mount. Everybody was
looking on, and the roll commenced. The commandant crossed the square,
and the captains went quickly up to meet him; he said a few words to
them, and then passed in front of the battalion, followed by a sergeant
with three chevrons, who carried a flag in its oil-cloth case. The
crowd increased every moment. Mr. Goulden had mounted on the stone
posts in front of the arch of the guard-house. After the roll was
called, the commandant waited a moment and then drew his sword and gave
the order to form a square. I tell you these things in a simple way,
because they were simple and terrible.

The commandant was very pale, and we could see, though it was almost
night, that he had fever. The gray lines of soldiers in the square,
the commandant on horseback, the officers around him in the rain, the
listening citizens, the profound silence, the opening of the windows in
the vicinity, all are present to my mind though fifty years have passed
since then. Not a word was said, for we all felt that we were going to
learn the fate of France.

"Carry arms! shoulder arms!"

After this nothing was heard but the voice of the commandant, that
voice which I had heard on the other side of the Rhine at Lutzen and
Leipzig, saying:

"Close the ranks."

The words went through my very marrow.

"Soldiers!" said he, "Louis XVIII. left Paris on the 20th of March, and
the Emperor Napoleon made his entry into the capital the same day."

A sort of shiver went through the crowd, but it lasted for a moment
only, and the commandant continued:

"Soldiers, the flag of France is the flag of Arcola, of Rivoli, of
Alexandria, of Chebreisse, of the Pyramids, of Aboukir, of Marengo, of
Austerlitz, and of Jena, of Eylau, of Friedland, of Sommo-Sierra, of
Madrid, of Abensberg, of Eckmuel, of Essling, of Wagram, of Smolensk, of
Moscowa, of Weissenfels, of Lutzen, of Bautzen, of Wurtschen, of
Dresden, of Bischofswarda, of Hanau, of Brienne, of Saint Dizier, of
Champaubert, of Chateau-Thierry, of Joinvilliers, of Mery-sur-Seine, of
Montereau, and of Montmirail. It is the flag which we have dyed with
our blood, and it is that which makes it our glory."

The old sergeant had drawn the torn flag from its case, and the
commandant continued:

"Here is the flag! you recognize it; it is the flag of the nation, it
is that flag which the Russians and Austrians and Prussians took from
us on the day of their first victory, because they