ze the friend of my heart,--General
d'Auvergne. I lift him in my arms, and search for the wound. Alas! a
grapeshot had torn through his chest, and cut asunder that noble heart
whose every beat was honor. Though still warm, no ray of life remained:
the hand I had so often grasped in friendship, I wrung now in the last
energy of despair, and fell upon the corpse in the agony of my grief.

The night was falling fast. All was still around me; none remained near;
the village was deserted. The deafening din of the cannonade continued,
and at times some straggling shot crashed through the crumbling walls,
and brought them thundering to the earth; but all had fled. By the pale
crescent of a new moon I dug a grave beneath the ruined wall of the
farmhouse. The labor was long and tedious; but my breaking heart took no
note of time. My task completed, I sat down beside the grave, and taking
his now cold hand in mine, pressed it to my lips. Oh, could I have
shared that narrow bed of clay, what rapture would it have brought to my
sorrowing soul! I lifted the body and laid it gently in the earth; and
as I arose, I found that something had entangled itself in my uniform,
and held me. It seemed a locket, which he wore by a ribbon round his
neck. I detached it from its place, and put it in my bosom. One lock of
the snowy hair I severed from his noble head, and then covered up the
grave. "Adieu forever!" I muttered, as I wandered from the spot.

It was the death of a true D'Auvergne,--"on the field of battle!"

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE BRIDGE OF MONTEREAU

Ere I left the village, a shower of shells was thrown into it from the
French lines, and in a few minutes the whole blazed up in a red flame,
and threw a wide glare over the battlefield. Spurring my horse to
his speed, I galloped onward, and now discovered that our troops were
retiring in all haste. The Allies had won the battle, and we were
falling back on Brienne.

Leaving seventy-three guns in the hands of the enemy, above one thousand
prisoners, and six thousand killed in battle, Napoleon drew off his
shattered forces, and marched through the long darkness of a winter's
night. Thus ended the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube,--the most fatal for the
hopes of the Emperor since the dreadful day of Leipzic.

From that hour Fortune seemed to frown on those whose arms she had so
often crowned with victory; and he himself, the mighty leader of so
many conquering hosts, stood at the window of th