The Catholic World, Vol. 06, October, 1867 to March, 1868.

by Various

Abscondita.

Flower of the forest, that, unseen,
With sweetness fill'st the vernal grove,
Where hid'st thou? 'Mid the grasses green,
Or those dim boughs that mix above?
Thou bird that, darkling, sing'st a song
That shook the bowers of paradise,
Thou too art hid thy leaves among:
Thou sing'st unseen of mortal eyes.
Of her thou sing'st whose every breath
Sweetened a world too blind to heed;
Of Him—Death's Conqueror—that from death
Alone would take the crown decreed.
Thou sing'st that secret gifts are best;
That only like to God are they
Who keep God's secret in their breast,
And hide, as stars are hid by day.
Aubrey De Vere.

---

Translated From The French.
The Story of a Conscript.

XV.

When I returned to myself, I looked around. I was in a long hall, with posts all around. I was in a bed, and beside me was an old gray-mustached soldier, who, when he saw my eyes open, lifted up my head and held a cup to my lips.

"Well," said he cheerfully, "well! we are better."

I could not help smiling as I thought that I was yet among the living. My chest and arm were stiff with bandages; I felt as if a hot iron were burning me there; but no matter, I lived!

I gazed at the heavy rafters crossing the space above me; at the tiles of the roof, through which the daylight entered in more than one spot; I turned and looked to the other side, and saw that I was in one of those vast sheds used by the brewers of the country as a shelter for their casks and wagons. All around, on mattresses and heaps of straw, numbers of wounded lay ranged; and in the middle, on a large kitchen-table, a surgeon-major and his two aids, their shirt-sleeves rolled up, were amputating the leg of a soldier, who was shrieking in agony. Behind them was a mass of legs and arms. I turned away sick and trembling.

Five or six soldiers were walking about, giving drink to the wounded.

But the man who impressed himself most on my memory was a surgeon with sleeves rolled up, who cut and cut without paying the slightest attention to what was going on around; he was a man with a large nose and wrinkled cheeks, and every moment flew into a passion at his assistants, who could not give him his knives, pincers, lint, or linen fast enough, or who were not quick enough sponging up the blood.

They had just laid out on the table a Russian carbineer, six feet in height at least; a ball had pierced his neck near the ear, and while the surgeon was asking for his little knives, a cavalry surgeon passed before the shed. He was short, stout, and badly pitted with the small-pox, and held a portfolio under his arm.

"Ha! Forel!" cried he cheerfully.

"It is Duchêne," said our surgeon, turning around. "How many wounded?"

"Seventeen to eighteen thousand." Our surgeon left the shed to chat with his comrade; they conversed tranquilly, while the assistants sat down to drink a cup of wine, and the Russian rolled his eyes despairingly.

"See, Duchêne; you have only to go down the street, opposite that well, do you see?"

" Very well indeed."

"Just opposite you will see the canteen."

"Very good; thank you; I am off."

He started, and our surgeon called after him—

"A good appetite to you, Duchêne!"

Then he returned to his Russian, whose neck he had laid open. He worked ill-humoredly, constantly scolding his aids.

The Russian writhed and groaned, but he paid no attention to that, and at last, throwing the bullet upon the ground, he bandaged up the wound, and cried, "Carry him off!"

They lifted the Russian from the table, and stretched him on a mattress beside the others; then they laid his neighbor upon the table.

I could not think that such horrors took place in the world; but I was yet to see worse than this.

At five or six beds from mine was an old corporal with his leg bound up. He closed one eye knowingly, and said to his neighbor, whose arm had just been cut off:

"Conscript, look at that heap! I will bet that you cannot recognize your arm."

The other, who had hitherto shown the greatest courage, looked, and fell back senseless.

Then the corporal began laughing, saying:

"He did recognize it. It always produces that effect."

He looked around self-approvingly, but: no one laughed with him.

Every moment the wounded called for water. When one began, all followed, and the old soldier had certainly conceived a liking for me, for each time he passed, he presented the cup.

I did not remain in the shed more than an hour. A dozen ambulances drew up before the door, and the peasants of the country round, in their velvet jackets and large black, slouched hats, their whips on their shoulders, held the horses by the reins. A picket of hussars arrived soon after, and their officer dismounting, entered and said:

"Excuse me, major, but here is an order to escort twelve wagons of wounded as far as Lutzen. Is it here that we are to receive them?" '"Yes, it is here," replied the surgeon.

The peasants and the ambulance-drivers, after giving us a last draught of wine, began carrying us to the wagons. As one was filled, it departed, and another advanced. They had given us our great-coats; but despite them and the sun, which was shining brightly, we shivered with cold. No one spoke; each was too much occupied thinking of himself.

At moments I was terribly cold; then flashes of heat would dart through me, and flush me as in fever; and indeed it was the beginning of the fever. But as we left Kaya, I was yet well; I saw everything clearly, and it was not till we neared Leipsic that I felt indeed sick. The hussars rode beside us, smoking and chatting, paying no attention to us.

In passing through Kaya, I saw all the horrors of war. The village was but a mass of cinders; the roofs had fallen, and the walls alone remained standing; the rafters were broken; we could see the remnants of rooms, stairs, and doors heaped within. The poor villagers, women, children, and old men, came and went with sorrowful faces. We could see them going up and down in their houses; and in one we saw a mirror yet hanging unbroken, showing where dwelt a young girl in time of peace.

Ah! who of them could foresee that their happiness would so soon be destroyed, not by the fury of the winds or the wrath of heaven, but by the rage of man!

Even the cattle and pigeons seemed seeking their lost homes among the ruins; the oxen and the goats scattered through the streets, lowed and bleated plaintively. At the last house an old man, with flowing white hair, sat at the threshold of what had been his cottage, with a child upon his knees, glaring on us as we passed. His furrowed brow and stony eyes spoke of despair. How many years of labor, of patient economy, had he passed to make sure a quiet old age! Now all was crushed, ruined; the child and he had no longer a roof to cover their heads.

And those great trenches—fully a mile of them—at which the country people were working in such haste, to keep the plague from completing the work war began! I saw them, too, from the top of the hill of Kaya, and turned away my eyes, horror-stricken. Russians, French, Prussians were there heaped pell-mell, as if God had made them to love each other before the invention of arms and uniforms, which divide them for the profit of those who rule them. There they lay, side by side; and those of them who could not die knew no more of war, but cursed the crimes that had for centuries kept them apart.

But what was sadder yet, was the long line of ambulances, bearing the agonized wounded—those of whom they speak so much in the bulletins to make the loss seem less, and who die by thousands in the hospitals, far from all they love; while at their homes cannon are firing, and church-bells are ringing with joyous chimes of victory.

At length we reached Lutzen, but it was so full of wounded that we were obliged to continue on to Leipsic. Fatigue and weariness overpowered me, and I fell asleep, and only awoke when I felt myself lifted from the ambulance. It was night, the sky seemed covered with stars, and innumerable lights shone from an immense edifice before us. It was the hospital of the market-place at Leipsic.

The two men who were carrying me ascended a spiral stairway which led to an immense hall, where beds were laid together in three lines, so close that they touched each other. On one of these beds I was placed, in the midst of oaths, cries for pity, and muttered complaints from hundreds of fever-stricken wounded. The windows were open, and the flames of the lanterns flickered in the gusts of wind. Surgeons, assistants, and nurses came and went, while the groans from the halls below, and the rolling of ambulances, cracking of whips and neighing of horses without, seemed to pierce my very brain. While they were undressing me, they handled me roughly, and my wound pained me so horribly that I could not avoid shrieking. A surgeon came up at once, and scolded them for not being more careful. That is all I remember that night; for I became delirious, and raved constantly of Catharine, Monsieur Goulden, and Aunt Grédel, as my neighbor, an old artilleryman, whom my cries prevented from sleeping, afterward told me. I awoke the next morning at about eight o'clock, and then learned that I had the bone of my left shoulder broken. I lay in the middle of a dozen surgeons; one of them a stout, dark man, whom they called Monsieur the Baron, was opening my bandages, while an assistant at the foot of the bed held a basin of warm water. The baron examined my wound; all the others bent forward to hear what he might say. He spoke a few moments, but all that I could understand was, that the ball had struck from below, breaking the bone and passing out behind. The surgeon, passing to another bed, cried:

"What! You here again, old fellow?"

"Yes; it is I, Monsieur the Baron," replied the artilleryman, proud to be recognized; "the first time was at Austerlitz, the second at Jena, and then I received two thrusts of a lance at Smolensk."

