a trot, with their
pennons fluttering in the breeze, and their lance-heads glimmering like
stars above the clouds of dust which rose from under their horses'
hoofs; and these were followed by several squadrons of hussars, with
their crimson trousers and their gaily furred pelisses, and then troop
after troop of horse-artillery clattering along, the high-bred horses
whirling the heavy guns and caissons behind them as if they had been
mere playthings.

It certainly was a beautiful and brilliant pageant, and the splendid
military music of the cavalry-bands, the clash and clang of the silver
cymbals, the ringing roll of the kettle-drums, and the symphonious
cadences of the cornets, horns, and trumpets at the same time, delighted
and excited me to the utmost.

But, I confess, that to me the calm old veteran, sitting unmoved amidst
all that pomp and clangour, and evidently marking only every smallest
minutiae of the men, the accoutrements, the movements, was a more
interesting, a more moving sight, than all the pageantry of uniform,
than all the thrill of music.

I thought how he had sat as cool and impassive under the iron hail of
battle, with thousands and thousands of the best and bravest falling
around him, the fate of nations hanging on a balanced scale in those
fights of giants--I thought how he, alone of men, had faced undaunted
and self-confident, that greater than Hannibal, or Alexander, that
world-conqueror Napoleon--I thought how he had quelled the might of my
own gallant land, and my blood seemed to thrill coldly in my veins, as
it will at the recital of great deeds and noble daring--and I knew not
altogether whether it was the shudder of dislike, or the thrill of
admiration that so shook me.

Had he looked proud, or self-elate, or triumphant, I felt that I could
have hated him; but so impassive, and withal now so frail and feeble,
yet with an eye so calmly firm, an expression of rectitude so conscious,
I could not but perceive that if an enemy of my _belle France_ was
before me, it was an enemy who had been made such by duty, not by
choice--an enemy who had done nought in hatred, all in honour.

I acknowledged to myself that I was in the presence of the greatest
living man; and though I could neither love nor worship, I felt subdued
and awed into a sort of breathless horror, as one might fancy humanity
to be in the presence of some superior intelligence, some being of
another world.

The girls observed m