"'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