ull gray had overspread the
entire sky. Albert wrapped his mantle more closely about him, and
while he trotted on along the broad road, the picture of the last
eventful time unfolded itself to his imagination. He thought how, a
few months before, he had travelled on the same road, in an opposite
direction, and during the loveliest season of the year. The fields
then bloomed forth luxuriantly, the fragrant meadows resembled
variegated carpets, and the bushes in which the birds joyously chirped
and sung, shone in the fair light of golden sunbeams. The earth, like
a longing bride, had richly adorned herself to receive in her dark
nuptial chamber, the victims consecrated to death--the heroes who fell
in the sanguinary battles.

Albert had reached the corps to which he was appointed, when the cannon
had already begun to thunder by the Sambre, though he was in time
enough to take part in the bloody battles of Charleroi, Gilly, and
Gosselins. Indeed, chance seemed to wish that Albert should be present
just when any thing decided took place. Thus he was at the last
storming of the village Planchenoit, which caused the victory in the
most remarkable of all battles--Waterloo. He was in the last
engagement of the campaign, when the final effort of rage and fierce
despair on the part of the enemy wreaked itself on the immoveable
courage of the heroes, who having a fine position in the village of
Issy, drove back the foe as they sought, amid the most furious
discharge of grape, to scatter death and destruction in the ranks; and
indeed drove them back so far, that the sharp-shooters pursued them
almost to the barriers of Paris. The night afterwards (that of the 3rd
and 4th of July), was, as is well known, that on which the military
convention for the surrender of the metropolis was settled at St. Cloud.

The battle of Issy now rose brightly before Albert's soul; he thought
of things, which as it seemed, he had not observed, nay, had not been
able to observe during the fight. Thus the faces of many individual
officers and men appeared before his eyes, depicted in the most lively
manner, and his heart was struck by the inexplicable expression, not of
proud or unfeeling contempt of death, but of really divine inspiration,
which beamed from many an eye. Thus he heard sounds, now exhorting to
fight, now uttered with the last sigh of death, which deserved to be
treasured up for posterity like the animating utterances of the hero