For a moment, as I looked, I could detect the marshal himself, as, holding his plumed hat above his head, he returned the salute of a lancer regiment, who proudly waved their banners as he passed; but, hark, what are those clanging sounds which, rising high above the rest, seem like the war-cry of a warrior?
"I can't mistake those tones," said a bronzed old veteran beside me; "those are the brass bands of the Imperial Guard.

Can Napoleon be there?
See, there they come!" As he spoke, the head of a column emerged from the wood, and deploying as they came, poured into the plain.

For above an hour that mighty tide flowed on, and before noon a force of sixty thousand men was collected in the space beneath us.
I was not long to remain an unoccupied spectator of this brilliant display, for I soon received orders to move down with my squadron to the support of the Eleventh Light Dragoons, who were posted at the base of the hill.

The order at the moment was anything but agreeable, for I was mounted upon a hack pony, on which I had ridden over from Crawfurd's Division early in the morning, and suspecting that there might be some hot work during the day, had ordered Mike to follow with my horse.

There was no time, however, for hesitation, and I moved my men down the slope in the direction of the skirmishers.
The position we occupied was singularly favorable,--our flanks defended on either side by brushwood, we could only be assailed in front; and here, notwithstanding our vast inferiority of force, we steadily awaited the attack.