sary for
an assault. When all was ready, orders were given: the column marched
forward at midnight. At that moment a courier rode up at full speed
with dispatches from Potemkin. Suwarrow was no sooner apprised of his
arrival than he guessed with his usual quickness the nature of the
dispatches, and he determined not to receive them till the fate of
the enterprise was decided. He ordered his horse to be brought round
to the door of his tent; he sprang on it and galloped off, without
seeming to observe the courier. After a desperate resistance the Turks
at length gave way, and Ismail fell into the hands of the Russians.
With his staff gathered eagerly round Suwarrow to offer their
congratulations, the eyes of the Marshal fell upon the officer who
bore the dispatches.

"Who are you, brother?" said he.

"It is I," replied the courier, "who brought dispatches from Prince
Potemkin yesterday evening."

"What!" exclaimed Suwarrow, with affected passion,--"what! you bring
me news from my sovereign!--you have been here since yesterday, and
I have not yet received the dispatches!" Then threatening the officer
for his negligence, he handed the dispatch to one of his generals and
bade him read it aloud.

A more striking scene can scarcely be conceived. There was deep
silence as the dispatch was opened. Suwarrow and his companions in
victory listened with breathless interest. Every danger which they
had braved and surmounted was enumerated one after the other. It was
urged that an enterprise undertaken in the midst of a winter even more
than usually severe, must be disastrous, and that it was absolutely
preposterous to think it possible to make an impression on a fortress
furnished with 230 pieces of cannon and defended by 43,000 men, the
half of whom were Janissaries, with a force that amounted to no more
than 28,000--little more than half their number. The dispatch ended
with a peremptory order for the abandonment of the enterprise.

"Thank God!" exclaimed Suwarrow, as soon as the general had ceased
reading, raising his eyes to heaven and crossing himself with
devotion, "thank God, Ismail is taken, or I should have been undone!"

There was silence for a moment, as if all participated in the feeling
with which Suwarrow glanced at the different situation which would
have been his had he not succeeded; every eye was fixed on him, and
then a sudden shout of triumph burst through all the ranks. He then
penned the following brief