Reverses which he hoped to inflict on the Prussian
Field Marshal would increase the Austrian hesitation. The Emperor
believed that the pressure by Oudinot and Victor would be effective.
They would draw in their columns and concentrate.

After he had finished with Bluecher and his army, he intended to retrace
his steps and do the same thing with Schwarzenberg. Of course, if he
failed with Bluecher it was all over. He was the last hope of
France--he and his army. If his magnificent dash at the Prussians and
Russians was not successful, nothing could delay the end. Napoleon was
staking all on the throw, taking the gambler's chance, taking it
recklessly, accepting the hazard, but neglecting no means to insure the
winning of the game.

The Emperor flung a screen of cavalry in front of Marmont, to patrol
every village, to control every farmhouse, to see that no news of his
advance came to the unsuspecting old Prussian. And then he himself
stayed back in Nogent to see his own orders carried out. He personally
inspected every division, as it marched to the front through the waning
night, the cheerless dawn, the gray dark day. It cut him to the heart
to see his soldiers go so silently and so sullenly. Here and there a
regiment did cry: "_Vive l'Empereur_"; here and there a voice sounded
it, but in the main the men marched dumbly, doggedly. It was only the
old guard that gave him the imperial salute in full voice in the old
way.

Nothing indicated to the Emperor more thoroughly the temper of the
soldiers than that open indifference. Why, even in Russia, ere their
stiffened lips froze into silence, they had breathed out the old
acclaim. The Emperor remembered that grenadier who, when told by the
surgeon that he feared to probe for a ball that had pierced his breast
because he did not know what he would find, "If you probe deep enough
to reach my heart," said the soldier with his dying breath, "you will
find the Emperor."

Grave-faced and frowning, shivering from time to time in the fierce,
raw cold, the Emperor watched the troops march by. Well, the day after
to-morrow, if there were any left, they would acclaim him loud enough.
The Emperor was cold and cynical. He had never allowed the life of men
to stand in the way of his desires, but even his iron nerve, his icy
indifference had been shaken. He gave no outward evidence of it, but
in his heart he realized more plainly than ever before that when these
were