"Yes, yes," said the surgeon kindly; "and now what is the matter with you?"

"Three sabre-cuts on my left arm while I was defending my piece from the Prussians."

The surgeon unwound the bandage, and asked:

"Have you the cross?"

"No, Monsieur the Baron."

"What is your name?"

"Christian Zunnier, second artillerie-a-cheval."

"Very good!"

He dressed the wounds, and went to the next, saying,

"You will soon be well."

The old artilleryman's heart seemed overflowing with joy; and, as I concluded from his name that he came from Alsace, I spoke to him in our language, at which he was still more rejoiced. He called me Josephel, and said:

"Josephel, be careful how you swallow the medicines they give you, only take what you know. All that does not taste well is good for nothing. If they would give us a bottle of Rikevir every day, we would soon be well."

When I told him I was afraid of dying of the fever, he laughed long and loud, and said:

"Josephel, you are a fool. Do you think that such tall fellows as you and I were born to die in a hospital? No, no; drive the idea from your head."

But he spoke in vain, for every morning the surgeons, making their rounds, found seven or eight dead. Some died in fevers, some in a deadly chill; so that heat or cold might be the presage of death.

Zunnier said that all this proceeded from the evil drugs which the doctors invented. "Do you see that tall, thin fellow?" he asked. "Well, that man can boast of having killed more men than a field-piece; he is always primed, with his match lighted; and that little brown fellow—I would send him instead of the emperor to the Russians and Prussians; he would kill more of them than a corps d'armée."

He would have made me laugh with his jokes if the litters were not constantly passing.

At the end of three weeks my shoulder had begun to heal, and Zunnier's wounds were also doing well, and they allowed us to walk in the large garden, full of elms, behind the hospital. There were benches under the trees, and we walked the paths like millionaires in our gray great-coats and forage-caps. The increasing heat presaged a fine year, and often, when looking at the beautiful scenery around, I thought of Phalsbourg, and the tears came to my eyes.

"I would like to know what makes you cry so," said Zunnier. "Instead of catching a fever in the hospital, or losing a leg or arm, like hundreds of others, here we are quietly seated in the shade; we are well fed, and can smoke when we have any tobacco; and still you cry. What more do you want, Josephel?"

Then I told him of Catharine; of our walks at Quatre-Vents; of our promises; of all my former life, which then seemed a dream. He listened, smoking his pipe.

"Yes, yes," said he; "all this is very sad. Before the conscription of 1798, I too was going to marry a girl of our village, who was named Margrédel, and whom I loved better than all the world beside. We had promised to marry each other; and all through the campaign of Zurich, I never passed a day without thinking of her. But when I first received a furlough and reached home, what did I hear? Margrédel had been three months married to a shoemaker, named Passauf.

"You may imagine my wrath, Josephel; I could not see clearly; I wanted to demolish everything; and, as they told me that Passauf was at the Grand-Cerf brewery, thither I started, looking neither to the right nor left. There I saw him drinking with three or four other rogues. As I rushed forward, he cried, 'There comes Christian Zunnier! How goes it, Christian! Margrédel sends you her compliments.' I seized a glass which I hurled at his head, and broke to pieces, saying, 'Give her that for my wedding present, you beggar!' The others, seeing their friend thus maltreated, very naturally fell upon me. I knocked two of three of them over with a jug, jumped on a table, sprang through a window, and beat a retreat."

"It was time," I thought

"But that was not all," he continued, "I had scarcely reached my mother's when the gendarmerie arrived, and they arrested me. They put me on a wagon and conducted me from my brigade to my regiment, which was at Strasbourg. I remained six weeks at Finckmatt, and would probably have received the ball and chain, if we did not have to cross the Rhine to Hohenlinden.

"From that day, Josephel, the thought of marriage never troubled me. Don't talk to me of a soldier who has a wife to think of. Look at our generals who are married, do they fight as they used to?"

I could not answer, for I did not know; but day after day I waited anxiously to hear from home, and my joy can be more easily imagined than described when, one day, a large, square letter was handed me. I recognized Monsieur Goulden's handwriting.

"Well," said Zunnier, laughing, "it is come at last."

I did not answer, but thrust the letter in my pocket, to read it at leisure and alone. I went to the end of the garden and opened it. Two or three apple-blossoms dropped upon the ground, with an order for money, on which Monsieur Goulden had written a few words. But what touched me most was the handwriting of Catharine, which I gazed at without reading a word, while my heart beat as if about to burst through my bosom. At last I grew a little calmer and read:

"My Dear Joseph: I write you to tell you I yet love you alone, and that, day by day, I love you more.

"My greatest grief is to know that you are wounded, in a hospital, and that I cannot take care of you. Since the conscripts departed, we have not had a moment's peace of mind. My mother says I am silly to weep night and day, but she weeps as much as I, and her wrath falls heavily on Pinacle, who scarcely now dares come to the market-place. When we heard the battle had taken place, and that thousands of men had fallen, mother ran every morning to the post-office, while I could not move from the house. At last your letter came, thank heaven! to cheer us. We hope now to see you again, but God's will be done.

"Many people talk of peace, but the emperor so loves war, that I fear it is far off.

"Now, Monsieur Goulden wishes to say a few words to you, so I will close. The weather is beautiful here, and the great apple-tree in the garden is full of flowers; I have plucked a few, which I send in this letter. God bless you, Joseph, and farewell!"

As I finished reading this, Zunnier arrived, and in my joy, I said:

"Sit down, Zunnier, and I will read you my sweetheart's letter. You will see whether she is a Margrédel."

"Let me light my pipe first," he answered; and having done so, he added: "Go on, Josephel, but I warn you that I am an old bird, and do not believe all I hear; women are more cunning than we."

Notwithstanding this bit of philosophy, I read Catharine's letter slowly to him. When I had ended, he took it, and for a long time gazed at it dreamily, and then handed it back, saying:

"There! Josephel. She is a good girl, and a sensible one, and will never marry any one but you."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes; you may rely upon her; she will never marry a Passauf. I would rather distrust the emperor than such a girl."

I could have embraced Zunnier for these words; but I said:

"I have received a bill for one hundred francs. Now for some white wine of Alsace. Let us try to get out."

"That is well thought of," said he, twisting his mustache and putting his pipe in his pocket. "I do not like to mope in a garden when there are taverns outside. We must get permission."

We arose joyfully and went to the hospital, when the letter-carrier, coming out, stopped Zunnier, saying:

"Are you Christian Zunnier, of the second artillerie-à-cheval?"

"I have that honor, monsieur the carrier."

"Well, here is something for you," said the other, handing him a little package and a large letter.

Zunnier was stupified, never having received anything from home or from anywhere else. He opened the packet—a box appeared—then the box—and saw the cross of honor. He became pale; his eyes filled with tears, he staggered against a balustrade, and then shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" in such tones that the three halls rang and rang again.

The carrier looked on smiling.

"You are satisfied," said he.

"Satisfied! I need but one thing more."

"And what is that?"

"Permission to go to the city."

"You must ask Monsieur Tardieu, the surgeon in chief."

He went away laughing, while we ascended arm-in-arm, to ask permission of the surgeon-major, an old man, who had heard the "Vive l'Empereur!" and demanded gravely:

"What is the matter?"

Zunnier showed his cross and replied:

"Pardon, major; but I am more than usually merry." "I can easily believe you," said Monsieur Tardieu; "you want a pass to the city?"

"If you will be so good; for myself and my comrade, Joseph Bertha."

The surgeon had examined my wound the day before. He took out his portfolio and gave us passes. We sallied forth as proud as kings—Zunnier of his cross, I, of my letter.

XVI.

I walked dreamily through the streets, led by Zunnier, who recognized every corner, and kept repeating:

"There—there is the church of Saint Nicholas; that large building is the university; that on yonder is the Hôtel de Ville."

He seemed to remember every stone, having been there in 1807, before the battle of Friedland, and continued:

"We are the same here as if we were in Metz, or Strasbourg, or any other city in France. The people wish us well. After the campaign of 1806, they used to do all they could for us. The citizens would take three or four of us at a time to dinner with them. They even gave us balls, and called us the heroes of Jena. Let us go in somewhere and see how they will treat us. We named their elector King of Saxony, and gave him a good slice of Poland."

Suddenly he stopped before a little, low door, and cried:

"Hold! Here is the Golden Sheep Brewery. The front is on the other street, but we can enter here. Come!"

I followed him into a narrow, winding passage, which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every story of the house.

