When I became conscious again I was lying on a table. Two men were
leaning over me; a third came up, holding a basin. There was an odor
of carbolic in the air.
The man with the basin made a horrid grimace when he caught my eye;
his face was a curious golden yellow, his eyes jet black, and at first
I took him for a fever phantom.
Then my bewildered eyes fastened on his scarlet fez, pulled down over
his left ear, the sky-blue Zouave jacket, with its bright-yellow
arabesques, the canvas breeches, leggings laced close over the thin
shins and ankles of an Arab.
And I knew him for a soldier of African
riflemen, one of those brave children of the desert whom we called
"Turcos," and whose faith in the greatness of France has never
faltered since the first blue battalion of Africa was formed under the
eagles of the First Empire.
"Hallo, Mustapha!" I said, faintly; "what are they doing to me
now?"
The Turco's golden-bronze visage relaxed; he saluted me.
"Macache sabir," he said; "they picked a bullet from your spine, my
inspector."
An officer in the uniform of a staff-surgeon came around the table
where I was lying.
"Bon!" he exclaimed, eying me sharply through his gold-rimmed
glasses. "Can you feel your hind-legs now, young man?"
I could feel them all too intensely, and I said so.
The surgeon began to turn down his shirt-sleeves and button his cuffs,
saying, "You're lucky to have a pain in your legs." Turning to the
Turco, he added, "Lift him!" And the giant rifleman picked me up and
laid me in a long chair by the window.
"Your case is one of those amusing cases," continued the surgeon,
buckling on his sword and revolver; "very amusing, I assure you. As
for the bullet, I could have turned it out with a straw, only it
rested there exactly where it stopped the use of those long legs of
yours!--a fine example of temporary reflex paralysis, and no
hemorrhage to speak of--nothing to swear about, young man. By-the-way,
you ought to go to bed for a few days."
He clasped his short baldric over his smartly buttoned tunic. The room
was shaking with the discharges of cannon.
"A millimetre farther and that bullet would have cracked your spine.
Remember that and keep off your feet. Ouf! The cannon are tuning up!"
as a terrible discharge shattered the glass in the window-panes beside
me.
"Where am I, doctor?" I asked.
"Parbleu, in Morsbronn! Can't you hear the orchestra, zim-bam-zim!
The Prussians are playing their Wagner music for us. Here, swallow
this. How do you feel now?"
"Sleepy. Did you say a day or two, doctor?"
"I said a week or two--perhaps longer. I'll look in this evening if
I'm not up to my chin in amputations. Take these every hour if in
pain. Go to sleep, my son."
With a paternal tap on my head, he drew on his scarlet, gold-banded
cap, tightened the check strap, and walked out of the room.
Down-stairs I heard him cursing because his horse had been shot. I
never saw him again.
Dozing feverishly, hearing the cannon through troubled slumber, I
awoke toward noon quite free from any considerable pain, but thirsty
and restless, and numbed to the hips. Alarmed, I strove to move my
feet, and succeeded. Then, freed from the haunting terror of
paralysis, I fell to pinching my legs with satisfaction, my eyes
roving about in search of water.
The room where I lay was in disorder; it appeared to be completely
furnished with well-made old pieces, long out of date, but not old
enough to be desirable. Chairs, sofas, tables were all fashioned in
that poor design which marked the early period of the Consulate; the
mirror was a fine sheet of glass imbedded in Pompeian and Egyptian
designs; the clock, which had stopped, was a meaningless lump of gilt
and marble, supported on gilt sphinxes. Over the bed hung a tarnished
canopy broidered with a coronet, which, from the strawberry leaves and
the pearls raised above them, I took to be the coronet of a count of
English origin.
The room appeared to be very old, and I knew the house must have stood
for centuries somewhere along the single street of Morsbronn, though I
could not remember seeing any building in the village which, judging
from the exterior, seemed likely to contain such a room as this.
The nearer and heavier cannon-shots had ceased, but the window-sashes
hummed with the steady thunder of a battle going on somewhere among
the mountains. Knowing the Alsatian frontier fairly well, I understood
that a battle among the mountains must mean that our First Corps had
been attacked, and that we were on the defensive on French soil.
The booming of the guns was unbroken, as steady and sustained as the
eternal roar of a cataract. At moments I believed that I could
distinguish the staccato crashes of platoon firing, but could not be
certain in the swelling din.
