of the most powerful and comprehensive nature; the superb display of the finest army that the Continent had sent to war for the last hundred years; and all this excitement and enjoyment, with an unrivaled vista of matchless conquest in the horizon, a triumphal march through the provinces, to be consummated by the peace of Europe in Paris, filled even my vexed and wearied spirit with new life.  If I am right in my theory, that the mind reaches stages of its growth with as much distinctness as the frame, this was one of them.  I was conscious from this time of a more matured view of human being, of a clearer knowledge of its impulses, of a more vigorous, firm, and enlarged capacity for dealing with the real concerns of life.  I still loved; and, strange, hopeless, and bewildering as that passion was in the breast of one who seemed destined to all the diversities of fortune—­it remained without relief, or relaxation through all.  It was the vein of gold, or perhaps the stream of fire, beneath the soil, inaccessible to the power of change on the surface, but that surface undergoing every impulse and influence of art and nature.

The army now advanced unopposed.  Still we received neither cheers nor reinforcements from the population.  Yet we had now begun to be careless on the topic.  The intelligence from Paris was favourable in all the leading points.  The king was resuming his popularity, though still a prisoner.  The Jacobins were exhibiting signs of terror, though still masters of every thing.  The recruits were running away, though the decree for the general rising of the country was arming the people.  In short, the news was exactly of that checkered order which was calculated to put us all in the highest spirits.  The submission of Paris, at least until we were its conquerors, would have deprived us of a triumph on the spot, and the proclamation of a general peace would have been received as the command for a general mourning.

The duke was in the highest animation, and he talked to every one round him, as we marched along, with more than condescension.  He was easy, familiar, and flushed with approaching victory.  “We have now,” said he, “broken through the ‘iron barrier,’ the pride of Vauban, and the boast of France for these hundred years.  To-morrow Verdun will fall.  The commandant of Thionville, in desperation at the certainty of our taking the town by assault, has shot himself, and the keys are on their way to me.  Nothing but villages now lie in our road, and once past those heights,” and he pointed to a range of woody hills on the far horizon, “and we shall send our light troops en promenade to Paris.”  We all responded in our various ways of congratulation.

“Apropos,” said the duke, applying to me, “M.  Marston, you have been later on the spot than any of us.  What can you tell of this M. Dumourier, who, I see from my letters, is appointed to the forlorn hope of France—­the command of the broken armies of Lafayette and Luckner?”