hundred miles off; and if they do not
growl as I do now, I shall give up all my knowledge of quadruped
nature."

"Why, Guiscard, what is the matter with you to-night? Have we not
gained our point? You are like the Thracians, who always mourned at
the birth of a child."

"And the Thracians were perfectly right, if the child were to be
reared a diplomatist. You talk of success!" Our path had led to where
a view of Valenciennes opened on us through the trees; and its
shattered ramparts and curtains, the trees felled along its glacis,
and its bastions stripped and broken by our cannon-balls, certainly
presented a rueful spectacle. The Austrian flag was flying on the
citadel.

"There," said he, "is our prize. It is not worth the loading of a
single gun; but it has cost us more millions to ruin than it took
francs to build it--it has cost us the conquest of France; and will
cost Europe the war, which we might have extinguished three months ago
if we had but left it behind. I acknowledge that I speak in the
bitterness of my heart; delay has ruined every thing. Our march to
Paris, and our march to Georgium Sidus, will now be finished on the
same day."

I attempted to laugh off his predictions, but he was intractable. "The
business," said he, "is all over. That flag is the signal of European
jealousy--the apple of discord. Yon are going to England; and, if you
have any regard for my opinion, tell your friends there to withdraw
their troops as soon as they can. That flag, which pretends to
partition France, will unite it as one man. Our sages here are
actually about to play its game. Orders have come to divide the army.
What folly! What inconceivable infatuation! In the very face of the
most fantastic and furious population of mankind, whom the most
trivial success inflames into enthusiasts; they are going to break up
their force, and seek adventures by brigades and battalions."

He stamped the ground with indignation; but, suddenly recovering his
calmness, he turned to me with his grave smile. "I am ashamed,
Marston, of thus betraying a temper which time ought to have cooled.
But, after all, what is public life but a burlesque; a thing of
ludicrous disappointment; a tragedy, with a farce always at hand to
relieve the tedium and the tinsel; the fall of kingdoms made laughable
by the copper lace of the stage wardrobe?"

"Do you object to our duke?"

"Not in the least. He is personally a gallant fellow; and if he wants