The clinking of glasses was heard coming from a room which opened on the Rue de Tilly. The sweet smell of the new March beer filled the air, and Zunnier, with a look of satisfaction, cried:

"Yes, here I came six years ago with Ferré and Rousillon. Poor Rousillon! he left his bones at Smolensk; and Ferré must now be at home in his village, for he lost a leg at Wagram."

At the same time he pushed open the door, and we entered a lofty hall, full of smoke. I saw, through the thick, gray atmosphere, a long row of tables, surrounded by men drinking—the greater number in short coats and little caps, the remainder in the Saxon uniform. They were mostly students, and the oldest of them—a tall, withered-looking man, with a red nose and long flaxen beard, stained with beer—was standing upon a table, reading the gazette aloud. He held the paper in one hand, and in the other a long porcelain pipe. His comrades, with their long, light hair falling upon their shoulders, were listening with the deepest interest; and as we entered, they shouted "Vaterland! Vaterland!"

They touched glasses with the Saxon soldiers, while the tall student bent over to take up his glass, and the round, fat brewer cried:

"Gesundheit! Gesundheit!"

Scarcely had we made half a dozen steps toward them, when they became silent.

"Come, come, comrades!" cried Zunnier, "don't disturb yourselves. Go on reading. We do not object to hear the news."

But they did not seem inclined to profit by our invitation, and the reader descended from the table, folding up his paper, which he put in his pocket.

"It is finished," said he, "it is finished."

"Yes; it is finished," repeated the others, looking at each other with a peculiar expression.

Two or three of the soldiers rose and left the room, and the fat landlord said:

"You do not perhaps know that the large hall is on the Rue de Tilly?"

"Yes; we know it very well," replied Zunnier; "but I like this little hall better. Here I used to come, long ago, with two old comrades, to empty a few glasses in honor of Jena and Auerstaedt. I know this room of old."

"Ah! as you please, as you please," returned the landlord. "Do you wish some March beer?"

"Yes; two glasses and the gazette."

"Very good."

The glasses were handed us, and Zunnier, who observed nothing, tried to open a conversation with the students; but they excused themselves, and, one after another, went out. I saw that they hated us, but dared not show it.

The gazette spoke of an armistice, after two new victories at Bautzen and Wurtschen. This armistice commenced on the sixth of June, and a conference was then being held at Prague, in Bohemia, to arrange on terms of peace. All this naturally gave me pleasure. I thought of again seeing home. But Zunnier, with his habit of thinking aloud, filled the hall with his reflections, and interrupted me at every line.

"An armistice!" he cried. "Do we want an armistice, after having beaten those Prussians and Russians three times? We should annihilate them! Would they give us an armistice if they had beaten us? There, Joseph, you see the emperor's character—he is too good. It is his only fault. He did the same thing after Austerlitz, and we had to begin over again. I tell you, he is too good and if he were not so, we should have been masters of Europe."

As he spoke, he looked around as if seeking assent; but the students scowled, and no one replied.

At last Zunnier rose.

"Come, Joseph," said he; "I know nothing of politics, but I insist that we should give no armistice to those beggars. When they are down, we should keep them there."

After we had paid our reckoning, and were once more in the street, he continued:

"I do not know what was the matter with those people to-day. We must have disturbed them in something."

"It is very possible," I replied. "They certainly did not seem like the good-natured folks you were speaking of."

"No," said he. "The students, long ago, used to pass their time drinking with us. We sang Fanfan la Tulipe and 'King Dagobert' together, which are not political songs, you know. But these fellows are good for nothing."

I knew, afterward, that those students were members of the Tugend-Bund. No wonder they hated Frenchmen!

On returning to the hospital, we learned that we were to go, that same evening, to the barracks of Rosenthal—a sort of depot for wounded, near Lutzen, where the roll was called morning and evening, but where, at all other times, we were at liberty to do as we pleased. We often strolled through the town; but the citizens now slammed their doors in our faces, and the tavern-keepers not only refused to give us credit, but attempted to charge double and triple for what we got. But my comrade could not be cheated. He knew the price of everything as well as any Saxon among them. Often we stood on the bridge and gazed at the thousand branches of the Pleisse and the Elster, glowing red in the light of the setting sun, little thinking that we should one day cross those rivers after losing the bloodiest of battles, and that whole regiments would be submerged in the glittering waters beneath us.

But the ill-feeling of the people toward us was shown in a thousand forms. The day after the conclusion of the armistice, we went together to bathe in the Elster, and Zunnier, seeing a peasant approaching, cried:

"Holloa! comrade! Is there any danger here?"

"No. Go in boldly," replied the man.

Zunnier, mistrusting nothing, walked fifteen or eighteen feet out. He was a good swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current carried him away so quickly that he could not even catch the branches of the willows which hung over him; and were it not that he was carried to a ford, where he gained a footing, he would have been swept between two muddy islands, and certainly lost.

The peasant stood to see the effect of his advice. I rushed at him, but he laughed, and ran, quicker than I could follow him, to the city. Zunnier was wild with wrath, and wished to pursue him to Counewitz; but how could we find him among four or five hundred houses?

Returning to Leipsic, we saw joy painted on the countenances of the inhabitants. It did not display itself openly; but the citizens, meeting, would shake hands with an air of huge satisfaction, and the general rejoicing glistened even in the eyes of servants and the poorest workmen.

Zunnier said: "These Germans seem to be merry about something. They do not always look so good-natured."

"Yes," I replied; "their good humor comes from the fine weather and good harvest."

But when we reached the barracks, we found some of our officers at the gate, talking eagerly together, and then we learned the cause of so much joy. The conference at Prague was broken off, and Austria, too, was about to declare war against us, which gave us two hundred thousand more men to take care of.

The day after, twelve hundred wounded were ordered to rejoin their corps. Zunnier was of the number—I accompanied him to the gates. My arm was yet too weak for duty. My existence was them sad enough, for I formed no more close friendships, and when, on the first of October, the old surgeon, Tardieu, gave me my orders to march, telling me I was fully recovered, I felt almost relived.

XVII.

It was about five o'clock in the evening, and we were approaching the village of Risa, when we descried an old mill, with its wooden bridge, over which a bridle-path ran. We struck off from the road and took this path, to make a short cut to the village, when we heard cries and shrieks for help, and, at the same moment, two women, one old, and the other somewhat younger, ran across a garden, dragging two children with them. They were trying to gain a little wood which bordered the road, and, at the same moment, we saw several of our soldiers come out of the mill with sacks, while others came up from a cellar with little casks, which they hastened to place on a cart standing near; still others were driving cows and horses from a stable, while an old man stood at the door, with uplifted hands, as if imprecating Heaven's malison upon them.

"There," cried the quartermaster, who commanded our party, an old soldier named Poitevin, "there are fellows pillaging. We are not far from the army."

"But that is horrible!" I cried. "They are robbers."

"Yes," returned the quartermaster coolly; "it is contrary to discipline, and if the emperor knew of it, they would be shot like dogs."

We crossed the little bridge, and found the thieves crowded around a cask which they had pierced, passing around the cup. This sight roused the quartermaster's indignation, and he cried:

"On what authority do you commit this pillage?"

Several turned their heads, but seeing that we were but three, for the rest of our party had gone on, one of them replied:

"Ha! what do you want, old joker? A little of the spoil, I suppose. But you need not curl up your mustaches on that account. Here, drink a drop."

The speaker held out the cup, and the quartermaster took it and drank, looking at me as he did so.

"Well, young man," said he., "will you have some, too? It is famous wine, this."

"No, I thank you," I replied.

Several of the pillaging party now cried:

"Hurry, there it is time to get back to camp."

"No, no," replied others; "there is more to be had here."

"Comrades," said the quartermaster, in a tone of gentle reproof and warning, "you know, comrades, you must go gently about it."

"Yes, yes, old fellow," replied a drum-major, with half-closed eyes, and a mocking smile; "do not be alarmed; we will pluck the chicken according to rule. We will take care; we will take care."

The quartermaster said no more, but seemed ashamed on my account. He remained in a meditative mood for some time after we started to overtake our companions, and, at length, said deprecatingly:

"What would you have, young man? War is war. One cannot see himself starving, with food at hand."

He was afraid I would report him; he would have remained with the pillagers but for the fear of being captured. I replied, to relieve his mind:

"Those are probably good fellows, but the sight of a cup of wine makes them forget everything."

