Lamoriciere, commanding the first attacking column, was carried back
blinded, and to everybody's astonishment the commanding officer of the
2nd column, Colonel Combes, was seen returning also. He advanced, sword
in hand, to the General commanding, over whose face an expression first
of wonder and then of anger spread, at the sight of a commanding officer
quitting his post. Nothing daunted, the colonel informed him, in a few
curt sentences, of the state of the fight, and of his own confidence in
its success, ending with these words: "It will be another glorious day
for France and for those who live to see the end of it." He saluted,
tottered--he was dead! No sign of his had betrayed that he was mortally
wounded.

As I listened to the tale I asked General Vallee,--"But what would you
have done, General, if the assault had been repulsed?"

"We should have begun again." As he said it he pressed his lips together
with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short stature, had
earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.," and an
officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer, added in an
undertone, "And he had taken all his precautions."

"What do you mean?"

"When he was told, the night before the assault, that the ammunition was
giving out, he ordered one round to be kept in reserve for the battery
that played upon the breach--"

"Well?"