As I lay there on my long, cushioned chair, burning with that
insatiable thirst which, to thoroughly appreciate, one must be
wounded, the door opened and a Turco soldier came into the room and
advanced toward me on tip-toe.
He wore full uniform, was fully equipped, crimson chechia, snowy
gaiters, and terrible sabre-bayonet.
I beckoned him, and the tall, bronzed fellow came up, smiling, showing
his snowy, pointed teeth under a crisp beard.
"Water, Mustapha," I motioned with stiffened lips, and the good
fellow unslung his blue water-bottle and set it to my burning mouth.
"Merci, mon brave!" I said. "May you dwell in Paradise with Ali, the
fourth Caliph, the Lion of God!"
The Turco stared, muttered the Tekbir in a low voice, bent and kissed
my hands.
"Were you once an officer of our African battalions?" he asked, in
the Arab tongue.
"Sous-officier of spahi cavalry," I said, smiling. "And you are a
Kabyle mountaineer from Constantine, I see."
"It is true as I recite the fatha," cried the great fellow, beaming
on me. "We Kabyles love our officers and bear witness to the unity of
God, too. I am a marabout, my inspector, Third Turcos, and I am
anxious to have a Prussian ask me who were my seven ancestors."
The music of his long-forgotten tongue refreshed me; old scenes and
memories of the camp at Oran, the never-to-be-forgotten cavalry with
the scarlet cloaks, rushed on me thick and fast; incidents, trivial
matters of the bazaars, faces of comrades dead, came to me in
flashes. My eyes grew moist, my throat swelled, I whimpered:
"It is all very well, mon enfant, but I'm here with a hole in me
stuffed full of lint, and you have your two good arms and as many legs
with which to explain to the Prussians who your seven ancestors may
be. Give me a drink, in God's name!"
Again he held up the blue water-bottle, saying, gravely: "We both
worship the same God, my inspector, call Him what we will."
After a moment I said: "Is it a battle or a bousculade? But I need
not ask; the cannon tell me enough. Are they storming the heights,
Mustapha?"
"Macache comprendir," said the soldier, dropping into patois. "There
is much noise, but we Turcos are here in Morsbronn, and we have seen
nothing but sparrows."
I listened for a moment; the sound of the cannonade appeared to be
steadily receding westward.
"It seems to me like retreat!" I said, sharply.
"Ritrite? Quis qui ci, ritrite?"
I looked at the simple fellow with tears in my eyes.
"You would not understand if I told you," said I. "Are you detailed
to look after me?"
He said he was, and I informed him that I needed nobody; that it was
much more important for everybody that he should rejoin his battalion
in the street below, where even now I could hear the Algerian bugles
blowing a silvery sonnerie--"Garde à vous!"
"I am Salah Ben-Ahmed, a marabout of the Third Turcos," he said,
proudly, "and I have yet to explain to these Prussians who my seven
ancestors were. Have I my inspector's permission to go?"
He was fairly trembling as the imperative clangor of the bugles rang
through the street; his fine nostrils quivered, his eyes glittered
like a cobra's.
"Go, Salah Ben-Ahmed, the marabout," said I, laughing.
The soldier stiffened to attention; his bronzed hand flew to his
scarlet fez, and, "Salute! O my inspector!" he cried, sonorously, and
was gone at a bound.
That breathless unrest which always seizes me when men are at one
another's throats set me wriggling and twitching, and peering from the
window, through which I could not see because of the blinds. Command
after command was ringing out in the street below. "Forward!" shouted
a resonant voice, and "Forward! forward! forward!" echoed the voices
of the captains, distant and more distant, then drowned in the rolling
of kettle-drums and the silvery clang of Moorish cymbals.
The band music of the Algerian infantry died away in the distant
tumult of the guns; faintly, at moments, I could still hear the shrill
whistle of their flutes, the tinkle of the silver chimes on their
toug; then a blank, filled with the hollow roar of battle, then a
clear note from their reeds, a tinkle, an echoing chime--and nothing,
save the immense monotone of the cannonade.
I had been lying there motionless for an hour, my head on my hand,
snivelling, when there came a knock at the door, and I hastily
buttoned my blood-stained shirt to the throat, threw a tunic over my
shoulders, and cried, "Come in!"
A trick of memory and perhaps of physical weakness had driven from my
mind all recollection of the Countess de Vassart since I had come to
my senses under the surgeon's probe. But at the touch of her fingers
on the door outside, I knew her--I was certain that it could be nobody
but my Countess, who had turned aside in her gentle pilgrimage to lift
this Lazarus from the waysides of a hostile world.