At length, about ten o'clock, we saw the bivouac fires, on a gloomy hill-side. Further on, in the plain, a great number of other fires were burning. The night was clear, and as we approached the bivouac, the sentry challenged:

"Who goes there?"

"France!" replied the quartermaster.

My heart beat, as I thought that, in a few moments, I should again meet my old comrades, if they were yet in the world.

Two men of the guard came forward to reconnoitre us. The commandant of the post, a gray-haired sous-lieutenant, his arm in a sling under his cloak, asked us whence we came, whither we were going, and whether we had met any parties of Cossacks on our route. The quartermaster answered. The lieutenant informed us that Sonham's division had that morning left them, and ordered us to follow him, that he might examine our marching-papers, which we did in silence, passing among the bivouac fires, around which men, covered with dried mud, were sleeping, in groups of twenty. Not one moved.

We arrived at the officers' quarters. It was an old brick-kiln, with an immense roof, resting on posts driven into the ground. A large fire was burning in it, and the air was agreeably warm. Around it soldiers were sleeping, with happy faces, and near the posts stacks of arms shone in the light of the flames. One bronzed old veteran watched alone, seated on the ground, and mending a shoe with a needle and thread.

The officer handed me back my paper first, saying:

"You will rejoin your battalion tomorrow, two leagues hence, near Torgau."

Then the old soldier, looking at me, placed his hand upon the ground, to show that there was room beside him, and I seated myself. I opened my knapsack, and put on new stockings and shoes which I had brought from Leipsic, after which I felt much better.

The old man asked:

"You are rejoining your corps?"

"Yes; the sixth at Torgau."

"And you came from—"

"The hospital at Leipsic."

"That is easily seen," said he; "you are fat as a beadle. They fed you on chickens down there, while we were eating cow-beef."

I looked around at my sleeping neighbors. He was right; the poor conscripts were mere skin and bone. They were bronzed as veterans, and scarcely seemed able to stand.

The old man, in a moment, continued his train of questions:

"You were wounded?"

"Yes; at Lutzen."

"Four months in the hospital!" said he whistling; "what luck! I have just returned from Spain, flattering myself that I was going to meet the Kaiserliks of 1807 once more—sheep, regular sheep—but they have become worse than guerrillas. Things are spoiling."

He said the most of this to himself, without according me much of his attention, all the while sewing his shoe, which from time to time he tried on, to be sure that the sewn part would not hurt his foot. At last he put the thread in his knapsack and the shoe upon his foot, and stretched himself upon a truss of straw.

I was too fatigued to sleep at once, and for an hour lay awake.

In the morning I set out again with the quartermaster Poitevin, and three other soldiers of Sonham's division. Our route lay along the bank of the Elbe; the weather was wet and the wind swept fiercely over the river, throwing the spray far on the land.

We hastened on for an hour, when suddenly the quartermaster cried:

"Attention!"

He had halted suddenly, and stood listening. We could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind through the trees, and the splash of the waves; but his ear was finer than ours.

"They are skirmishing yonder," said he, pointing to a wood on our right. "The enemy may be toward us, and the best thing we can do is to enter the wood and pursue our route cautiously. We can see at the other end of it what is going on; and if the Prussians or Russians are there, we can beat a retreat without their perceiving us."

We all thought the quartermaster was right; and, in my heart, I admired the shrewdness of the old drunkard, for such he was. We kept on toward the wood, Poitevin leading, and the others following, with our pieces cocked. We marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew nearer; they were fired at intervals, and the quartermaster said:

"They are sharp-shooters reconnoitering a body of cavalry, for the firing is all on one side."

It was true. In a few moments we perceived, through the trees, a battalion of French infantry, about to make their soup, and in the distance, on the plain beyond, platoons of Cossacks defiling from one village to another. A few skirmishers along the edge of the wood were firing on them, but they were almost beyond musket-range.

"There are your people, young man," said Poitevin. "You are at home."

He had good eyes to read the number of a regiment at such a distance. I could only see ragged soldiers with their cheeks and famine-glistening eyes. Their great-coats were twice too large for them, and fell in folds along their bodies like cloaks. I say nothing of the mud; it was everywhere. No wonder the Germans were gleeful, even after our victories.

We went toward a couple of little tents, before which three or four horses were nibbling the scanty grass. I saw Colonel Lorain, who now commanded the third battalion—a tall, thin man, with brown mustaches and a fierce air. He looked at me frowningly, and when I showed my papers, only said:

"Go and rejoin your company."

I started off, thinking that I would recognize some of the Fourth; but, since Lutzen, companies had been so mingled with companies, regiments with regiments, and divisions with divisions, that, on arriving at the camp of the grenadiers, I knew no one. The men seeing me approach, looked distrustfully at me, as if to say:

"Does he want some of our beef? Let us see what he brings to the pot!"

I was almost ashamed to ask for my company, when a bony veteran, with a nose long and pointed like an eagle's beak, and a worn-out coat hanging from his shoulders, lifting his head, and gazing at me, said quietly:

"Hold! It is Joseph. I thought he was buried four months ago."

Then I recognized my poor Zébédé. My appearance seemed to affect him, for, without rising, he squeezed my hand, crying: "Klipfel! here is Joseph!" Another soldier, seated near a pot, turned his head, saying:

"It is you, Joseph, is it? Then you were not killed."

This was all my welcome. Misery had made them so selfish that they thought only of themselves. But Zébédé was always good-hearted; he made me sit near him, throwing a glance at the others that commanded respect, and offered me his spoon, which he had fastened to the button-hole of his coat. I thanked him, and produced from my knapsack a dozen sausages, a good loaf of bread, and a flask of eau-de-vie, which I had the foresight to purchase at Risa. I handed a couple of the sausages to Zébédé, who took them with tears in his eyes. I was also going to offer some to the others; but he put his hand on my arm, saying:

"What is good to eat is good to keep."

We retired from the circle and ate, drinking at the same time; the rest of the soldiers said nothing, but looked wistfully at us. Klipfel, smelling the sausages, turned and said:

"Hollo! Joseph! Come and eat with us. Comrades are always comrades, you know."

"That is all very well," said Zébédé; "but I find meat and drink the best comrades."

He shut up my knapsack himself, saying:

"Keep that, Joseph. I have not been so well regaled for more than a month. You shall not lose it."

A half-hour after, the recall was beaten; the skirmishers came in, and Sergeant Pinto, who was among the number, recognized me, and said:

"Well; so you have escaped! But you came back in an evil moment! Things go wrong—wrong!"

The colonel and commandants mounted, and we began moving. The Cossacks withdrew. We marched with arms at will; Zébédé was at my side and related all that passed since Lutzen; the great victories of Bautzen and Wurtzen; the forced marches to overtake the retreating enemy; the march on Berlin; then the armistice, the arrival of the veterans of Spain—men accustomed to pillaging and living on the peasantry.

Unfortunately, at the close of the armistice, all were against us. The country people looked on us with horror; they cut the bridges down, and kept the Russians and Prussians informed of all our movements. It rained almost constantly, and the day of the battle of Dresden, it fell so heavily that the emperor's hat hung down upon his shoulders. But when victorious, we only laughed at these things. Zébédé told me all this in detail; how after the victory at Dresden, General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and how those whom we had beaten the day before fell upon him on all sides, front, flank, and rear, and captured him and several other generals, utterly destroying his corps d'armée. Two days before, owing to a false movement of Marshal Macdonald, the enemy had surprised our division, and the fifth, sixth, and eleventh corps on the heights of Luwenberg, and in the mélée Zébédé received two blows from the butt of a grenadier's musket, and was thrown into the river Katzbach. Luckily he seized the over-hanging branch of a tree, and managed to regain the bank. He told me how all that night, despite the blood that flowed from his nose and ears, he had marched to the village of Goldberg, almost dead with hunger, fatigue, and his wounds, and how a joiner had taken pity upon him and given him bread, onions, and water. He told me how, on the day following, they had marched across the fields, each one taking his own course, without orders, because the marshals, generals, and all mounted officers had fled as far as possible, in the fear of being captured. He assured me that fifty hussars could have captured them, one after another; but that by good fortune, Blücher could not cross the river, so that they finally rallied at Wolda, and further on at Buntzlau their officers met them, surprised at yet having troops to lead. He told me how Marshal Oudinot and Marshal Ney had been beaten; the first at Gross-Beeren, and the other at Dennewitz.

