“They are doomed, like their fathers,” I muttered—“sons of the cuirassiers of Waterloo. See what men can do for France!”
The young Countess started and stood up very straight.
“Look, madame!” I said, harshly—“look on the men of France! You say you do not understand the narrow love of country! Look!” 83
“It is too pitiful, too horrible,” she said, hoarsely. “How the horses fall in that meadow!”
“They will fall thicker than that in this street!”
“See!” she cried; “they have begun to gallop! They are coming! Oh, I cannot look!—I—I cannot!”
Far away, a thin cry sounded above the cannon din; the doomed cuirassiers were cheering. It was the first charge they had ever made; nobody had ever seen cavalry of their arm on any battle-field of Europe since Waterloo.
Suddenly their long, straight blades shot into the air, the cuirassiers broke into a furious gallop, and that mass of steel-clad men burst straight down the first slope of the plateau, through the Prussian infantry, then wheeled and descended like a torrent on Morsbronn.
In the first ranks galloped the giants of the Eighth Cuirassiers, Colonel Guiot de la Rochere at their head; the Ninth Cuirassiers thundered behind them; then came the lancers under a torrent of red-and-white pennons. Nothing stopped them, neither hedges nor ditches nor fallen trees.
Their huge horses bounded forward, manes in the wind, tails streaming, iron hoofs battering the shaking earth; the steel-clad riders, sabres pointed to the front, leaned forward in their saddles.