"Here he is!"
He rose to his knees, supporting himself with one hand, while with the other he waved his hat in the air, and cried in a ringing voice:
"Vive l'Empereur!"
Then he fell on his face to the earth and moved no more.
And I, raising myself too from the ground, saw Napoleon, riding calmly through the hail of shot—-his hat pulled down over his large head—his gray great-coat open, a broad red ribbon crossing his white vest—there he rode, calm and imperturbable, his face lit up with the reflection from the bayonets. None stood their ground before him; the Prussian artillerymen abandoned their pieces and sprang over the garden-hedge, despite the cries of their officers who sought to keep them back.
Everything gave way before him.
All this I saw—it seems graved with fire on my memory, but from that moment I can remember no more of the battle, for in that certainty of victory I lost consciousness and fell like a corpse in the midst of corpses.