We were between three armies, who were uniting to crush us; that of the north, commanded by Bernadotte; that of Silesia, commanded by Blücher; and the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg. We marched in turn against each of them; they feared the emperor and retreated before us; but we could not be at once in Silesia and Bohemia, so march followed march, and countermarch, countermarch. All the men asked was to fight; they wanted their misery to end. A sort of guerrilla, named Thielmann, raised the peasantry against us, and the Bavarians and Wurtemburgers declared against us. We had all Europe on our hands.

On the fourteenth of October, our battalion was detached to reconnoitre the village of Aken. The enemy were in force there and received us with a scattering artillery fire, and we remained all night without being able to light a fire, on account of the pouring rain. The next day we set out to rejoin our division by forced marches. Every one said, I know not why:

"The battle is approaching! the fight is coming on!"

Sergeant Pinto declared that he felt the emperor in the air. I felt nothing, but I knew that we were marching on Leipsic. The night following, the weather cleared up a little, millions of stars shone out, and we still kept on. The next day, about ten o'clock, near a little village whose name I cannot recollect, we were ordered to halt, and then we heard a trembling in the air. The colonel and Sergeant Pinto said:

"The battle has begun!" and at the same moment, the colonel, waving his sword, cried:

"Forward!"

We started at a run, and half an hour after saw, at a few thousand paces ahead, a long column, in which followed artillery, cavalry, and infantry, one upon the other; behind us, on the road to Duben, we saw another, all pushing forward at their utmost speed. Regiments were even hastening across the fields.

At the end of the road we could see the two spires of the churches of Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipsic, rising amidst great clouds of smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased; we were yet more than a league from the city, but were forced to almost shout to hear each other, and men gazed around, pale as death, seeming by their looks to say:

"This is indeed a battle!"

Sergeant Pinto cried that it was worse than Eylau. He laughed no more, nor did Zébédé; but on, on we rushed, officers incessantly urging us forward. We seemed to grow delirious; the love of country was indeed striving within us, but still greater was the furious eagerness for the fight.

At eleven o'clock, we descried the battle-field, about a league in front of Leipsic. We saw the steeples and roofs of the city crowded with people, and the old ramparts on which I had walked so often, thinking of Catharine. Opposite us, twelve or fifteen hundred yards distant, two regiments of red lancers were drawn up, and a little to the left, two or three regiments of chasseurs-à-cheval, and between them filed the long column from Duben. Further on, along a slope, were the divisions Ricard, Dombrowski, Sonham, and several others, with their rear to the city; and far behind, on a hill, around one of those old farm-houses with flat roofs and immense outlying sheds, so often seen in that country, glittered the brilliant uniforms of the staff.

It was the army of reserve, commanded by Ney. His left wing communicated with Marmont, who was posted on the road to Halle, and his right with the grand army, commanded by the emperor in person. In this manner our troops formed an immense circle around Leipsic; and the enemy, arriving from all points, sought to join their divisions so as to form a yet larger circle around us, and to inclose us in Leipsic as in a trap.

While we waited thus, three fearful battles were going on at once; one against the Austrians and Russians at Wachau; another against the Prussians at Mockern on the road to Halle; and the third on the road to Lutzen, to defend the bridge of Lindenau, attacked by General Giulay.

XVIII.

The battalion was commencing to descend the hill, opposite Leipsic, when we saw a staff-officer crossing the plain beneath, and coming at full gallop toward us. In two minutes he was with us; Colonel Lorain had spurred forward to meet him; they exchanged a few words, and the officer returned. Hundreds of others were rushing over the plain in the same manner, bearing orders.

"Head of column to the right!" shouted the colonel.

We took the direction of a wood, which skirts the Duben road some half a league. Once at its borders, we were ordered to re-prime our guns, and the battalion was deployed through the wood as skirmishers. We advanced, twenty-five paces apart, and each of us kept his eyes well opened, as may be imagined. Every minute Sergeant Pinto would cry out:

"Get under cover!"

But he did not need to warn us; each one hastened to take his post behind a stout tree, to reconnoitre well before proceeding to another. We kept on in this manner some ten minutes, and, as we saw nothing, began to grow confident, when suddenly, one, two, three shots rang out. Then they came from all sides, and rattled from end to end of our line. At the same instant I saw my comrade on the left fall, trying, as he sank to the earth, to support himself by the trunk of the tree behind which he was standing. This roused me. I looked to the right and saw, fifty or sixty paces off, an old Prussian soldier, with his long red mustaches covering the lock of his piece; he was aiming deliberately at me. I fell at once to the ground, and at the same moment heard the report. It was a close escape, for the comb, brush, and handkerchief in my shako were broken and torn by the bullet. A cold shiver ran through me.

"Well done! a miss is as good as a mile!" cried the old sergeant, starting forward at a run, and I, who had no wish to remain longer in such a place, followed with right good-will.

Lieutenant Bretonville, waving his sabre, cried, "Forward!" while, to the right, the firing still continued. We soon arrived at a clearing, where lay five or six trunks of felled trees, but not one standing, that might serve us for a cover. Nevertheless, five or six of our men advanced boldly, when the sergeant called out:

"Halt! The Prussians are in ambush around. Look sharp!"

Scarcely had he spoken, when a dozen bullets whistled through the branches, and, at the same time, a number of Prussians rose, and plunged deeper into the forest opposite.

"There they go! Forward!" cried Pinto.

But the bullet in my shako had rendered me cautious; it seemed as if I could almost see through the trees, and, as the sergeant started forth into the clearing, I held his arm, pointing out to him the muzzle of a musket peeping out from a bush, not a hundred paces before us. The others, clustering around, saw it too, and Pinto whispered,

"Stay, Bertha; remain here, and do not lose sight of him, while we turn the position."

They set off to the right and left, and I, behind my tree, my piece at my shoulder, waited like a hunter for his game. At the end of two or three minutes, the Prussian, hearing nothing, rose slowly. He was quite a boy, with little blonde mustaches, and a tall, slight, but well-knit figure. I could have killed him as he stood, but the thought of thus slaying a defenceless man froze my blood. Suddenly he saw me, and bounded aside. Then I fired, and breathed more freely as I saw him running, like a stag, toward the wood.

At the same moment, five or six reports rang out to the right and left; the sergeant, Zébédé, Klipfel, and the rest appeared, and a hundred paces further on, we found the young Prussian upon the ground, blood gushing from his mouth. He gazed at us with a scared expression, raising his arms, as if to parry bayonet-thrusts, but the sergeant called gleefully to him:

"Fear nothing! Your account is settled."

No one offered to injure him further but Klipfel took a beautiful pipe, which was hanging out of his pocket, saying:

"For a long time I have wanted a pipe, and here is a fine one."

"Fusilier Klipfel!" cried Pinto indignantly, "will you be good enough to put back that pipe? Leave it to the Cossacks to rob the wounded! A French soldier knows only honor!"

Klipfel threw down the pipe, and we departed, not one caring to look back at the wounded Prussian. We arrived at the edge of the forest, outside which, among tufted bushes, the Prussians we pursued had taken refuge. We saw them rise to fire upon us, but they immediately lay down again. We might have remained there tranquilly, since we had orders to occupy the wood, and the shots of the Prussians could not hurt us, protected as we were by the trees. On the other side of the slope we heard a terrific battle going on; the thunder of cannon was increasing, it filled the air with one continuous roar. But our officers held a council, and decided that the bushes were part of the forest, and that the Prussians must be driven from them. This determination cost many a life.

We received orders, then, to drive in the enemy's tirailleurs, and as they fired as we came on, we started at a run, so as to be upon them before they could reload. Our officers ran, also, full of ardor. We thought the bushes ended at the top of the hill, and that then we could sweep off the Prussians by dozens. But scarcely had we arrived, out of breath, upon the ridge, when old Pinto cried:

"Hussars!"

I looked up, and saw the Colbacks rushing down upon us like a tempest. Scarcely had I seen them, when I began to spring down the hill, going, I verily believe, in spite of weariness and my knapsack, fifteen feet at a bound. I saw before me, Pinto, Zébédé, and the others, making their best speed. Behind, on came the hussars, their officers shouting orders in German, their scabbards clanking and horses neighing. The earth shook beneath them.

