to the front. The ridges are crested with human masses
swaying to and fro, and the first red uniform is seen in the streets of
Montebello, in relief against the chalky facades bristling with Austrian
guns, pouring forth their ammunition on the enemy below. The soldiers
burst into the houses, the courtyards, the enclosures; every instant
you hear the breaking open of doors, the crashing of windows, and
the scuffling of the terrified inmates. The white uniforms retire in
disorder. The village belongs to the French! Not just yet, though.
From the last houses on the street, to the entrance of the cemetery,
is rising ground, and just behind stands a small hillock. The enemy has
retrenched itself there, and, from its cannons ranged in battery, is
raining a terrible shower on the village just evacuated.

The assailants hesitate, and draw back before this hailstorm of iron;
suddenly a general appears from under the walls of a building already
crumbling under the continuous fire, spurs his horse forward, and
shouts: "Come, boys, let us carry the fort!"

Among the first to rally to this call, one rifleman in particular, a
fine, broad-shouldered active fellow, with a brown moustache and olive
complexion, darts forward to the point indicated. It is Claudet. Others
are behind him, and soon more than a hundred men, with their bayonets,
are hurling themselves along the cemetery road; the grand chasserot
leaps across the fields, as he used formerly in pursuit of the game in
the Charbonniere forest. The soldiers are falling right and left of
him, but he hardly sees them; he continues pressing forward, breathless,
excited, scarcely stopping to think. As he is crossing one of the
meadows, however, he notices the profusion of scarlet gladiolus and also
observes that the rye and barley grow somewhat sturdier here than in
his country; these are the only definite ideas that detach themselves
clearly from his seething brain. The wall of the cemetery is scaled;
they are fighting now in the ditches, killing one another on the side of
the hill; at last, the fort is taken and they begin routing the enemy.
But, at this moment, Claudet stoops to pick up a cartridge, a ball
strikes him in the forehead, and, without a sound, he drops to the
ground, among the noisome fennels which flourish in graveyards--he
drops, thinking of the clock of his native village.

......................

"I have sad news for you," said Julien to