the
plain of Donchery. There were two courses left for them to pursue, both
desperate; and the most promising, as well as the bravest, of them was
to drive the Bavarians into the Meuse, and cut their way through and
regain possession of the Carignan road.

Weiss, whose spectacles were constantly slipping down upon his nose,
adjusted them nervously and proceeded to explain matters to the
lieutenant, who was still seated against the wall with his two stumps of
legs, very pale and slowly bleeding to death.

"Lieutenant, I assure you I am right. Tell your men to stand their
ground. You can see for yourself that we are doing well. One more effort
like the last, and we shall drive them into the river."

It was true that the Bavarians' second attack had been repulsed. The
mitrailleuses had again swept the Place de l'Eglise, the heaps of
corpses in the square resembled barricades, and our troops, emerging
from every cross street, had driven the enemy at the point of the
bayonet through the meadows toward the river in headlong flight, which
might easily have been converted into a general rout had there been
fresh troops to support the sailor-boys, who had suffered severely and
were by this time much distressed. And in Montivilliers Park, again, the
firing did not seem to advance, which was a sign that in that quarter,
also, reinforcements, could they have been had, would have cleared the
wood.

"Order your men to charge them with the bayonet, lieutenant."

The waxen pallor of death was on the poor boy-officer's face; yet he had
strength to murmur in feeble accents:

"You hear, my children; give them the bayonet!"

It was his last utterance; his spirit passed, his ingenuous, resolute
face and his wide open eyes still turned on the battle. The flies
already were beginning to buzz about Francoise's head and settle there,
while lying on his bed little Charles, in an access of delirium, was
calling on his mother in pitiful, beseeching tones to give him something
to quench his thirst.

"Mother, mother, awake; get up--I am thirsty, I am so thirsty."

But the instructions of the new chief were imperative, and the officers,
vexed and grieved to see the successes they had achieved thus rendered
nugatory, had nothing for it but to give orders for the retreat. It was
plain that the commander-in-chief, possessed by a haunting dread of
the enemy's turning movement, was determined to sacrifice everything in
order to escape from the