I took the shortest road to the wood, and had almost reached it, when I came upon one of the trenches where the peasants were in the habit of digging clay for their houses. It was more than twenty feet wide, and forty or fifty long, and the rain had made the sides very slippery; but as I heard the very breathing of the horses behind me, without thinking of aught else, I sprang forward, and fell upon my face; another fusilier of my company was already there. We arose as soon as we could, and at the same instant two hussars glided down the slippery side of the trench. The first, cursing like a fiend, aimed a sabre-stroke at my poor comrade's head, but as he rose in his stirrups to give force to the blow, I buried my bayonet in his side, while the other brought down his blade upon my shoulder with such force, that, were it not for my epaulette, I believe that I had been well-nigh cloven in two. Then he lunged, but as his point touched my breast, a bullet from above crashed through his skull. I looked around, and saw one of our men, up to his knees in the clay. He had heard the oaths of the hussars and the neighing of the horses, and had come to the edge of the trench to see what was going on.

"Well, comrade," said he, laughing, "it was about time."

I had not strength to reply, but stood trembling like an aspen leaf. He unfixed his bayonet, and stretched the muzzle of his piece to me to help me out. Then I squeezed his hand, saying:

"You saved my life! What is your name?"

He told me that his name was Jean Pierre Vincent. I have often since thought that I should be only too happy to render that man any service in my power; but two days after, the second battle of Leipsic took place; then the retreat from Hanau began, and I never saw him again.

Sergeant Pinto and Zébédé came up a moment after. Zébédé said:

"We have escaped once more, Joseph, and now we are the only Phalsbourg men in the battalion. Klipfel was sabred by the hussars."

"Did you see?" I cried.

"Yes; he received over twenty wounds, and kept calling to me for aid." Then, after a moment's pause, he added, "O Joseph! it is terrible to hear the companion of your childhood calling for help, and not be able to give it! But they were too many. They surrounded him on ail sides."

The thoughts of home rushed upon both our minds. I thought I could see grandmother Klipfel when she would learn the news, and this made me think too of Catharine.

From the time of the charge of the hussars until night, the battalion remained in the same position, skirmishing with the Prussians. We kept them from occupying the wood; but they prevented us from ascending to the ridge. The next day we knew why. The hill commanded the entire course of the Partha, and the fierce cannonade we heard came from Dombrowski's division, which was attacking the Prussian left wing, in order to aid General Marmont at Mockern, where twenty thousand French, posted in a ravine, were holding eighty thousand of Blücher's troops in check; while toward Wachau a hundred and fifteen thousand French were engaged with two hundred thousand Austrians and Russians. More than fifteen hundred cannon were thundering at once. Our poor little fusilade was like the humming of a bee in a storm, and we sometimes ceased firing, on both sides, to listen. It seemed as if some supernatural, infernal battle were going on; the air was filled with smoke; the earth trembled beneath our feet; old soldiers like Pinto declared they had never seen anything like it.

About six o'clock, a staff-officer brought orders to Colonel Lorain, and immediately after a retreat was sounded. The battalion had lost sixty men.

It was night when we left the forest, and on the banks of the Partha among caissons, wagons, retreating divisions, ambulances filled with wounded, all defiling over the two bridges—we had to wait more than two hours for our turn to cross. The heavens were black; the artillery still growled afar off, but the three battles were ended. We heard that we had beaten the Austrians and the Russians at Wachau, on the other side of Leipsic; but our men returning from Mockern were downcast and gloomy; not a voice cried Vive l'Empereur! as after a victory.

Once on the other side of the river, we marched on amid the din of the retreat from Mockern, and at length reached a burial-ground, where we were ordered to stack arms and break ranks.

By this time the sky had cleared, and I recognized Schoenfeld in the moonlight. How often had I eaten bread and drank white wine with Zunnier there at the Golden Sheaf when the sun shone brightly and the leaves were green around? But those times had passed! I sat against the cemetery wall, and at length fell asleep. About three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened.

It was Zébédé. "Joseph," said he, "come to the fire. If you remain here, you run the risk of catching the fever."

I arose, sick with fatigue and suffering. A fine rain filled the air. My comrade drew me toward the fire which smoked in the drizzling atmosphere; it seemed to give out no heat; but Zébédé having made me drink a draught of brandy, I felt at least less cold, and gazed at the bivouac fires on the other side of the Partha.

"The Prussians are warming themselves in our wood," said Zébédé.

"Yes," I replied; "and poor Klipfel is there too, but he no longer feels the cold."

My teeth chattered. These words saddened us both. A few moments after, Zébédé resumed:

"Do you remember, Joseph, the black ribbon he wore the day of the conscription, and how he cried that we were all condemned to death, like those who had gone to Russia?"

I thought how Pinacle had held out the black ribbon for me; and the remembrance, together with the cold, which seemed to freeze the very marrow in our bones, made me shudder. I thought Pinacle was right; that I had seen the last of home, and I cursed those who had forced me from it.

At day-break, wagons arrived with food and brandy for us. The rain had ceased; we made soup, but nothing could warm me; I had caught the fever. I was not the only one in the battalion in that condition; three fourths of the men were suffering from it; and, for a month before, those who could no longer march had lain down by the roadside weeping and calling upon their mothers like little children. Hunger, forced marches, the rain, and grief had done their work, and happy was it for the parents that they could not see the miserable end of their cherished sons.

As the light increased, we saw to the left, on the other side of the river, burnt villages, heaps of dead, abandoned wagons, and broken cannon, stretching as far as the eye could reach. It was worse than at Lutzen. We saw the Prussians deploy, and advance their thousands over the battle-field. They were to join with the Russians and Austrians and close the great circle around us, and we could not prevent them, especially as Bernadotte and the Russian General Benningsen had come up with twenty thousand fresh troops. Thus, after fighting three battles in one day, were we, only one hundred thousand strong, seemingly about to be entrapped in the midst of three hundred thousand bayonets, not to speak of fifty thousand horse and twelve hundred cannon.

From Schoenfeld, the battalion started to rejoin the division at Kohlgarten. All the roads were lined with slow-moving ambulances, filled with wounded; all the wagons of the country around had been impressed for this service; and, in the intervals between them, marched hundreds of poor fellows with their arms in slings, or their heads bandaged—pale, crestfallen, half dead.

We made our way, with a thousand difficulties, through this mass, when, near Kohlgarten, twenty hussars, galloping at full speed, and with levelled pistols, drove back the crowd, right and left, into the fields, shouting as they pressed on:

"The emperor! the emperor!"

The battalion drew up, and presented arms; and a few moments after, the grenadiers-à-cheval of the guard—veritable giants, with their great boots, their immense bear-skin hats, descending to their shoulders and only allowing their mustaches, nose, and eyes to remain visible—passed at a gallop. Our men looked joyfully at them, glad that such robust warriors were on our side.

Scarcely had they passed, when the staff tore after. Imagine a hundred and fifty to two hundred marshals, generals, and other superior officers, mounted on magnificent steeds, and so covered with embroidery that the color of their uniforms was scarcely visible; some tall, thin, and haughty; others short, thick-set, and red-faced; others again young and handsome, sitting like statues in their saddles; all with eager look and flashing eyes. It was a magnificent and terrible sight. But the most striking figure among those captains, who for twenty years had made Europe tremble, was Napoleon himself, with his old hat and gray over-coat; his large, determined chin and neck buried between his shoulders. All shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!" but he heard nothing of it. He paid no more attention to us than to the drizzling rain which filled the air, but gazed with contracted brows at the Prussian army stretching along the Partha to join the Austrians.

"Did you see him, Joseph?" asked Zébédé.

"I did," I replied; "I saw him well, and I will remember the sight all my life."

"It is strange," said my comrade; "he does not seem to be pleased. At Wurzen, the day after the battle, he seemed rejoiced to hear our "Vive l'Empereur!' and the generals all wore merry faces too. To-day they seem savage, and nevertheless the captain said that we bore off the victory on the other side of Leipsic."

Others thought the same thing without speaking of it, but there was a growing uneasiness among all.

We found the regiment bivouacked near Kohlgarten. In every direction camp-fires were rolling their smoke to the sky. A drizzling rain continued to fall, and the men, seated on their knapsacks around the fires, seemed depressed and gloomy. The officers formed groups of their own. On all sides it was whispered that such a war had never before been seen; it was one of extermination; that it did not help us to defeat the enemy, for they only desired to kill us off, knowing that they had four or five times our number of men, and would finally remain masters.

Toward evening of the next day, we discovered the army of the north on the plateau of Breitenfeld. This was sixty thousand more men for the enemy. I can yet hear the maledictions levelled at Bernadotte—the cries of indignation of those who knew him as a simple officer in the army of the republic, who cried out that he owed us all—that we made him a king with our blood, and that he now came to give us the finishing blow.