She entered noiselessly, bearing a bowl of broth and some bread; but
when she saw me sitting there with eyes and nose all red and swollen
from snivelling she set the bowl on a table and hurried to my side.
"What is it? Is the pain so dreadful?" she whispered.
"No--oh no. I'm only a fool, and quite hungry, madame."
She brought the broth and bread and a glass of the most exquisite wine
I ever tasted--a wine that seemed to brighten the whole room with its
liquid sunshine.
"Do you know where you are?" she asked, gravely.
"Oh yes--in Morsbronn."
"And in whose house, monsieur?"
"I don't know--" I glanced instinctively at the tarnished coronet on
the canopy above the bed. "Do you know, Madame la Comtesse?"
"I ought to," she said, faintly amused. "I was born in this room. It
was to this house that I desired to come before--my exile."
Her eyes softened as they rested first on one familiar object, then on
another.
"The house has always been in our family," she said. "It was once
one of those fortified farms in the times when every hamlet was a
petty kingdom--like the King of Yvetôt's domain. Doubtless the ancient
Trécourts also wore cotton night-caps for their coronets."
"I remember now," said I, "a stone turret wedged in between two
houses. Is this it?"
"Yes, it is all that is left of the farm. My ancestors built this
crazy old row of houses for their tenants."
After a silence I said, "I wish I could look out of the window."
She hesitated. "I don't suppose it could harm you?"
"It will harm me if I don't," said I.
She went to the window and folded up the varnished blinds.
"How dreadful the cannonade is growing," she said. "Wait! don't
think of moving! I will push you close to the window, where you can
see."
The tower in which my room was built projected from the rambling row
of houses, so that my narrow window commanded a view of almost the
entire length of the street. This street comprised all there was of
Morsbronn; it lay between a double rank of houses constructed of
plaster and beams, and surmounted by high-pointed gables and slated or
tiled roofs, so fantastic that they resembled steeples.
Down the street I could see the house that I had left twenty-four
hours before, never dreaming what my journey to La Trappe held in
store for me. One or two dismounted soldiers of the Third Hussars sat
in the doorway, listening to the cannon; but, except for these
listless troopers, a few nervous sparrows, and here and there a
skulking peasant, slinking off with a load of household furniture on
his back, the street was deserted.
Everywhere shutters had been put up, blinds closed, curtains drawn.
Not a shred of smoke curled from the chimneys of these deserted
houses; the heavy gables cast sinister shadows over closed doors and
gates barred and locked, and it made me think of an unseaworthy ship,
prepared for a storm, so bare and battened down was this long, dreary
commune, lying there in the August sun.
Beside the window, close to my face, was a small, square loop-hole,
doubtless once used for arquebus fire. It tired me to lean on the
window, so I contented myself with lying back and turning my head, and
I could see quite as well through the loop-hole as from the window.
Lying there, watching the slow shadows crawling out over the sidewalk,
I had been for some minutes thinking of my friend Mr. Buckhurst, when
I heard the young Countess stirring in the room behind me.
"You are not going to be a cripple?" she said, as I turned my head.
"Oh no, indeed!" said I.
"Nor die?" she added, seriously.
"How could a man die with an angel straight from heaven to guard him!
Pardon, I am only grateful, not impertinent." I looked at her humbly,
and she looked at me without the slightest expression. Oh, it was all
very well for the Countess de Vassart to tuck up her skirts and rake
hay, and live with a lot of half-crazy apostles, and throw her fortune
to the proletariat and her reputation to the dogs. She could do it;
she was Éline Cyprienne de Trécourt, Countess de Vassart; and if her
relatives didn't like her views, that was their affair; and if the
Faubourg Saint-Germain emitted moans, that concerned the noble
faubourg and not James Scarlett, a policeman attached to a division of
paid mercenaries.
Oh yes, it was all very well for the Countess de Vassart to play at
democracy with her unbalanced friends, but it was also well for
Americans to remember that she was French, and that this was France,
and that in France a countess was a countess until she was buried in
the family vault, whether she had chosen to live as a countess or as
Doll Dairymaid.
The young girl looked at me curiously, studying me with those
exquisite gray eyes of hers. Pensive, distraite, she sat there, the
delicate contour of her head outlined against the sunny window, which
quivered with the slow boom! boom! of the cannonade.
