trot, the rattling of the cuirasses, the clicking of the sabres, and the fierce roar of the coming host. There was a moment of fearful silence, then, suddenly, a long line of raised arms brandishing sabres appeared above the crest, with casques, trumpets and standards, and three thousand faces with grey mustaches crying "Vive l'Empereur!" All this cavalry debouched on the plateau; it was like the beginning of an earthquake. All at once, at the left of the English the head of the column of cuirassiers reared with a frightful clamor. Arrived at the culminating point of the crest, unmanageable, full of fury, and bent on the extermination of the English squares, the cuirassiers saw between themselves and the English, a ditch-a grave. It was the sunken road of Ohain. It was a frightful moment. There was the ravine, unlooked for, yawning at the very feet of the horses, two fathoms deep. The second rank pushed in the first, the third pushed in the second The horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders. No power to retreat, the whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English, crushed the French. The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf; and when this grave was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on. Here the loss of the battle commenced.

At the same time with the ravine, the artillery was unmasked. All the English flying artillery took position in the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not even time to breathe. The disaster of the sunken road had decimated but not discouraged them. They were men who, diminished in number, grew greater in heart. The English battalions, desperately assailed, did not yield an inch. Then it was frightful. All sides of the English squares were attacked at once. A whirlwind of frenzy enveloped them. This frigid infantry remained impassable. The cuirassiers rushed forward with crushing force. The great horses reared, trampled upon the ranks, leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four living walls. The balls made gaps in the ranks of

the cuirassiers; the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground down beneath the horses' feet. The squares kept up an explosion in the midst of their assailants. They were battalions no longer, they were craters. With such Frenchmen only such Englishmen could cope. It was no longer a conflict! it was a darkness, a fury, a giddy vortex of souls and courage, a hurricane of sword-flashes! In an instant the fourteen hundred horse-guards were but eight. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to return to the infantry. All this terrible multitude wrestled with each other without letting go their hold.

There were twelve assaults, the struggle lasting two hours. The English army was terribly shaken. Wellington, though threefourths conquered, was struck with heroic admiration. He said in a low voice: "Splendid!" This strange battle was like a duel between two wounded infuriates, who, while yet fighting and resisting, lose all their blood. Which of the two shall fall first? The English army was farthest gone. The furious onslaughts of these great squadrons had ground up the infantry. A few men about a flag marked the place of a regiment; battalions were now commanded by captains or lieutenants. Alten's division was almost destroyed; there were hardly any left of those Dutch grenadiers. The loss in officers was heavy. With the exception of the small reserve drawn up behind the hospital, Wellington's cavalry was exhausted. Many thought the Duke beyond hope. At five o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and was heard to murmur these sombre words: "Blücher or night!"

It was about this time that a distant line of bayonets glistened on the heights beyond Frischemont. Blücher and his army arrived in time.

The irruption of a third army threw everything in confusion. A new battle falling at nightfall upon the dismantled regiments of the French, the whole English line, assuming the offensive, pushed forward. The gigantic gap made in the French army, the English grape and the Prussian grape lending mutual aid, extermination, disaster in front, disaster in flank, the Guard entered into line amid this terrible crumbling. Feeling that they were going to

their death, they cried out: "Vive l'Empereur!" There is nothing more touching in history than this death-agony bursting forth in acclamations.

The sky had been overcast all day. All at once, at this very moment—it was eight o'clock at night—the clouds in the horizon broke, and through the elms of the Nivelles road streamed the sinister red light of the setting sun.

Arrangements were speedily made for the final effort. Each battalion was commanded by a general. When the tall caps of the Grenadiers of the Guard with their large eagle plates appeared, symmetrical, drawn up in line, calm in the smoke of that conflict, the enemy felt respect for France. They thought they saw twenty victories entering upon the field of battle with wings extended, and those who were conquerors thinking themselves conquered recoiled; but Wellington cried: "Up, Guards, and at them!" The red regiment of English Guards, lying behind the hedges, rose up; a shower of grape riddled the tricolored flag. All hurled themselves forward, and the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping away around them in the gloom, and the vast overthrow of the rout. They heard the "Sauve qui peut!" which had replaced "Vive l'Empereur!" and, with flight between them, they held on their course, battered more and more, dying faster and faster. There were no weak souls or cowards there. The privates of that band were as heroic as their general. Not a man flinched from the suicide.