That night, as we drew our lines still closer around Leipsic, I gazed at the circle of fires which surrounded us, and it seemed as if the whole world was bent on our extermination. But I remembered that we had the honor of bearing the name of Frenchmen, and must conquer or die.

To Be Concluded In Our Next.

---

The Old Roman World.
[Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: The Old Roman World:
the Grandeur and Failure of its Civilization.
By John Lord, LL.D.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1867.]

Did Doctor Lord dream that the world would pronounce him immortal for having formed an ill-assorted museum of effete ideas gathered from all the kingdoms of thought? While he was writing the sheets of The Old Roman World, was he thinking of a political world, or an ecclesiastical world, or a literary world, or a military world, or conjuring up a visionary world? Did he base his claims to an imperishable name on his faculty to extract philosophical truth from historical facts, or on his powers of describing facts and communicating truths so as to be useful to his fellow-man, or on his irrepressible fluency in saying again and again, what had been better said again and again by others before? Did he intend to write a book; or are the sixteen chapters of his volume sixteen independent and unrelated pamphlets, or sixteen stump speeches, or sixteen lectures, or sixteen spiritualistic effusions in a meandering mood of mind?

Did he write to instruct the student, or amuse the indolent, or delight the world, or add to the lore of the learned? Did he ever read, in the original languages, the historians, the philosophers, the critics, the poets, the scientific writers on whose minds and merits he wrote; or has he seen them only as in a mirror, by means of encyclopedian dissertations, hand-books, and such second-hand depositories? Did he think that the world would regard his compilations as a faithful reflector of ancient minds and ancient life?

There is, however, in Dr. Lord's Old Roman World food for thought. No one denies the importance of the high and momentous questions connected with the Roman name. It is an unquestionable fact that, in the history of the human race, the Romans occupy the most prominent position. To the eyes of the historian, the Roman world is, amongst the nations of bygone centuries, what, to the eyes of the astronomer, the sun is amongst the heavenly bodies. The generative causes of that outshining social edifice have occupied the most splendid intellects in past ages, and have been analyzed anew in our day, according to his generalization, by Dr. Lord. To his mind it seems that the nations of the earth were welded into one body by the superior military mechanism of the Romans, and that the impaired efficiency of this military machinery, together with a certain mysterious fatality, produced the disintegration of the Roman empire, by destroying the cohesive qualities of Roman rule. Such is the pervading idea of his chapters. We know that vast empires have been born of the sword; but we have yet to learn that an empire embracing the nations, religions, and languages of the earth, could have been founded on, and conserved for centuries by, military mechanism. The Romans, like Attila, or Genghis Khan, or Alexander, or Sesostris, might have gone forth, and, either by bravery, or superior tactics, or vast levied armies, have overrun the nations of the earth; but military mechanism could never have raised and sustained through a long lapse of ages a mighty empire built on vanquished peoples. And yet Rome not only conquered and incorporated independent races, but glued them to the centre Rome; so much so, that they lost animosity, language, institutions, and nationality to become Romans. Rome not only romanized Italy, but italianized the then known world. In the days of Hadrian and Trajan, the waves of the Mediterranean knew no lord but the Roman; from the margin of those seas were wafted the wealth and the produce of the world toward Rome; and far beyond that margin, through hundreds of miles, the genius and power of Rome were transforming the nations, building roads and palaces, founding cities, subdividing provinces, spreading the Latin language, and stamping the mind of Latium on the human race. From the Padus to Japugium the names of the Italian tribes were merged into the name of Rome. The men of Mesraim bowed before the Roman eagle, and saw the traditions of two thousand years vanish away before the institutions of Rome. The Asiatic cities renounced their pride of birth, and Greece yielded up a rich heritage of literary and military glory. The fiery valor of the Gauls and the martial memories of western nations were surmounted by the unconquerable energy of the Roman mind. To Rome the known nations of the world became as handmaids, and paid homage through a dozen generations. Whatever had been great in the world, whatever powerful, whatever beautiful, whatever renowned, whatever ennobling, was swallowed up in the mighty name of Rome. And when, amid the upheaving of humanity and the undulations of races, Rome sank as a ship in a troubled ocean, her spirit lived to elevate the Italian, the Frank, the Spaniard, the Norman, to be the princes of the families of mankind. Could military mechanism have accomplished such results? Could military mechanism, when it was no more, possess a renovating influence? Does not Sallust assert the superiority of the Gauls to the Romans in war? Besides, it is a questionable point whether the military systems of the Greeks are not preferable to the war tactics of the Romans. The Thessalian cavalry, and the Macedonian phalanx with its adaptability to evolutions, can stand a strict critical comparison with the Roman equites and Roman legion. The variety of movements in the phalanx, despite its inflexible and inseparable character, may well compensate for the individual and displayed energy of the Roman combination. That Polybius judges the mechanism of the Roman superior to that of the Greek, may be ascribable to the fact that he preferred attributing the subjugation of his countrymen, not to a superiority of valor, but of military manoeuvres. Does any one suppose that the army of Pompey, twice as numerous as that of Caesar, was worsted through the defect of theoretic military mechanism, rather than through the deficiency of the qualities which make a soldier? If any one will take the trouble of writing, in parallel columns, the organization, the sub-organizations, the war habiliments, the aggressive and defensive weapons, the laws of army management in sieges, in march, in battle, and in the tent, as they existed in Italy and Greece, we would leave to his candid judgment the decision on the speculative excellence of Grecian and Roman war systems, considered as a whole. And on the sea, the Romans were tyros when the Greeks had attained considerable perfection. The Romans defeated the Carthaginians, not on a system indigenously reared on the waters of Latium, but with a fleet formed after the fashion of an inimical craft wrecked on the Italian shore. In the progressive days of Rome, the nomenclature of the parts and naval acts of a Roman vessel was suggested by, or adopted from, the preexisting terminology of Greece. What thence? Do we depreciate the military mechanism of Rome? By no means. But we unhesitatingly object to placing it as the primary cause of the elevation of Rome to the pinnacle of power. Where Doctor Lord placed Roman military mechanism, he should have mentioned Roman character and Roman institutions. In no place did character and institutions more powerfully concur to elevate the individual than in the city of old Rome, in the state of Latium, on the banks of the Tiber. The kings imparted a multifold and vigorous development to the martial, the religious, the aesthetical, the governmental, the utilitarian tendencies of the people. These fountains of grandeur poured their united streams of glory during the five centuries of the republic into a magnificent reservoir, to empty which there was demanded the lapse of five hundred years of enfeebling despotism. It would be long to trace the single developments. But we can see, and might explain by facts that, in as far as Rome incorporated with an equalization other powers, so far did she strengthen and aggrandize herself; whereas, incorporations subject to inequality were co-causes of her destruction. In the books of the Machabees we see that the Jews, in their emergency, called in the Romans as the justest amongst the Gentiles. In his preface Livy says: "Caeterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit, aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam serae avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint: nec ubi tantus tamdiuque paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit: adeo quanto rerum minus tanto minus cupiditatis erat. Nuper divitiae avaritiam at abundantes voluptates desiderium per luxum atque libidinem pereundi perdendique omnia invexere." It is always safer to accuse those that are dead than those with whom we live; and surely, the historian that did not dread to attack the living, would not have failed to arraign the dead, had the dead deserved it. The expulsion and cause of expelling Tarquin, consecrated an individual self-respect which evermore remained an important element in the Roman character. This self-respect is the bulwark of individual freedom, and the most indestructible foundation of a social edifice. From it arose the acquisition by the populace of the jus suffragii, jus commercii, jus connubii, jus honorum. It was the mine which blew up, first, the patricians, and then the nobles. Where did Dr. Lord learn that patricians and nobles are synonymous terms? This self-respect imparted fortitude to the soldier, wisdom to the statesman, honor to the merchant. The individual was clothed with the majesty of his country. To uphold that majesty was the first duty of the Roman. Allied with self-respect, unchangeableness of purpose appears as a trait of the Roman character. Athens might have been a Rome, had the Athenian spirit the persistency of the Roman. There was, perhaps, no formative element of the Roman character so prominent as the practical common sense which made them learners in all the departments of life. The Romans admitted the perfectibility of their institutions and practices, so as to adopt from foreigners whatever they deemed an improvement. The Spartan loved his country as intensely and as devotedly as the Roman, but Sparta, rejecting the eclecticism of Rome, remained cramped and undeveloped in its exclusiveness. These qualities of the mind, together with a physical strength, such as appears from the saying of Pyrrhus, "Had I the Romans for soldiers, I could conquer the world," led Rome along the highway of glory and power.