"Are you English, Monsieur Scarlett?" she asked, quietly.
"American, madame."
"And yet you take service under an emperor."
"I have taken harder service than that."
"Of necessity?"
"Yes, madame."
She was silent.
"Would it amuse you to hear what I have been?" I said, smiling.
"That is not the word," she said, quietly. "To hear of hardship
helps one to understand the world."
The cannonade had been growing so loud again that it was with
difficulty that we could make ourselves audible to each other. The jar
of the discharges began to dislodge bits of glass and little
triangular pieces of plaster, and the solid walls of the tower shook
till even the mirror began to sway and the tarnished gilt sconces to
quiver in their sockets.
"I wish you were not in Morsbronn," I said.
"I feel safer here in my own house than I should at La Trappe," she
replied.
She was probably thinking of the dead Uhlan and of poor Bazard;
perhaps of the wretched exposure of Buckhurst--the man she had trusted
and who had proved to be a swindler, and a murderous one at that.
Suddenly a shell fell into the court-yard opposite, bursting
immediately in a cloud of gravel which rained against our turret like
hail.
Stunned for an instant, the Countess stood there motionless, her face
turned towards the window. I struggled to sit upright.
She looked calmly at me; the color came back into her face, and in
spite of my remonstrance she walked to the window, closed the heavy
outside shutters and the blinds. As she was fastening them I heard the
whizzing quaver of another shell, the racket of its explosion, the
crash of plaster.
"Where is the safest place for us to stay?" she asked. Her voice was
perfectly steady.
"In the cellar. I beg you to go at once."
Bang! a shell blew up in a shower of slates and knocked a chimney into
a heap of bricks.
"Do you insist on staying by that loop-hole?" she asked, without a
quiver in her voice.
"Yes, I do," said I. "Will you go to the cellar?"
"No," she said, shortly.
I saw her walk toward the rear of the room, hesitate, sink down by the
edge of the bed and lay her face in the pillow.
Two shells burst with deafening reports in the street; the young
Countess covered her face with both hands. Shell after shell came
howling, whistling, whizzing into the village; the two hussars had
disappeared, but a company of Turcos came up on a run and began to dig
a trench across the street a hundred yards west of our turret.
How they made the picks and shovels fly! Shells tore through the air
over them, bursting on impact with roof and chimney; the Turcos tucked
up their blue sleeves, spat on their hands, and dug away like
terriers, while their officers, smoking the eternal cigarette, coolly
examined the distant landscape through their field-glasses.
Shells rained fast on Morsbronn; nearer and nearer bellowed the guns;
the plaster ceiling above my head cracked and fell in thin flakes,
filling the room with an acrid, smarting dust. Again and again metal
fragments from shells rang out on the heavy walls of our turret; a
roof opposite sank in; flames flickered up through clouds of dust; a
heavy yellow smoke, swarming with sparks, rolled past my window.
Down the street a dull sound grew into a steady roar; the Turcos
dropped pick and shovel and seized their rifles.
"Garde! Garde à vous!" rang their startled bugles; the tumult
increased to a swelling uproar, shouting, cheering, the crash of
shutters and of glass, and--
"The Prussians!" bellowed the captain. "Turcos--charge!"
His voice was lost; a yelling mass of soldiery burst into view; spiked
helmets and bayonets glittering through the smoke, the Turcos were
whirled about like brilliant butterflies in a tornado; the fusillade
swelled to a stupefying din, exploding in one terrible crash; and,
wrapped in lightning, the Prussian onset passed.
From the stairs below came the sound of a voiceless struggle, the
trample and panting and clicking of steel, till of a sudden a voice
burst out into a dreadful screaming. A shot followed--silence--another
shot--then the stairs outside shook under the rush of mounting men.
As the door burst open I felt a touch on my arm; the Countess de
Vassart stood erect and pale, one slender, protecting hand resting
lightly on my shoulder; a lieutenant of Prussian infantry confronted
us; straight, heavy sword drawn, rigid, uncompromising, in his
faultless gray-and-black uniform, with its tight, silver waist-sash.
"I do not have you thrown into the street," he said to me, in
excellent French, "because there has been no firing from the windows
in this village. Otherwise--other measures. Be at ease, madame, I
shall not harm your invalid."
He glanced at me out of his near-sighted eyes, dropped the point of
his sword to the stone floor, and slowly caressed his small, blond
mustache.
