As I stood I heard a window below me open, and some voices speaking. What they said at first was indistinct, from the noise of a tumbrel rolling across the court; but that ceased, and I could plainly distinguish the tone of the Marquis de St. Brie, saying, "I tell you, I saw him myself, with the Marquis de Sourdis in the other army: if it was not he, it was his spirit. He was paler, thinner, darker, older--but there was every line--and yet surely it could not be."
"No, no, my lord!" replied another voice. "I saw him as dead as a felled ox, and I gave him myself another slash across the head, to make all sure, before I threw him into the water."
"I will trust my own hand next time, however," said the Marquis. "Not that I doubt you, my good----"
As he spoke, I remembered that I was eaves-dropping; and though, if ever there was an occasion where it might be justified, it was then, I felt ashamed to do so, and retired to bed, bidding my servants, however, lock the door of the anteroom before they slept.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Early next morning, a firing was heard in the direction of Torcy; and springing on my horse, I galloped off for the scene of action, as fast as possible. Before I came up, however, the firing had ceased; and I found my troop under arms in the hamlet where I had left them, though the village itself, not above five hundred yards in front, was in the hands of the enemy. A regiment of infantry, which Monsieur de Bouillon had thrown forward into the village of Torcy itself for the purpose of covering his bridge of boats, had been attacked, it seemed, by the advance-guard of the enemy, and, after a sharp struggle, had been driven back upon the hamlet behind, from which Garcias had made a very brilliant charge upon the pursuing parties of the enemy, repulsed them with some loss, and compelled them to content themselves with the village they had taken.
As may be imagined, I was mortified at not having been present; but I expressed to my troop my high satisfaction at what had been done; and told them, in a brief harangue I made them on the occasion, that his highness the Count de Soissons reckoned greatly upon their valour for success; and that, therefore, he proposed to intrust to them, under my command, some of the most important manœuvres which had already been determined upon. Praise was perhaps the more palatable to them, as their bravery had been attended with no loss, and as they had driven back the enemy at the expense of a few slight wounds. Loud cheers, therefore, attended me as I rode with Garcias along their ranks; and these were repeated still more loudly when the commanding officer of the infantry rode up to Garcias, and thanked him for the very successful diversion which my troop had operated in his favour.
Finding that the enemy did not make any disposition for advancing farther, which would indeed have brought them almost under the guns of Sedan, I rode into the town to inform the Count of what had occurred; and after a brief interview with him, I delivered the letter for my father into the hands of little Achilles; and taking with me all my papers, I bade adieu to my little attendant with feelings that perhaps do not often exist between master and servant, and returned to my troop for the night.
Before joining them, however, according to the commands of the Count, I reconnoitred the position I was to take up the next morning, and passed by the pillar from which the signal was to be given. It had formed part of an old Roman arch, and probably had recorded some victory of those wonderful barbarians, the Romans, over their still more barbarous enemies, the Gauls; but as I looked at the broken fragments of the structure they had probably raised, in the fond hope of immortalizing some long-forgotten deed, the thrilling feeling of man's mortality--of the mortality of all his works--the mortality of his very fame, came coldly over my heart; and I turned away, repeating to myself some of the lines which my dead friend Father Francis of Allurdi had once cited--
"Glory, alas! what art thou but a name?"