awing a bead on Sheridan, when I leaned forward
and jerked his gun. He struggled with me, but I finally raised it. I
then loosed it, and he started to aim again. I caught it again, when
he turned his stern, white face, all broken with grief and streaming
with tears, up to me, and said: "Well, General, then let him keep on
his own side."

The fighting had continued up to this point. Indeed, after the flag of
truce, a regiment of my men, who had been fighting their way through
toward where we were, and who did not know of a flag of truce, fired
into some of Sheridan's cavalry. This was speedily stopped, however. I
showed General Sheridan General Lee's note, and he determined to await
events. He dismounted, and I did the same. Then, for the first time,
the men seemed to understand what it all meant, and then the poor
fellows broke down. The men cried like children. Worn, starved and
bleeding as they were, they would rather have died than have
surrendered. At one word from me they would have hurled themselves on
the enemy, and have cut their way through or have fallen to a man with
their guns in their hands. But I could not permit it. The great drama
had been played to its end. But men are seldom permitted to look upon
such a scene as the one presented here. That these men should have
wept at surrendering so unequal a fight, at being taken out of this
constant carnage and storm, at being sent back to their families; that
they should have wept at having their starved and wasted forms lifted
out of the jaws of death and placed once more before their
hearthstones, was an exhibition of fortitude and patriotism that might
set an example for all time.

SEDAN.

BY VICTOR HUGO.

The Second Empire of the French was pounded to powder in a bowl. This
is literal, not figurative. To attempt to describe Sedan after Victor
Hugo has described it for all mankind were a work futile and foolish.
To Hugo we concede the palm among all writers, ancient and modern, as
a delineator of battle. His description of the battle of Waterloo will
outlast the tumulus and the lion which French patriotism has reared on
the square where the last of the Old Guard perished. His description,
though not elaborate, is equally graphic and final. He was returning,
in September, 1871, from his fourth exile. He had been in Belgium in
banishment for about eighteen years. It is in the "History of a Crime"
that he tells the story. He says that he was re-entering F