"How many troops passed through here yesterday morning?" he asked.
I was silent.
"There was artillery, was there not?"
I only looked at him.
"Do you hear?" he repeated, sharply. "You are a prisoner, and I am
questioning you."
"You have that useless privilege," I observed.
"If you are insolent I will have you shot!" he retorted, staring
haughtily at me.
I glanced out of the window.
There was a pause; the hand of the Countess de Vassart trembled on my
shoulder.
Under the window strident Prussian bugles were blowing a harsh
summons; the young officer stepped to the loop-hole and looked out,
then hastily removed his helmet and thrust his blond head through the
smoky aperture. "March those prisoners in below!" he shouted down.
Then he withdrew his head, put on his polished helmet of black
leather, faced with the glittering Prussian eagle, and tightened the
gold-scaled cheek-guard.
A moment later came a trample of feet on the landing outside, the door
was flung open, and three prisoners were brutally pushed into the
room.
I tried to turn and look at them; they stood in the dusk near the bed,
but I could only make out that one was a Turco, his jacket in rags,
his canvas breeches covered with mud.
Again the lieutenant came to the loop-hole and glanced out, then shook
his head, motioning the soldiers back.
"It is too high and the arc of fire too limited," he said, shortly.
"Detail four men to hold the stairs, ten men and a sergeant in the
room below, and you'd better take your prisoners down there. Bayonet
that Turco tiger if he shows his teeth again. March!"
As the prisoners filed out I turned once more and thought I recognized
Salah Ben-Ahmed in the dishevelled Turco, but could not be certain,
so disfigured and tattered the soldier appeared.
"Here, you hussar prisoner!" cried the lieutenant, pointing at me
with his white-gloved finger, "turn your head and busy yourself with
what concerns you. And you, madame," he added, pompously, "see that
you give us no trouble and stay in this room until you have permission
to leave."
"Are--are you speaking to me, monsieur?" asked the Countess, amazed.
Then she rose, exasperated.
"Your insolence disgraces your uniform," she said. "Go to your
French prisoners and learn the rudiments of courtesy!"
The officer reddened to his colorless eyebrows; his little,
near-sighted eyes became stupid and fixed; he smoothed the blond down
on his upper lip with hesitating fingers.
Suddenly he turned and marched out, slamming the door violently behind
him.
At this impudence the eyes of the Countess began to sparkle, and an
angry flush mounted to her cheeks.
"Madame," said I, "he is only a German boy, unbalanced by his own
importance and his first battle. But he will never forget this lesson;
let him digest it in his own manner."
And he did, for presently there came a polite knock at the door, and
the lieutenant reappeared, bowing rigidly, one hand on his sword-hilt,
the other holding his helmet by the gilt spike.
"Lieutenant von Eberbach present to apologize," he said, jerkily, red
as a beet. "Begs permission to take a half-dozen of wine; men very
thirsty."
"Lieutenant von Eberbach may take the wine," said the Countess,
calmly.
"Rudeness without excuse!" muttered the boy; "beg the graciously
well-born lady not to judge my regiment or my country by it. Can
Lieutenant von Eberbach make amends?"
"The Lieutenant has made them," said the Countess. "The merciful
treatment of French prisoners will prove his sincerity."
The lad made another rigid bow and got himself out of the door with
more or less dignity, and the Countess drew a chair beside my
sofa-chair and sat down, eyes still bright with the cinders of a wrath
I had never suspected in her.
Together we looked down into the street.
Under the window the flat, high-pitched drums began to rattle; deep
voices shouted; the whole street undulated with masses of
gray-and-black uniforms, moving forward through the smoke. A superb
regimental band began to play; the troops broke out into heavy
cheering.
"Vorwärts! Vorwärts!" came the steady commands. The band passed with
a dull flash of instruments; a thousand brass helmet-spikes pricked
the smoke; the tread of the Prussian infantry shook the earth.
"The invasion has begun," I said.
Her face was expressionless, save for the brightness of her eyes.
And now another band sounded, playing "I Had a Comrade!" and the
whole street began to ring with the noble marching-song of the coming
regiment.
"Bavarian infantry," I whispered, as the light-blue columns wheeled
around the curve and came swinging up the street; for I could see the
yellow crown on the collars of their tunics, and the heavy leather
helmets, surmounted by chenille rolls.
Behind them trotted a squadron of Uhlans on their dainty horses, under
a canopy of little black-and-white flags fluttering from the points of
their lances.
