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At the climax of the music which drove the people of Pesth wild at its first performance, so that Berlioz confessed that he himself shuddered and felt the hair bristling on his head when in a long crescendo fugued fragments of the march theme keep reappearing, interrupted by drum-beats like distant cannonading, Gunsbourg's battalions halt, and there is a solemn benediction of the standards.
He walked about the fires or lingered by the groups in consultation until the first signs of dawn. Then he climbed the low, rocky hill to the east and peered over the top, the drum-beats still pulsing through him, still coercing him. As the light grew, he could make out the details of the scene below.
Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy muffled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Détaille in Le Régiment quì Passe. Could he have been with us on the curbstone making his studies?
The air was filled with drum-beats, shouts of encouragement and derision, and the sound of the heavy blows which were administered to the unlucky bridegroom by each successive detachment of women as he ran the gantlet. It became evident at once that despite his most violent efforts he would fail to overtake the flying Atalanta before she completed the circuit of the tent.
Surely buttons were never designed to resist such strain. Coloured ladies generally sit meekly among the audience and chatter and maintain the drum-beats, lacking which no corroboree could be successful. During the intervals they may emboss pictures in the impressionable sand with cunning forefinger and giggle, for the subjects are often quaint.
The Grand Review passed through Washington; four hundred thousand ghosts of murdered men kept invisible march to the drum-beats, and lifted to the stained and tattered flags the proud and unreturned gaze of the dead who have died in their glory. Our gayest scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of bereaved wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed piteously everywhere.
Coarse chaff, vulgar comments on the dead man and his doings, with which all Paris was familiar, laughter called forth by the broad-brimmed hats of the rabbis and the solemn "mugs" of the council of wise men, filled the air between two drum-beats.
As carts passed under the great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish spirits. If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped their ears and fled in terror.
Farewell to the morning drum-beats, taps, roll-calls, drills, marches, battles, and all the other incidents and events of a soldier's life. "The serried ranks, with flags displayed, The bugle's thrilling blast, The charge, the thund'rous cannonade, The din and shout were past." The scattering-out process promptly began after we received our pay and discharges.
With its love of native land, its expression of the unity of comradeship and ties stronger than death, the song appeared to challenge an answer; and, when the music ceased, and only the drum-beats still seemed to make themselves heard, she raised her head without moving from her position and looked at him to see if he understood. But though she glanced at him, she hardly saw him.
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