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Two postilions in uniform, in high military saddles on the nigh horse of each span, completed the establishment. All being ready, we took one of the roads from Pont-a-Mousson to Rezonville, which is on the direct road from Metz to Chalons, and near the central point of the field where, on the 16th of August, the battle of Mars-la-Tour had been fought.
A vivid imagination carried the child into realms where the stolid aunt could not follow, realms of whose existence the older woman never dreamed. But what troubled Maria Metz most was the child's frank avowal of vanity. Every new dress was a source of intense joy to Phœbe. Every new ribbon for her hair, no matter how narrow and dull of color, sent her face smiling.
In the summer his inclinations led him to make various journeys to the fortified city of Metz, where the regiment "de Noailles" was in garrison under the charge of the Prince de Poix who was a brother-in-law of Adrienne, Lafayette's wife. On his way back from one of these visits he stayed at Chaillot for a time and there was inoculated for smallpox.
All I could perceive, however, was a disabled gun, a broken mitrailleuse, and two badly damaged caissons. Everything else, except a little ammunition in the trenches, had been carried away, and it was plain to see, from the good shape in which the French left wing had retired to Metz, that its retreat had been predetermined by the disasters to the right wing.
How, only six months after their union, the Franco-Prussian war broke out, and Elsie's husband Wilhelm was sent with his regiment to the frontier; how in many engagements he had distinguished himself; and how, at last, he was mortally wounded during one of the sorties at the siege of Metz.
She remained some time in Munich, Berlin, and Rome, establishing her studio in these cities and painting a variety of subjects. Her flower pictures are her best works. Her "Mors Imperator" created a sensation by reason of its striking qualities rather than by intrinsic artistic merit. In the gallery at Metz is her picture of "Irene von Spilimberg on the Funeral Gondola."
By the middle of the afternoon the steady progress of the German left and centre had driven the French from their more advanced positions from behind stone walls and hedges, through valleys and hamlets, in the direction of Metz, but as yet the German right had accomplished little except to get possession of the village of Gravelotte, forcing the French across the deep ravine I have mentioned, which runs north and south a little distance east of ihe town.
They and we reverently stood as becomes persons who are in the presence of kings and the superiors of kings until Joan, troubled by this mark of homage and respect, and not content with it nor yet used to it, although we had not permitted ourselves to do otherwise since the day she prophesied that wretched traitor's death and he was straightway drowned, thus confirming many previous signs that she was indeed an ambassador commissioned of God, commanded us to sit; then the Sieur de Metz said to Joan: "The King has got the letter, but they will not let us have speech with him."
The folly of the politicians had not only ceased, but had fallen out of memory. It is no exaggeration to say that the vividness of that self-possession for a spring annihilated time. It was not a fortnight since the blow had come of the 15th Corps breaking before Metz, and the stunning fall of Namur.
The promptness with which, at much personal hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent insurrection; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bedridden man arose from his sick-bed to smite the Protestants at Muhlberg; the grim stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in the wintry siege of Metz; all ensured him a large measure of that applause which ever follows military distinction, especially when the man who achieves it happens to wear a crown.
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