quished, it was all ended; then why not stop the slaughter?
The abomination of desolation raised its voice to heaven: let it cease.

The Emperor, again before the window, trembled and raised his hands to
his ears, as if to shut out those reproachful voices.

"Oh, those guns, those guns! Will they never be silent!"

Perhaps the dreadful thought of his responsibilities arose before him,
with the vision of all those thousands of bleeding forms with which
his errors had cumbered the earth; perhaps, again, it was but the
compassionate impulse of the tender-hearted dreamer, of the well-meaning
man whose mind was stocked with humanitarian theories. At the moment
when he beheld utter ruin staring him in the face, in that frightful
whirlwind of destruction that broke him like a reed and scattered his
fortunes in the dust, he could yet find tears for others. Almost crazed
at the thought of the slaughter that was mercilessly going on so near
him, he felt he had not strength to endure it longer; each report of
that accursed cannonade seemed to pierce his heart and intensified a
thousandfold his own private suffering.

"Oh, those guns, those guns! they must be silenced at once, at once!"

And that monarch who no longer had a throne, for he had delegated all
his functions to the Empress regent, that chief without an army, since
he had turned over the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, now felt that
he must once more take the reins in his hand and be the master. Since
they left Chalons he had kept himself in the background, had issued no
orders, content to be a nameless nullity without recognized position, a
cumbrous burden carried about from place to place among the baggage of
his troops, and it was only in their hour of defeat that the Emperor
reasserted itself in him; the one order that he was yet to give, out
of the pity of his sorrowing heart, was to raise the white flag on the
citadel to request an armistice.

"Those guns, oh! those guns! Take a sheet, someone, a tablecloth, it
matters not what! only hasten, hasten, and see that it is done!"

The aide-de-camp hurried from the room, and with unsteady steps the
Emperor continued to pace his beat, back and forth, between the window
and the fireplace, while still the batteries kept thundering, shaking
the house from garret to foundation.

Delaherche was still chatting with Rose in the room below when a
non-commissioned officer of the guard came running in and interrupted
th