"Uhlans," I murmured. I heard the faint click of her teeth closing
tightly.
Hussars in crimson tunics, armed with curious weapons, half carbine,
half pistol, followed the Uhlans, filling the smoky street with a
flood of gorgeous color.
Suddenly a company of Saxon pioneers arrived on the double-quick,
halted, fell out, and began to break down the locked doors of the
houses on either side of the street. At the same time Prussian
infantry came hurrying past, dragging behind them dozens of vehicles,
long hay-wagons, gardeners' carts, heavy wheelbarrows, even a dingy
private carriage, with tarnished lamps, rocking crazily on rusty
springs.
The soldiers wheeled these wagons into a double line, forming a
complete chain across the street, where the Turcos had commenced to
dig their ditch and breastworks--a barricade high enough to check a
charge, and cunningly arranged, too, for the wooden abatis could not
be seen from the eastern end of the street, where a charge of French
infantry or cavalry must enter Morsbronn if it entered at all.
We watched the building of the barricade, fascinated. Soldiers entered
the houses on either side of the street, only to reappear at the
windows and thrust out helmeted heads. More soldiers came, running
heavily--the road swarmed with them; some threw themselves flat under
the wagons, some knelt, thrusting their needle-guns through the
wheel-spokes; others remained standing, rifles resting over the rails
of the long, skeleton hay-wagons.
"Something is going to happen," I said, as a group of smartly
uniformed officers appeared on the roof of the opposite house and
hastily scrambled to the ridge-pole.
Something was surely going to happen; the officers were using their
field-glasses and pointing excitedly across the roof-tops; the windows
of every house as far as I could see were black with helmets; a
regiment in column came up on the double, halted, disintegrated,
melting away behind walls, into yards, doorways, gardens.
A colonel of infantry, splendidly mounted, drew bridle under our
loop-hole and looked up at the officers on the roof across the way.
"Attention, you up there!" he shouted. "Is it infantry?"
"No!" bawled an officer, hollowed hand to his cheek. "It's their
brigade of heavy cavalry coming like an earthquake!"
"The cuirassiers!" I cried, electrified. "It's Michel's cuirassiers,
madame! And--oh, the barricade!" I groaned, twisting my fingers in
helpless rage. "They'll be caught in a trap; they'll die like flies
in that street."
"This is horrible!" muttered the girl. "Don't they know the street
is blocked? Can't they find out before they ride into this ravine
below us? Will they all be killed here under our windows?"
She sprang to her feet, stood a moment, then stepped swiftly forward
into the angle of the tower.
"Look there!" she cried, in terror.
"Push my chair--quick!" I said. She dragged it forward.
An old house across the street, which had been on fire, had collapsed
into a mere mound of slate, charred beams, and plaster. Through the
brown heat which quivered above the ruins I could see out into the
country. And what I saw was a line of hills, crowned with smoke, a
rolling stretch of meadow below, set here and there with shot-torn
trees and hop-poles; and over this uneven ground two regiments of
French cuirassiers and two squadrons of lancers moving slowly forward
as though on parade.
Above them, around them, clouds of smoke puffed up suddenly and
floated away--the shells from Prussian batteries on the heights. Long,
rippling crashes broke out, belting the fields with smoky breastworks,
where a Prussian infantry regiment, knee-deep in smoke, was firing on
the advancing cavalry.
The cuirassiers moved on slowly, the sun a blinding sheet of fire on
their armor; now and then a horse tossed his beautiful head, now and
then a steel helmet turned, flashing.
Grief-stricken, I groaned aloud: "Madame, there rides the finest
cavalry in the world!--to annihilation."
How could I know that they were coming deliberately to sacrifice
themselves?--that they rode with death heavy on their souls, knowing
well there was no hope, understanding that they were to die to save
the fragments of a beaten army?
Yet something of this I suspected, for already I saw the long, dark
Prussian lines overlapping the French flank; I heard the French
mitrailleuses rattling through the cannon's thunder, and I saw an
entire French division, which I did not then know to be Lartigue's,
falling back across the hills.
And straight into the entire Prussian army rode the "grosse
cavallerie" and the lancers.
"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!"
"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.
