The sortie of the garrison had given the capture an eclat which could not have been obtained by the mere surrender of a strong place.  But the most important point of all was, the surrender before the assault.  “The sight of our troops is enough,” was the universal conclusion.  If the fortified barrier of France cannot resist, what will be done by troops as raw as peasants, and officers as raw as their troops?  The capitulation was a matter of half an hour, and by nightfall I followed the duke and his escort into the town.  It was illuminated by order of the conquerors, and, whether bongre or malgre, it looked showy; we had gazers in abundance, as the dashing staff caracoled their way through the streets.  I observed, however, that we had no acclamations.  To have hissed us, might be a hazardous experiment, while so many Hulans were galloping through the Grande Rue; but we got no smiles.  In the midst of the crowd, I met Varnhorst steering his charger with no small difficulty, and carrying a packet of notes in his hand.  “Go to your quarters, and dress,” said my good-humoured friend.  “You will have a busy night of it.  The duke has invited the French commandant and his officers to dine with him, and we are to have a ball and supper afterwards for the ladies.  Lose no time.”  He left me wondering at the new world into which I had fallen, and strongly doubting, that he would be able to fill up his ball-room.  But I was mistaken.  The dinner was handsomely attended, and the ball more handsomely still.  “Fortune de la guerre,” reconciled the gallant captains of the garrison to the change; and they fully enjoyed the contrast between a night on the ramparts, and the hours spent at the Prussian generalissimo’s splendidly furnished table.  The ball which followed exhibited a crowd of the belles of Longwy, all as happy as dress and dancing could make them.  It was a charming episode in the sullen history of campaigning, and before I flung myself on the embroidered sofa of the mayor’s drawing-room, where my billet had been given for the night, I was on terms of eternal “friendship” with a whole group of classic beauties—­Aspasias, Psyches and Cleopatras.

But neither love nor luxury, neither the smiles of that fair Champagnaises, nor the delight of treading on the tesselated floors, and feasting on the richness of municipal tables, could now detain us.  We were in our saddles by daybreak, and with horses that outstripped the wind, with hearts light as air, and with prospects of endless victory and orders and honours innumerable before us, we galloped along, preceded, surrounded, and followed by the most showy squadrons that ever wore lace and feathers.  The delight of this period was indescribable.  It was to me a new birth of faculties that resembled a new sense of being, a buoyant and elastic lightness of feelings and frame.  The pure air; the perpetual change of scene; the novelty of the landscape; the restless and vivid variety of events, and those too