sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a
naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me his
coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to
mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings
pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some
idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of
ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way
out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with
caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light Infantry
was standing sentry beside a big stone.

"What are you doing there?"

"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is
underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish
belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"

A terrible trial that explosion was for assaulting columns scattered
through a labyrinth of ruins, and barricaded lanes, and fired at from
all sides by an invisible foe.

But nothing dismayed our brave fellows for an instant. I was told that
at the moment of the catastrophe, when the staff, which was following
the progress of the fight with anxious ears, for there was no seeing
anything, saw the cloud caused by the explosion shrouding the
neighbourhood of the breach, and hundreds of wounded and burnt and
maimed men coming down it, they thought the assault had been repulsed
and that the game was up.