ome of her
heavy care, more than from any love of a soldier's life, that Leopold,
at the age of fourteen, enlisted as a drummer.

At parting with her darling, the good woman said little, but to charge
him to remember his father's honesty and bravery, his mother's
goodness, and the love of the true hearts left behind him. "Make all
thy noise with thy drum, lad; neither boast nor swear, and remember,
the better man the better soldier."

"Keep up good heart, brother," said Heinrich, with a quivering lip,
"thou wilt come back to us some day, safe and sound, a grand
officer,--the General of all the drummers."

"Adieu, dear Leopold," sobbed Madeline; "O, what can I do without thee?
I pray the holy saints and angels to turn the bullets away from thee.
Take with thee our mother's prayer-book. The _Forget-me-nots_ pressed
in it are from her grave. I shall cry my prayers now; but they will
all be for thee. Adieu! adieu!"

Just then came the command, "Forward, march!" Leopold hastily thrust
his sister's gift into his bosom, kissed her for the last time, and
with a sad wave of the hand to his old friends, moved on in his place,
sturdily beating his drum, a tear-drop falling at every stroke.

Leopold first saw real hard fighting in Italy, at the great battle of
Marengo. In the early part of the engagement, as his regiment was
marching past a little hill, on which were a group of mounted officers,
Leopold's boyish eye was caught by the figure of a tall, handsome young
general, mounted on a magnificent white horse. He was very singularly
and splendidly dressed, in a rich Eastern-looking uniform, of scarlet,
azure, and gold. At his side hung a diamond-hilted sword, suspended by
a girdle of gold brocade. On his head he wore a three-cornered
chapeau, from which rose a long, white ostrich plume, and a superb
heron feather. The band that held these was clasped with brilliants of
great value.

"Ah, there is the great General Bonaparte!" cried Leopold, to a
comrade. "I knew him at a glance."

"Which, my lad?"

"Why, that splendid officer, talking to the pale little man, in a gray
surtout and leather breeches."

"Ah, no, my little comrade," replied the other drummer, laughing, "that
is Murat, General of Cavalry,--the little man in the gray surtout is
General Bonaparte. However, you need not blush for your hero; he is a
wonderful fellow at the head of a charge. Wherever his white plume
goes, victory follows. You shoul