oarsely. "How the
horses fall in that meadow!"

"They will fall thicker than that in this street!"

"See!" she cried; "they have begun to gallop! They are coming! Oh, I
cannot look!--I--I cannot!"

Far away, a thin cry sounded above the cannon din; the doomed
cuirassiers were cheering. It was the first charge they had ever made;
nobody had ever seen cavalry of their arm on any battle-field of
Europe since Waterloo.

Suddenly their long, straight blades shot into the air, the
cuirassiers broke into a furious gallop, and that mass of steel-clad
men burst straight down the first slope of the plateau, through the
Prussian infantry, then wheeled and descended like a torrent on
Morsbronn.

In the first ranks galloped the giants of the Eighth Cuirassiers,
Colonel Guiot de la Rochere at their head; the Ninth Cuirassiers
thundered behind them; then came the lancers under a torrent of
red-and-white pennons. Nothing stopped them, neither hedges nor
ditches nor fallen trees.

Their huge horses bounded forward, manes in the wind, tails streaming,
iron hoofs battering the shaking earth; the steel-clad riders, sabres
pointed to the front, leaned forward in their saddles.

Now among the thicket of hop-vines long lines of black arose; there
was a flash, a belt of smoke, another flash--then the metallic rattle
of bullets on steel breastplates. Entire ranks of cuirassiers went
down in the smoke of the Prussian rifles, the sinister clash and crash
of falling armor filled the air. Sheets of lead poured into them; the
rattle of empty scabbards on stirrups, the metallic ringing of bullets
on helmet and cuirass, the rifle-shots, the roar of the shells
exploding swelled into a very hell of sound. And, above the infernal
fracas rose the heavy cheering of the doomed riders.

Into the deep, narrow street wheeled the horsemen, choking road and
sidewalk with their galloping squadrons, a solid cataract of impetuous
horses, a flashing torrent of armored men--and then! Crash! the first
squadron dashed headlong against the barricade of wagons and went
down.

Into them tore the squadron behind, unable to stop their maddened
horses, and into these thundered squadron after squadron, unconscious
of the dead wall ahead.

In the terrible tumult and confusion, screaming horses and shrieking
men were piled in heaps, a human whirlpool formed at the barricade,
hurling bodily from its centre horses and riders. Men galloped
headlong into each other,