It would be folly to follow Dr. Lord through the many subjects on which he speaks. We take the first chapter of his work as a specimen of the wild, thoughtless, rambling manner in which he writes. It is headed "The Conquests of the Romans;" but in it one finds a paragraph on "the lawfulness of war," a paragraph on "the evils of war," a few pages on "Providence," a disquisition on the immediate and ultimate consequences of the Crusades, a paragraph on Providence again, something on the aspirations of the South, a paragraph to show "how petty legends indicate the existence of great virtues," a paragraph to show "how petty wars with neighboring states develop patriotism," something on morals and Cato, whom he characterizes as "a hard, narrow statesman," a chronicon Romanum, the history of the helepolis, a paragraph to show the necessity for the empire. Would any one imagine that the same man wrote of Rome under the emperors the following passages: "The real (page 13) grandeur of Rome is associated with the emperors. Great works of art appear, and they become historical. The city is changed from brick to marble, and palaces, and theatres, and temples become colossal. There are more marble busts than living men. A liberal patronage is extended to artists. Medicine, law, and science flourish. … The highest state of prosperity is reached that the ancient world knew." Again "Rome (p. 69) yields her liberties, and imperial despotism begins its reign—hard, immovable, resolute— under which genius is crushed. Empire is added, but prosperity is undermined. The machinery is perfect, but life is fled." Dr. Lord tells us that he loves to ponder on the sacred geese, but we would respectfully direct his pondering to the inconsistencies, contradictions, and false pronouncements with which his volume teems. He considers the Crusades the worst wars in history, uncalled for, unscrupulous, fanatical; but, though they were uncalled for, unscrupulous, and fanatical, he styles Bernard, Urban, Philip, and Richard, great men, far-sighted statesmen, and asserts that "the hand which guided that warfare between Europe and Asia was the hand that led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea;" and those wars which he pronounces worst he declares to have developed the resources of Europe, built free cities, opened the horizon of knowledge, and given a new stimulus to all the energies of the European nations. There are few who will agree with Dr. Lord when he says that the Romans "despised literature, art, philosophy, agriculture, and even luxury when they were making their grand conquests." He need only read his own description of the heroes who made the conquests to see the falsehood of his statements. There are few, too, who will say that he describes the characters of the ancients with accuracy. We would especially notice his defect of appreciation in the case of Homer, of Sophocles, and of the Latin historians. The grand excellence of Homer remains unseen by him. The raising up of hero after and over hero, and the transference of a collective glory to Achilles may be said to constitute the greatest marvel of the Iliad. This generates the oneness which has been noticed and praised by all the ancients. The Doctor praises extravagantly Virgil's epic, but every candid reader will confess that he feels unconcerned, and, it may be, weary, as he wades though the last half of the AEneid, whereas he becomes more and more enraptured as he advances through the books of the Iliad. Diomedes is as grand a warrior as AEneas, and we doubt very much whether Virgil could have raised a higher model than AEneas, whereas Homer has worked the climax through four or five to Achilles. Who believes, or has believed, that Demosthenes' Philippics are more brilliant than his De Corona? To us Dr. Lord seems, in judging of the ancients, to have acted as a compiler rather than to stand boldly before the extant originals and pronounce his own judgment. When he does speak for himself, he seems to be more anxious to make himself singular than to see and tell the truth with accuracy. Speaking of "the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse and the mythological myths of the ante-Homeric songsters," he looks rather in the light of a foolish fool than a serious writer communicating truth to a criticising world.

It is curious, touchy, and, we might say, laughable, to read over Dr. Lord's notions of the connection of the old Roman world with the church. Bossuet's idea of the old Roman empire being an instrument in the hands of God to propagate Christianity, has a deep fascination for our author; but Bossuet never gets the credit of it. We err very much if, in writing The Old Roman World, Dr. Lord did not intend to elaborate this conception in a work which the world would recognize as the rival of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. How does he do it? He discovers that there had existed an ineffable fatalism, according to which the Roman empire was doomed to die. What was old and heathen should disappear, that what was new and Christian might arise. The fading away of the Roman reign was unworthy to be compared with the glories about to be manifested. What were they? Were they the beauties of a grand society whose teaching authority as to the things of eternity was to be the Holy Spirit, whose head and sanctifier was to be Christ—of a society to be sustained by the hand of God, elevated above all societies, extended and visible through the world such as Bossuet conceived? Dr. Lord opines that, when Christianity is embraced by all, it is corrupted, and may be said to be dead except with a few chosen spirits; and when Christianity is embraced only by a few and is pure, it is valueless for the mass of mankind, being limited and uninfluential. On either horn of the dilemma, Christianity may be regarded as an unimportant and unprofitable school for the multitude. Yet he says that the world marches on in Christian progress. There are always some revivalists, some believers, as the Puritans, in a pure and personal God; and Providence, which "grandly and mournfully" eliminates the Roman world, consoles the human race by casting up, here and there, some select ones, some pure ones, some godly ones. But, if Dr. Lord merely wished to act the part of a noonday somnambulist or a dreamy rhapsodist, we would fain permit him to revel undisturbed in his reveries. We have, however, a right, as Catholics, to object to misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine. There are many honest and righteous Protestant minds whose vision may become jaundiced by the assertions of this writer. Where has he learned that the Virgin has been made the object of absolute worship? When he speaks of ceremonies, and festivals, and pomps, he ought to look upon them as those do who use them. We have always been at a loss to understand what special enmity some people have against a special sense. If the senses are channels for communicating thought, why decry the legitimate use of any one of them performing its own function? Why instruct through the ear and not through the eye? Does not a map surpass all language in communicating geographical knowledge? Logically, one ought to praise God through the intuition of spirit vis-a-vis spirit and disown corporeal agents, eyes, tongue, ears, hands, physical actions; or recognize all, provided they be means of communicating thought. There is not and there never has been in the church, any imposing altar typical of Jewish sacrifices. As to the monks, either Lord admits the truth of what are called evangelical counsels, or he does not; if he does, he should not be at war with the monks for actuating what is true; if he does not, how does he get rid of the texts of the Bible which contain them? Did the monks effect nothing for the good of humanity? Were all the monks in pursuit of a purely contemplative life? Were there no teachers, no benefactors of the poor, no cultivators of deserts, and woods, and wildernesses amongst them? Were there no founders of cities, no evangelizers of savages? Surely, the disciples of Columbanus, of Benedict, of Basil, deserve something better than the following turgid rigmarole of a visionary fanfaron: "Monastic life (p. 559) ripened also in a grand system of penance and expiatory rights, such as characterized oriental asceticism. Armies of monks retired to gloomy and isolated places, and abandoned themselves to rhapsodies, and fastings, and self-expiations in opposition to the grand doctrine of Christ's expiation. They despaired of society and abandoned the world to its fate—a dismal and fanatical set of men overlooking the practical aims of life. They lived more like beasts and savages than enlightened Christians—wild, fierce, solitary, superstitious, ignorant, fanatical, filthy, clothed in rags, eating the coarsest food, practising gloomy austerities, introducing a false standard of virtue, regardless of the comforts of civilization, and careless of those great interests which were entrusted to them to guard.

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The monks and hermits sought to save themselves by climbing to heaven by the same ladder that had been sought by the soofis and fakirs, which delusion had an immense influence in undermining the doctrines of grace. Christianity was fast merging itself into an oriental theosophy." It is a sad thing to see, and a tormenting thing to have to follow, through over six hundred pages, a man, rushing madly from subject to subject. We have no interest, except in the cause of truth and right, to censure Dr. Lord; and could we fairly, in the capacity of critic, have awarded him praise, we should have, without reluctance, and with warmth, performed the task. We should say that he must have labored long to compile his work; but if anything distinguishes that work, it is an unlikeness to the sources from which it is presumed to have been gotten up. The ancients conceived of a whole, and elaborated the natural component parts to form that whole; in the work before us the formative materials produce as grotesque a union as that in the minotaur, or centaur, or gorgon, or chimaera, or hydra, or sphinx. In the ancients, we are pleased with a modesty which dreads alike the overstatement or the withholding of the truth; Dr. Lord astounds us with an unblushing and unthinking recklessness of assertion. In presenting their thoughts to the world, the Greeks and Romans were scrupulous down to the collocation of a particle; Dr. Lord's production is overgrown with expletives, ambiguities, redundancies, and repetitions. To any one accustomed to gaze on the chaste, crystal, and refreshing pages of classic lore, his volume is an unendurable eyesore.

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