NARRATIVE, &c.


You know, my dear friend, how often I have expressed the inconsiderate
wish to have some time or other an opportunity of witnessing a general
engagement. This wish has now been accomplished, and in such a way as
had well nigh proved fatal to myself; for my life had like to have been
forfeited to my curiosity. I may boast, however, with perfect truth,
that, during the four most tremendous days, I was wholly unaffected by
that alarm and terror which had seized all around me. On those four days
I was a near and undisturbed observer of a conflict which can scarcely
be paralleled In the annals of the world: a conflict distinguished by a
character which raises it far above your ordinary every-day battles. Its
consequences will extend not to Europe only, but to regions separated
from it by vast oceans. You must not expect from me a narrative that
will enter into military details, but merely a faithful historical
picture of what fell under my own observation; of what my own eyes,
assisted by an excellent telescope, could discover from one of the
highest buildings in the city, in the centre of operations, in the midst
of a circumference of more than eighteen leagues; and what I saw and
heard while venturing, at the hazard of my life, out of the city, not
indeed up to the mouths of the infernal volcanoes, but close in the
rear of the French lines, into the horrible bustle and tumult of the
baggage-waggons and bivouacs. We were here exactly in the middle of the
immense magic circle, where the incantations thundered forth from
upwards of fifteen hundred engines of destruction annihilated many
thousands, in order to produce a new creation. It was the conflict of
the Titans against Olympus. It is unparalleled in regard to the