“’There has been some mistake, or else I dote—­and can’t tell a
    soldier from a’—­

    “‘Don’t say the word, old man, or your heart will bleed!’

    “’Humph!  I must go into this matter at once.  Be seated, Captain,
    if you please, and tell me what have you been doing all these
    years?’

    “‘Suffering!’

    “‘What, all the time?’

    “‘Without intermission.’

    “‘But what? suffering what?’

    “’Cold, hunger, darkness, wounds, solitude, sickness, despair,
    prison,—­all that man can suffer.’

    “‘Impossible! a man would be dead at that rate before this.’

    “‘I should have died a dozen times, but for one thing.’

    “‘Ay! what was that?’

    “‘I had promised to live.’

    “There was a pause.  Then the old man said, calmly,—­

    “‘To the facts, young man:  I listen.’”

And high time, be it said; since it begins to read very much like one of Artemas Ward’s burlesques.  The upshot of which listening was, that the man left for Paris directly in the demanded regimentals, and wrapt about with the Governor’s furred cloak to boot; that he would not delay in the metropolis one moment, even to put on the epaulets they gave him, but saved them for his sweetheart to make him a colonel with, and, though weary and torn with pain, galloped away to the Chateau de Beaurepaire, to find that sweetheart another man’s wife.

“He turned his back quickly on her.  ‘To the army!’ he cried, hoarsely.  He drew himself haughtily up in marching-attitude.  He took three strides, erect and fiery and bold.  At the fourth the great heart snapped, and the worn body it had held up so long rolled like a dead log upon the ground, with a tremendous fall.”

Which scene must be followed by its pendant, taking place during the siege of a Prussian town, when, from the enemy’s bastion, Long Tom, out of range of Dujardin’s battery, was throwing red-hot shot, sending half a hundred-weight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging it down into the French lines a mile off.

    “‘Volunteers to go out of the trenches!’ cried Sergeant La Croix,
    in a stentorian voice, standing erect as a poker, and swelling
    with importance.

    “There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds.

    “‘Only twelve allowed to go,’ said the Sergeant; ‘and I am one,’
    added he, adroitly inserting himself.

    “A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and posted near
    Death’s Alley, but out of the line of fire.

    “The Colonel himself superintended the loading of this gun; and to
    the surprise of his men had the shot weighed first, and then
    weighed out the powder himself.