. He lets them enter the tete-de-pont. *
They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that
the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they
desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The officer sends for
Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack jokes, sit on the
cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to the bridge unobserved,
flings the bags of incendiary material into the water, and approaches
the tete-de-pont. At length appears the lieutenant general, our dear
Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the
Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can
shake one another's hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience
to make Prince Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen,
Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so
flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals,
and so dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes,
qu'il n'y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
l'ennemi!" *(2) In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not
forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation.
"The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went on, his excitement
subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, "is that the
sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
goes up to Auersperg and says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are
the French!' Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed
to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a
true Gascon) and says: 'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian
discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It
was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."

* Bridgehead.

* (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
he ought to be firing at the enemy.

"It may be treachery," said Princ