s, heard from the mountain side, startled every
listener.

"The Prussians! the Prussians!" called out three or four voices
together.

"No, no!" shouted Francois; "I was too long a tambour not to know that
beat; they 're our fellows."

The drums rolled fuller and louder; and soon the head of a column
appeared peering over the ascent of the road. The sun shone brightly on
their gay uniforms and glancing arms, and the tall and showily-dressed
tambour-major stepped in advance with the proud bearing of a conqueror.

"Form, men, and to the front!" said the major of the voltigeurs, who
knew that his place was in the advance, and felt a noble pride that he
had won it bravely.

As the column came up the road, the voltigeurs, scattered along the road
on either side, advanced at a run. But no longer was there any obstacle
to their course; no enemy presented themselves in sight, and we mounted
the ascent without a single shot being fired.

As I stopped for time to recover breath, I could not help turning to
behold the valley, which, now filled with armed men, was a grand and
a gorgeous sight. In long columns of attack they came, the artillery
filling the interspaces between them. A brilliant sunlight shone out;
and I could distinguish the different brigades, with whose colors I was
now familiar. Still my eye ranged over the field in search of cavalry,
the arm I loved above all others,--that which, more than all the rest,
revived the heroic spirit of the chivalrous ages, and made the horseman
feel the ancient ardor of the belted knight. But none were within sight.
Indeed, the very nature of the ground offered an obstacle to their
movement, and I saw that here, as at Austerlitz, the day was for the
infantry.

Meanwhile we toiled up the height, and at length reached the crest of
the ridge. And then burst forth a sight such as all the grandeur I
had ever beheld of war had never presented the equal to. On a vast
tableland, slightly undulating on the surface, was drawn up the whole
Prussian army in battle array,--a splendid force of nigh thirty thousand
infantry, flanked by ten thousand sabres, the finest cavalry in Europe.
By some inconceivable error of tactics, they had offered no other
resistance to the French ascent of the mountain than the skirmishing
troops, which fell back as we came on; and even now they seemed to wait
patiently for the enemy to form before the conflict should begin. As our
columns crowned the hill they