diamonds, gazing at the roaring waves of the Danube and the throng of human
beings who surrounded him.

Behind him, in gloomy silence, stood his generals--he did not notice them.
His soldiers marched before him--he did not heed them. But they saw him,
and turned from him to the mountains of corpses, to the moaning wounded
men, the pools of blood which everywhere surrounded them, then gazed once
more at him whom they were wont to hail exultingly as their hero, their
earthly god, and whom to-day, for the first time, they execrated; whom in
the fury of their grief they even ventured to accuse and to scorn.

But he did not hear. He heard naught save the voices in his own breast, to
whose gloomy words the wails and groans of the wounded formed a horrible
chorus.

Suddenly he rose slowly, and turning toward Marshal Bessières, who, with
his wounded arm in a sling, stood nearest to him, Napoleon pointed to the
river.

"To Ebersdorf!" he said, in his firm, imperious voice. "You will accompany
me, marshal. You too, gentlemen," he added, turning to the captured
Austrian General Weber, and the Russian General Czernitschef, who had
arrived at Napoleon's headquarters the day before the battle on a special
mission from the Czar Alexander, and been a very inopportune witness of his
defeat.

The two generals bowed silently and followed the emperor, who went hastily
down to the shore. A boat with four oarsmen lay waiting for him, and his
two valets, Constant and Roustan, stood beside the skiff to help the
emperor enter.