Stuttgart, in 1814, I met an old quartermaster of my regiment. This
dear fellow, the only man who chose to recognize me, and of whom I
will tell you more later, explained the marvel of my preservation, by
telling me that my horse was shot in the flank at the moment when I
was wounded. Man and beast went down together, like a monk cut out of
card-paper. As I fell, to the right or to the left, I was no doubt
covered by the body of my horse, which protected me from being
trampled to death or hit by a ball.

"When I came to myself, monsieur, I was in a position and an
atmosphere of which I could give you no idea if I talked till
to-morrow. The little air there was to breathe was foul. I wanted to
move, and found no room. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. The most
alarming circumstance was the lack of air, and this enlightened me as
to my situation. I understood that no fresh air could penetrate to me,
and that I must die. This thought took off the sense of intolerable
pain which had aroused me. There was a violent singing in my ears. I
heard--or I thought I heard, I will assert nothing--groans from the
world of dead among whom I was lying. Some nights I still think I hear
those stifled moans; though the remembrance of that time is very
obscure, and my memory very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of
far more acute suffering I was fated to go through, and which have
confused my ideas.

"But there was something more awful than cries; there was a silence
such as I have never known elsewhere--literally, the silence of the
grave. At last, by raising my hands and feeling the dead, I discerned
a vacant space between my head and the human carrion above. I could
thus measure the space, granted by a chance of which I knew not the
cause. It would seem that, thanks to the carelessness and the haste