Now among the thicket of hop-vines long lines of black arose; there
was a flash, a belt of smoke, another flash--then the metallic rattle
of bullets on steel breastplates. Entire ranks of cuirassiers went
down in the smoke of the Prussian rifles, the sinister clash and crash
of falling armor filled the air. Sheets of lead poured into them; the
rattle of empty scabbards on stirrups, the metallic ringing of bullets
on helmet and cuirass, the rifle-shots, the roar of the shells
exploding swelled into a very hell of sound. And, above the infernal
fracas rose the heavy cheering of the doomed riders.
Into the deep, narrow street wheeled the horsemen, choking road and
sidewalk with their galloping squadrons, a solid cataract of impetuous
horses, a flashing torrent of armored men--and then! Crash! the first
squadron dashed headlong against the barricade of wagons and went
down.
Into them tore the squadron behind, unable to stop their maddened
horses, and into these thundered squadron after squadron, unconscious
of the dead wall ahead.
In the terrible tumult and confusion, screaming horses and shrieking
men were piled in heaps, a human whirlpool formed at the barricade,
hurling bodily from its centre horses and riders. Men galloped
headlong into each other, riders struggled knee to knee, pushing,
shouting, colliding.
Posted behind the upper and lower windows of the houses, the Prussians
shot into them, so close that the flames from the rifles set the
jackets of the cuirassiers on fire: a German captain opened the
shutters of a window and fired his pistol at a cuirassier, who replied
with a sabre thrust through the window, transfixing the German's
throat.
Then a horrible butchery of men and horses began; the fusillade became
so violent and the scene so sickening that a Prussian lieutenant went
crazy in the house opposite, and flung himself from the window into
the mass of writhing horsemen. Tall cuirassiers, in impotent fury,
began slashing at the walls of the houses, breaking their heavy sabres
to splinters against the stones; their powerful horses, white with
foam, reared, fell back, crushing their riders beneath them.
In front of the barricade a huge fellow reined in his horse and
turned, white-gloved hand raised, red epaulets tossing.
"Halt! Halt!" he shouted. "Stop the lancers!" And a trumpeter,
disengaging himself from the frantic chaos, set his long, silver
trumpet to his lips and blew the "Halt!"
A bullet rolled the trumpeter under his horse's feet; a volley riddled
the other's horse, and the agonized animal reared and cleared the
bristling abatis with a single bound, his rider dropping dead among
the hay-wagons.
Then into this awful struggle galloped the two squadrons of the lancers.
For a moment the street swam under their fluttering red-and-white
lance-pennons, then a volley swept them--another--another--and down
they went.
Herds of riderless horses tore through the street; the road undulated
with crushed, quivering creatures crawling about. Against the doorway
of a house opposite a noble horse in agony leaned with shaking knees,
head raised, lips shrinking back over his teeth.
Bewildered, stupefied, exhausted, the cuirassiers sat in their
saddles, staring up at the windows where the Prussians stood and
fired. Now and then one would start as from a nightmare, turn his
jaded horse, and go limping away down the street. The road was filled
with horsemen, wandering helplessly about under the rain of bullets.
One, a mere boy, rode up to a door, leaned from his horse and began to
knock for admittance; another dismounted and sat down on a doorstep,
head buried in his hands, regardless of the bullets which tore the
woodwork around him.
The street was still crowded with entrapped cuirassiers, huddled in
groups or riding up and down the walls mechanically seeking shelter. A
few of these, dismounted, were wearily attempting to drag a heavy cart
away from the barricade; the Prussians shot them, one at a time, but
others came to help, and a few lancers aided them, and at length they
managed to drag a hay-wagon aside, giving a narrow passage to the open
country beyond. Instantly the Prussian infantry swarmed out of the
houses and into the street, shouting, "Prisoners!" pushing, striking,
and dragging the exhausted cuirassiers from their saddles. But contact
with the enemy, hand to hand, seemed to revive the fury of the armored
riders. The débris of the regiments closed up, long, straight sabres
glittered, trembling horses plunged forward, broke into a stiff
gallop, and passed through the infantry, through the rent in the
barricade, and staggered away across the fields, buried in the smoke
of a thousand rifles.
So rode the "Cuirassiers of Morsbronn," the flower of an empire's
chivalry, the elect of France. So rode the gentlemen of the Sixth
Lancers to shiver their slender spears against stone walls--for the
honor of France.
Death led them. Death rode with them knee to knee. Death alone halted
them. But their shining souls galloped on into that vast Valhalla
where their ancestors of Waterloo stood waiting, and the celestial
trumpets pealed a last "Dismount!"