on to which he belongs has made an attack upon
Montebello, and is sending its sharpshooters among the cornfields and
vineyards. Some of the regiments invade the rice-fields, climb the walls
of the vineyards, and charge the enemy's column-ranks. The sullen roar of
the cannon alternates with the sharp report of guns, and whole showers of
grape-shot beat the air with their piercing whistle. All through the
uproar of guns and thunder of the artillery, you can distinguish the
guttural hurrahs of the Austrians, and the broken oaths of the French
troopers. The trenches are piled with dead bodies, the trumpets sound the
attack, the survivors, obeying an irresistible impulse, spring to the
front. The ridges are crested with human masses swaying to and fro, and
the first red uniform is seen in the streets of Montebello, in relief
against the chalky facades bristling with Austrian guns, pouring forth
their ammunition on the enemy below. The soldiers burst into the houses,
the courtyards, the enclosures; every instant you hear the breaking open
of doors, the crashing of windows, and the scuffling of the terrified
inmates. The white uniforms retire in disorder. The village belongs to
the French! Not just yet, though. From the last houses on the street, to
the entrance of the cemetery, is rising ground, and just behind stands a
small hillock. The enemy has retrenched itself there, and, from its
cannons ranged in battery, is raining a terrible shower on the village
just evacuated.

The assailants hesitate, and draw back before this hailstorm of iron;
suddenly a general appears from under the walls of a building already
crumbling under the continuous fire, spurs his horse forward, and shouts:
"Come, boys, let us carry the fort!"

Among the first to rally to this call, one rifleman in particular, a
fine, broad-shouldered active fellow, with a brown moustache and olive
complexion, darts forward to the point indicated. It is Claudet. Others
are behind him, and soon more than a hundred men, with their bayonets,
are hurling themselves along the cemetery road; the grand chasserot leaps
across the fields, as he used formerly in pursuit of the game in the
Charbonniere forest. The soldiers are falling right and left of him, but
he hardly sees them; he continues pressing forward, breathless, excited,
scarcely stopping to think. As he is crossing one of the meadows,
however, he notices the profusion of scarlet gladiolus and also observes
that th