now defiled to our support; but the death-dealing artillery swept through us without ceasing. Never was there a spectacle so terrible, as to see men, animated by courageous devotion, burning with glorious zeal, and yet powerless from very debility—actually dropping from the weakness of famine! The staggering step—the faint shout—the powerless charge—all showing the ravages of pestilence and want!
Some sentiment of compassion must have engaged our enemies' sympathy, for twice they relaxed their fire, and only resumed it as we returned to the attack. One fearful discharge of grape, at pistol range, now seemed to have closed the struggle; and as the smoke cleared away, the earth was seen crowded with dead and dying. The broken ranks no longer showed discipline—men gathered in groups around their wounded comrades, and, to all seeming, indifferent to the death that menaced them. Scarcely an officer survived, and, among the dead beside me, I recognized Giorgio, who still knelt in the attitude in which he had received his death-wound.
I was like one in some terrible dream, powerless and terror-stricken, as I stood thus amid the slaughtered and the wounded.
"You are my prisoner," said a gruff-looking old Croat grenadier, as he snatched my sword from my hand, by a smart blow on the wrist, and I yielded without a word.
"Is it over?" said I; "is it over?"
"Yes, parbleu, I think it is," said a comrade, whose cheek was hanging down from a bayonet wound. "There are not twenty of us remaining, and they will do very little for the service of the 'Great Republic.'"
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
FRENCH COTTAGE COOKERY.
I had frequently remarked a neat little old woman, in a clean, stiff-starched, quilted cap, going to and from a neighboring chapel, without however its ever coming into my head to ask who she was; until one day a drove of oxen alarmed her so visibly, that I opened the gate of my little garden, and begged her to remain there in safety till the cattle had passed by.