ore the
woodwork around him.

The street was still crowded with entrapped cuirassiers, huddled in
groups or riding up and down the walls mechanically seeking shelter. A
few of these, dismounted, were wearily attempting to drag a heavy cart
away from the barricade; the Prussians shot them, one at a time, but
others came to help, and a few lancers aided them, and at length they
managed to drag a hay-wagon aside, giving a narrow passage to the open
country beyond. Instantly the Prussian infantry swarmed out of the
houses and into the street, shouting, "Prisoners!" pushing, striking,
and dragging the exhausted cuirassiers from their saddles. But contact
with the enemy, hand to hand, seemed to revive the fury of the armored
riders. The debris of the regiments closed up, long, straight sabres
glittered, trembling horses plunged forward, broke into a stiff
gallop, and passed through the infantry, through the rent in the
barricade, and staggered away across the fields, buried in the smoke
of a thousand rifles.

So rode the "Cuirassiers of Morsbronn," the flower of an empire's
chivalry, the elect of France. So rode the gentlemen of the Sixth
Lancers to shiver their slender spears against stone walls--for the
honor of France.

Death led them. Death rode with them knee to knee. Death alone halted
them. But their shining souls galloped on into that vast Valhalla
where their ancestors of Waterloo stood waiting, and the celestial
trumpets pealed a last "Dismount!"

VI

THE GAME BEGINS

The room in the turret was now swimming in smoke and lime dust; I
could scarcely see the gray figure of the Countess through the
powder-mist which drifted in through shutters and loop-hole, dimming
the fading daylight.

In the street a dense pall of pungent vapor hung over roof and
pavement, motionless in the calm August air; two houses were burning
slowly, smothered in smoke; through a ruddy fog I saw the dead lying
in mounds, the wounded moving feebly, the Prussian soldiery tossing
straw into the hay-carts that had served their deadly purpose.

But oh, the dreadful murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous,
ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures,
tenacious of life, who are dying and who die hard.

Helmeted figures swarmed through the smoke; wagon after wagon, loaded
deep with dead cavalrymen, was drawn away by heavy teams of horses now
arriving from the regimental transport train, which had come up and