ccurred to me, that
there could be no better lesson for the love of conquest than a walk
through a military hospital after the first battle.

This anxious service lasted during the greater part of the night; for
the wounded amounted to little less than a thousand, both French and
foreign. But as I was returning to my mattress, I recollected the
countenance of a prisoner standing at the door of one of the chambers
set apart for officers of the higher rank. The man put his hand to his
shako, and addressed me in German;--he was one of the squadron of Hulans
whom I had commanded in the Prussian retreat, and who had rejoined his
regiment after the skirmish with the French dragoons. He expressed great
delight in finding that I was a survivor. But "on whom was he now in
attendance?" "On Major-General Count Varnhorst." He told me that the
general had volunteered to join the Austrian army in the Netherlands,
and taking the Hulan with him, had been wounded in covering the retreat,
been found on the field, and was now in the hands of the surgeons in
that chamber!

I pass briefly over this scene. I found my brave friend apparently at
the point of death; he had been wounded by the sabre, trampled under
horses' hoofs, and crushed in every imaginable way, in the course of the
desperate defence which he made against an overwhelming force of the
enemy's cavalry. The officers of the escort were loud in reports of his
almost frantic gallantry; but he was now so exhausted by the length of
the march as to be almost insensible: he knew no one; and his case,
after a day or two, was pronounced beyond all cure. It was then that I
obtained permission to watch over him, and at least provide that he
should not be disturbed in his closing hours. Care is often more than
science, and care succeeded in this instance, against all the ominous
looks of the medical staff. I so much delighted Pantoufle, by having
thus overthrown the authority of a pragmatical _confrere_, who had been
peculiarly stern in his prognostics; that he made the proposal to me of
joining him in the chances of his profession. "I shall fix myself in
Paris," said he; "fame will be the inevitable consequence, and fortune
will follow; here you shall be my successor." I fought off the prospect
as well as I could, and pleaded my want of professional knowledge. His
countenance, at the words, would have been an incomparable study of
mingled burlesque and scorn. He instanced a whole crowd o