ick off as many of us as they can with their muskets
then they will run for it, and fire a train, and blow it and us into the
air."

"Colonel, this is serious. Are you prepared to lay this statement before
the commander-in-chief?"

"I am, and I do so through you, the general of my division. I even beg
you to say, as from me, that the assault will be mere suicide--bloody
and useless."

General Raimbaut went off to headquarters in some haste, a thorough
convert to Colonel Dujardin's opinion. Meantime the colonel went
slowly to his tent. At the mouth of it a corporal, who was also his
body-servant, met him, saluted, and asked respectfully if there were any
orders.

"A few minutes' repose, Francois, that is all. Do not let me be
disturbed for an hour."

"Attention!" cried Francois. "Colonel wants to sleep."

The tent was sentinelled, and Dujardin was alone with the past.

Then had the fools, that took (as fools will do) deep sorrow for
sullenness, seen the fiery soldier droop, and his wan face fall into
haggard lines, and his martial figure shrink, and heard his stout heart
sigh! He took a letter from his bosom: it was almost worn to pieces. He
had read it a thousand times, yet he read it again. A part of the sweet
sad words ran thus:--

"We must bow. We can never be happy together on earth; let us make
Heaven our friend. This is still left us,--not to blush for our love; to
do our duty, and to die."

"How tender, but how firm," thought Camille. "I might agitate, taunt,
grieve her I love, but I could not shake her. No! God and the saints to
my aid! they saved me from a crime I now shudder at. And they have given
me the good chaplain: he prays with me, he weeps for me. His prayers
still my beating heart. Yes, poor suffering angel! I read your will in
these tender, but bitter, words: you prefer duty to love. And one day
you will forget me; not yet awhile, but it will be so. It wounds me when
I think of it, but I must bow. Your will is sacred. I must rise to your
level, not drag you to mine."

Then the soldier that had stood between two armies in a hail of bullets,
and fired a master-shot, took a little book of offices in one hand,--the
chaplain had given it him,--and fixed his eyes upon the pious words,
and clung like a child to the pious words, and kissed his lost wife's
letter, and tried hard to be like her he loved: patient, very patient,
till the end should come.

"Qui vive?" cried the sentinel outside