ad paid. It was staggering.

On that rosy August dawn Count Saxe, with a small escort, started for
the Rhine by way of Chalons. This did not take us near Brabant, and
there seemed no chance of my seeing Francezka. This gave me great
uneasiness of mind. I was haunted by a whole troop of malignant fears,
of dreadful apprehensions about that being, so ineffably dear to me.
And these hideous shapes marched with me, and kept watch over me, and
visited me nightly in my dreams. And to no one, not even to Count
Saxe, could I speak of them! I could only go on steadfastly doing my
duty.

We reached Fort Louis, and Count Saxe being put in command of the
vanguard, consisting of about fifteen thousand men, of Marshal
Belle-Isle's army, we began the crossing of the river. We knew we were
playing a game of war with loaded dice, but soldiers must not inquire
too curiously into their orders. Marshal Belle-Isle had gone to
Germany the year before with a basket of eggs, which he reckoned as
full-grown chickens, but the eggs mostly addled and would not hatch,
so the game with the loaded dice was substituted.

We were on the march early in September, through the blue Bavarian
mountains, where the air, though sharp, was like good wine, and then
into the wild Bohemian country, full of rocks and bogs and black
chasms, and shaggy mountains, ever colder and bleaker, ever farther
and farther away from our base. Marshal Saxe was troubled with the
company of the King of Saxony, whom Marshal Belle-Isle made King of
Moravia; as Count Saxe said: "He is King of Moravia very much as I am
Duke of Courland."

At last, in the midst of the storms, the snows, the fierce winds of
November in that wild Bohemian country, we found ourselves set down
before Prague. And Prague we must take or starve--starve all of
us--men and horses together.

There was a multitude of counselors, each counseling some different
form of folly, and only my master, with one or two to support him
steadfastly proclaiming that we must take Prague or be lost. There
were innumerable objections made; it was a stupendous undertaking, for
we had nothing fit for besieging, only our good swords and Maurice of
Saxe to lead us. But at last, seeing ruin advancing upon us in the
shape of an Austrian army, while starvation stood sentry over us, the
King of Saxony and the rest of them were visited with a great light
and concluded to let my master have his way; and the night of the
twenty-seven