wheel of one of their
guns, besides killing two and wounding another of their men. I felt a
hand seize my arm. It was the old sergeant. His eyes were glazing in
death, but he laughed scornfully and savagely. The roof of our shelter
fell in; the walls bent, but we cared not, we only saw the defeat of
the enemy and heard the shouts of our men nearer and nearer, when the
old sergeant gasped in my ear:

"Here he is!"

He rose to his knees, supporting himself with one hand, while with the
other he waved his hat in the air, and cried in a ringing voice:

"_Vive l'Empereur!_"

Then he fell on his face to the earth and moved no more.

And I, raising myself too from the ground, saw Napoleon, riding calmly
through the hail of shot---his hat pulled down over his large head--his
gray great-coat open, a broad red ribbon crossing his white vest--there
he rode, calm and imperturbable, his face lit up with the reflection
from the bayonets. None stood their ground before _him_; the Prussian
artillerymen abandoned their pieces and sprang over the garden-hedge,
despite the cries of their officers who sought to keep them back.

[Illustration: Everything gave way before him.]

All this I saw--it seems graved with fire on my memory, but from that
moment I can remember no more of the battle, for in that certainty of
victory I lost consciousness and fell like a corpse in the midst of
corpses.

XIV

When sense returned it was night and all was silent around. Clouds
were scudding across the sky, and the moon shone down upon the
abandoned village, the broken guns, and the pale upturned faces of the
dead, as calmly as for ages she had looked on the flowing water, the
waving grass, and the rustling leaves which fall in autumn. Men are
but insects in the midst of creation; lives but drops in the ocean of
eternity, and none so truly feel their insignificance as the dying.

I could not move from where I lay in the intensest pain. My right arm
alone could I stir, and raising myself with difficulty upon my elbow, I
saw the dead heaped along the street, their white faces shining like
snow in the moonlight. The mouths and eyes of some were wide open,
others lay on their faces, their knapsacks and cartridge-boxes on their
backs and their hands grasping their muskets. The sight thrilled me
with horror, and my teeth chattered.

I would have cried for help, but my voice was no louder than that of a
sobbing child. But my feeble c