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A scene of petty and disgraceful intrigues ensued between the exasperated duke and emperor, and there were the marching and the countermarching of hostile bands and the usual miseries of war, until the death of Duke Charles at the battle of Nancy on the 5th of January, 1477. The King of France now made a desperate endeavor to obtain the hand of Mary for his son.
The dominant impression is one of melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching Carthaginians, trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino, retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder.
For twelve days before the arrival of the ships, De Soto had kept companies of horse and foot marching and countermarching between Anhayea and the Bay, to keep the communication open. They also placed banners on the highest trees, as signals to point out the place of anchorage.
Here presently are phrases in conflicting motion, countermarching in a stormy maze. It is all, too, like noisy preparation, a manoeuvring of forces before the battle. Three distinct figures there are before a blast of horn in slower notes, answered by shrill call in highest wood. There enters a regular, rhythmic gait and a clearer tune, suggested by the call.
The passage of the Rhine at Markolsheim and the bridge of boats constructed under the electric light had existed merely in imagination, were an unexplained, inexplicable nightmare of the prefet at Schelestadt; and as for the army corps that had menaced Huningue, that famous corps of the Black Forest, that had made so much talk, it was but an insignificant detachment of Wurtemburgers, a couple of battalions of infantry and a squadron of cavalry, which had maneuvered with such address, marching and countermarching, appearing in one place and then suddenly popping up in another at a distance, as to gain for themselves the reputation of being thirty or forty thousand strong.
Twice has the iron entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal Crew gone over it: once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on prejudices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration; once again when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen dragged backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, 'rout on rout, confusion worse confounded, with places and pensions and the Quarterly Review dangling from their pockets, and shouting, 'Deliverance for mankind, for 'the worst, the second fall of man. Yet I have endured all this marching and countermarching of poets, philosophers, and politicians over my head as well as I could, like 'the camomile that thrives, the more 'tis trod upon. By Heavens, I think, I'll endure it no longer!
It has music under its trees and soldiers in its streets, and troops marching and countermarching along its sunny avenues. It has blue and pink, and yellow and green, on its awnings and on its house fronts. It has a merry open-air life on its pavements at little marble tables before little gay-colored cafés.
This was done without getting up and countermarching, but by facing around and bringing the rear into the front rank. The officers crawled back as best they could, and the sergeants did the same. I was making my way to the rear when one of the officers turned up his head and said to me, "Where in the devil are you trying to get to?" The tone indicated that he thought I was trying to sneak off.
The marching and countermarching was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in such matters.
Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains, I have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and entertained myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base were liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.
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