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The army fell back rapidly from all sides at once, from Hougomont, La Haie Sainte, Papelottle and Planchenoit. The cry Treachery!" was followed by " Sauve qui peut!" A disbanding army is a thaw. The whole bends, cracks, snaps, floats, rolls, falls, crashes, hurries, plunges. Ney borrows a horse, leaps upon him, and, without hat, cravat, or sword, plants himself in the Brussels road, arresting at once the English and the French. He endeavors to hold the army; he calls them back, he reproaches them, he grapples with the rout. He is swept away. The soldiers flee from him crying, "Vive Marshal Ney!" Durutte's two regiments come and go, frightened and tossed between the sabres of the Uhlans

and the fire of the brigades of Kempt. Rout is the worst of all conflicts; friends slay each other in their flight; squadrons and battalions are crushed and dispersed against each other, enormous foam of the battle. Napoleon gallops among the fugitives, harangues them, urges, threatens, entreats. The mouths which in the morning were crying" Vive l'Empereur," are now agape. He is hardly recognized. The Prussian cavalry, just come up, spring forward, fling themselves upon the enemy, sabre, cut, hack, kill, exterminate. Teams rush off; the guns are left to the care of themselves; the soldiers of the train unhitch the caissons and take the horses to escape; wagons upset, with their four wheels in the air, block up the road, and are accessories of massacre. They crush and they crowd; they trample upon the living and the dead. Arms are broken. A multitude fills roads, paths, bridges, plains, hills, valleys, woods, choked up by this flight of forty thousand men. Cries, despair; knapsacks and muskets cast into the rye; passages forced at the point of the sword; no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals; an inexpressible dismay. Ziethen sabring France at his ease. Lions become kids. Such was this flight.

A few squares of the Guard, immovable in the flow of the rout as rocks in running water, held out until night. Night approaching and death also, they awaited this double shadow, and yielded unfaltering to its embrace. At every discharge the square grew less, but returned the fire. It replied to grape by bullets, narrowing in its four walls continually. Afar off the fugitives, stopping for a moment out of breath, heard in the darkness this dismal thunder decreasing.

When this legion was reduced to a handful, when their flag was reduced to a shred, when their muskets, exhausted of ammunition, were reduced to nothing but clubs, when the pile of corpses was larger than the group of the living, there spread among the conquerors a sort of sacred terror about these sublime martyrs, and the English artillery, stopping to take breath, was silent. It was a kind of respite. These combatants had about them a swarm of spectres, the outlines of men on horseback, the black profile of the cannons, the white sky seen through the wheels and gun-carriages. The

colossal death's head, which heroes always see in the smoke of the battle, was advancing upon them and glaring at them. They could hear in the gloom of the twilight the loading of the pieces. The lighted matches, like tigers' eyes in the night, made a circle about their heads. All the linstocks of the English batteries approached the guns, when, touched by their heroism, holding the death-moment suspended over these men, an English general cried

to them:

"Brave Frenchmen, surrender!"

The word "Never!" fierce and desperate, came rolling back. To this word the English general replied, "Fire ! "

The batteries flamed, the hill trembled; from all those brazen throats went forth a final vomiting of grape, terrific. A vast smoke, dusky white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the smoke was dissipated, there was nothing left. That formidable remnant was annihilated -the Guard was dead! The four walls of the living redoubt had fallen. Hardly could a quivering be distinguished here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions expired.

HOW LISA LOVED THE KING.

GEORGE ELIOT.

IX hundred years ago in Dante's time,

SIX

Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme

Six hundred years ago, Palermo town

Kept holiday. A deed of great renown,

A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke

Of hated Frenchmen; and from Calpe's rock
To where the Bosphorus caught the earlier sun,
"Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon,
Was welcomed master of all Sicily,

A royal knight, supreme as kings should be.