It might then have been six in the evening. I was cold and had dropped my head forward upon my knees, when the roll of artillery called me again to my senses. The two pieces in the garden and many others posted behind them threw their broad flashes through the darkness, while Russians and Prussians crowded through the street. But all this was as nothing in comparison to the fire of the French, from the hill opposite the village, while the constant glare showed the Young Guard coming on at the double-quick, generals and colonels on horseback in the midst of the bayonets, waving their swords and cheering them on, while the twenty-four guns the emperor had sent to support the movement thundered behind. The old wall against which I leaned shook to its foundations. In the street the balls mowed down the enemy like grass before the scythe. It was their turn to close up the ranks.
I paid no further attention to the sergeant, but listened to the inspiring shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" ringing out in the momentary silence between the reports of the guns.
The Russians and the Prussians were forced back; the shouts of our troops grew nearer and nearer. The cannoneers at the pieces before me loaded and fired at their utmost speed, when three or four grape-shots fell among them and broke the wheel of one of their guns, besides killing two and wounding another of their men. I felt a hand seize my arm. It was the old sergeant. His eyes were glazing in death, but he laughed scornfully and savagely. The roof of our shelter fell in; the walls bent, but we cared not, we only saw the defeat of the enemy and heard the nearer and nearer shouts of our men, when the old sergeant gasped in my ear:
"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!"
They were his last words; 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 grey 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.
I saw no more, our victory was certain; and I fell like a corpse in the midst of corpses.