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To undermine the ground for fifty feet to devote three years to a labor which, if successful, would conduct you to a precipice overhanging the sea to plunge into the waves from the height of fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, at the risk of being dashed to pieces against the rocks, should you have been fortunate enough to have escaped the fire of the sentinels; and even, supposing all these perils past, then to have to swim for your life a distance of at least three miles ere you could reach the shore were difficulties so startling and formidable that Dantes had never even dreamed of such a scheme, resigning himself rather to death.
The confusion was bewildering, and became still more so, when, hurrying through all the streets toward the Place de St. Pierre, the people found it barricaded on all sides, and filled with mounted guards and archers. Carts, fastened to the posts at each corner, closed each entrance, and sentinels, armed with arquebuses, were stationed close to the carts.
A strange solemn stillness seemed to close all round us. By intervals a single syllable, "Lord! Lord!" came from the old minister's lips. He saw none of us, nor thought of us. I never knew how long we stood, like sentinels guarding him at his prayers, holding our lights in a confused dazed way, not knowing what we did.
The moon is now obscured, and a drizzly rain is falling. The camp fires are still burning, but beyond the lines of sleeping men, all is darkness and gloom. The sentinels out there in the night are listening to strange sounds. Through the tall grass of the swamp lands terrible forms are creeping, like snakes on their bellies, towards the camp.
It was a barren hump; upon its crest, and alone in barbaric majesty, stood a row of grass trees silhouetted against the sunset sky. Weird sentinels of the bridal camp they seemed tall, thick black trunks like palm-stems, from each of which spread an enormous tuft of gigantic grass blades green and upright in the middle, grey and jaggled and drooping where they hung over at the bottom.
The Landgrave received me with all grace, favour, and distinction. I revere his memory, and seek to honour his name. He was the friend of misfortune. When I not long afterwards fell ill, he sent me his own physician, and meat from his table, nor would he suffer me, during two months, to be wakened by the sentinels.
Accordingly, as soon as daylight appeared, the horse was put in the cart, the farmer mounting his own animal, and with a hearty good-by from his wife the party started away. The Yankee sentinels at each end of the bridge were passed without questions, for, early as it was, the carts were coming in with farm produce.
In this view of the urgent necessities of the case, the compiler most heartily and earnestly concurs. I have just returned from forty-eight hours' friendly and professional attendance at a bedside where I would fain place every young person in this country for a single hour before the Responsibilities of Life have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of his Will.
My overcoat pockets were stuffed with German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco tumbled out on the floor.
He did not know that two of the sentinels had escaped, but he arrived down-stairs just in time to see the result of their disappearance. A large reserve guard of Confederates, warned of the jail delivery by these two soldiers, came rushing madly into the yard. "Look out, boys!" cried Watson.
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