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And you too were there, Sultans with long pipes, reclining beneath arbors in the arms of Bayadères; Djiaours, Turkish sabers, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
The evolutions were such as to stir the blood of the most sluggish. A regiment, full front, would charge down upon a dead run from the far field, men shouting, sabers flashing, horses thundering along, so that the ground shook, towards the imperial party, and, when near, stop suddenly, wheel to right and left, and gallop back.
This was the entire furniture of the council-chamber, in which his Majesty alone could be seated. The generals stood before him, and had during these councils, which sometimes lasted three or four hours, no other support than the handles of their sabers. The council-chamber was entered from a hall.
Our cav airy were ordered to try and penetrate to the rear of the enemy. Here was a contest between cavalry. Carbines cracked and rattled almost like the heavy musketry of infantry. Many a horse was seen going at full speed over the field riderless. Many a cavalryman fell. At last a charge with sabers drawn was ordered. The sight, as described to me, was one of grandeur to behold.
Romance is what you look forward to; adventure is something you look back upon. If many disagreeable occupations, hunger and an occasional fisticuff, may be classed as adventure, then I have had my run of it. But I always supposed adventure was the finding of treasures, on land and on sea; of filibustering; of fighting with sabers and pistols, and all that rigmarole.
The assassins in the court-yard, with weapons reeking with blood, were howling for their prey. The soldiers were driven into the yard, and they fell beneath the blows of bayonets, sabers, and clubs, and their gory bodies were piled up, a hideous mound, in the corners of the court. The priests, without delay, met with the same fate. A moment sufficed for trial, and verdict, and execution.
One of the executioners seized the severed head of the monarch by the hair, and, raising the bloody trophy of their triumph, showed it to the shuddering throng, while the blood dripped from it on the scaffold. A few desperadoes dipped their sabers and the points of their pikes in the blood, and, waving them in the air, shouted "Vive la Republique!" The multitude, however, responded not to the cry.
"Was we to let out a yell now, they'd drag it so fast they'd dig their hoofs in clear down to the stirrup leathers." Drew shook his head. "Those are General Wilson's men ... can't be sure with them that they wouldn't come poundin' up, sabers out, tryin' to take a prisoner or two. Anyway, we don't stir them up, that's orders." Kirby sighed. "Too bad.
They passed through several villages; but although the tramp of the horses and the rattle of sabers must have been heard by the inhabitants, none stirred, for the mutineers took what they wanted without paying, and were already behaving as masters of the country; and even thus early the country people were beginning to doubt whether the fall of the English Raj, and the substitution of the old native rule, with its war, its bloodshed, and its exactions, was by any means a benefit, so far as the tillers of the soil were concerned.
As Louis was conducted to the Hotel de Ville, a hundred thousand armed men lined the way, and he passed along under the arch of their sabers crossed over his head. The cup of degradation he was compelled to drain to its dregs. While the king was absent from Versailles on this dreadful visit, silence and the deepest gloom pervaded the palace.
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