The highway became a torrent, rolling with living waves which seemed inexhaustible.

At the bend in the road fresh masses ever appeared, whose songs ever helped to swell the roar of this human tempest.

When the last battalions came in sight the uproar was deafening.

The "Marseillaise" filled the atmosphere as if blown through enormous trumpets by giant mouths, which cast it, vibrating with a brazen clang, into every corner of the valley.

The slumbering country-side awoke with a start--quivering like a beaten drum resonant to its very entrails, and repeating with each and every echo the passionate notes of the national song.