I.

'NOTHING yet,' said the Colonel, searching the horizon with a longing eye. 'Nothing! What can this delay mean?'

He looked again, but not a pillar of dust, the most slender, was to be

seen.

'What do you think of it, Captain Fabert ?" he added, addressing one of the two officers who had followed him to the mamelon --a grizzled veteran with figure full of energy, but face seamed with wrinkles and scars.

The worst, my Colonel. Either

our detachment of chasseurs was surprised on the road yesterday, and not a trooper got into Algiers, or the reinforcement we're expecting has been attacked en route. There's no other supposition to make.'

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders, pressed his hand on the pommel of his sword, but made no comment.

He was young for his rank, only thirty years of age, the Colonel, but he had inherited a name illustrious in France; to that accident he owed his rapid promotion. His signal personal courage and his great military skill had warded off the natural envy that dogs the spoiled child of Fortune. He was adored by the privates, and he had not an enemy even amongst the clan of old officers, the sworn detractors of the Restoration and all its belongings.

The scene narrated took place six weeks after the capitulation of

Algiers, that is to say, on the 17th of August 1830, at seven in the morning. At the time the characters in our little story were ignorant of the events which had recently happened in Paris.

'Vive Dieu! Here we are in the middle of the mess, with nothing to hope for! So much the better! The men are biting their nails with rage and disappointment. We must only start the old tune over again, and that without losing a minute.'

The speaker was the Chevalier de Valade, a youth whose lips were hardly yet conscious of down; but he had an epaulette on his left shoulder, and a double band of gold on his képi.

'Is that your opinion, Fabert ?' asked the Colonel.

'I think the game is up, and we

have no resource but to turn on our heels.'

'What!' shouted De Valade indignantly.

Tell me your reasons, Cap

tain ?'

A

'My reasons, Colonel, are the same that made you decide yesterday to stop the assault. This pretended biscuit-box can only be taken by artillery. Morbleu! Whose is the fault?' continued Fabert. 'The Marshal was badly served by his spies, that's all. battalion is sent on the service with five-and-twenty chasseurs, and not even a rocket-tube! It was too much and too little. They thought we had nothing but a pigeon-house to smash in; and here we are, staring at an infernal fortress that a

tobdji could defend against an army without cannon. Success was impossible.'

'Impossible!' echoed De Valade. 'I have heard it said that in the time of the Emperor nothing was impossible.'

Fabert looked at him, and in his calmest voice said,

'A mistake, Monsieur le Chevalier. In the time of the Emperor there was one thing impossible, that a raw recruit should try to teach his business to an old soldier.'

De Valade grew purple with anger, and was about to reply; but a glance from the Colonel closed his mouth.

'You forget, gentlemen, that we are in front of the enemy!'

This simple reminder, short and severe, stopped altercation. They rested yet a little while on the rock, from whose summit they could command a vast spread of country, a succession of arid plains and parched ridges, and the blue background of the Mediterranean, on which gleamed whitely in the sun the domes and minarets of the barbaric city. On a plateau at a short distance off bivouacked the battalion. Farther back came out in relief on the sky the Arab bordj, whose guns protruded, their muzzles painted red-the colour of their messages of blood-from the grim black embrasures. Surrounded by fantastic crags, there was but one access to this redoubtable fort, through a narrow gorge enfiladed by the cross-fire of ordnance rising in tiers.

From time to time the outline of a caftan or an embroidered vest could be caught glancing past a loophole, or the steel of a gun-barrel glimmered in the sunshine. Giant vultures, with dusky-gray wings, circled slowly round in the silent heavens.

The French camp was out of

range of fire, in a dip of the ground. Near the tents the arms were piled; the soldiers gossipped, or slept in the shade, their pockethandkerchiefs over their faces, or busied themselves with one duty or another. Here and there could be detected the silhouette of a watchful sentinel. The affair of the previous day can have been no child's play, to judge by the number of bandaged heads and arms in slings in the camp.

As the three officers prepared to leave their post of observation, a sudden noise arrested them. It seemed as if it were the far echo of a trumpet-blast.

'At last,' cried De Valade, 'here come our artillerymen.'

They listened attentively, but the noise was not repeated; and they began to think they had been the dupes of their senses, as travellers in mid-ocean often fancy they hear the music of church-bells. All at once the lieutenant extended his hand.

'My God!' he muttered. 'What is that?'

He pointed to a hill on which could be distinguished white masses, like snow-flakes, moving about, gathering, spreading, and shortly, when the whole crest was covered by them, sweeping down like an avalanche.

'Humph!' growled the veteran, 'instead of Grouchy, it is Blucher.' A wild tumult of trumpets, flutes, and drums, and an outburst of savage yells announced the approach of the enemy.

In an instant the officers had got back to the camp. Their men were already in order of battle. Every post was assigned, and all the dispositions for defence taken. From the walls of the bordj hurrahs and reiterated discharges saluted the unexpected aid from without. The French battalion was in a most hazardous situation-enclosed

'A parlementaire !' said an officer, laughing. 'Do these beggars take themselves for a civilised people ?'

They must be the tribes of the Bey of Tittery,' conjectured the Colonel; they are commanded by a French renegade.'

'It's just as you think, my Colonel. I know their phizzes. I saw them near Sidi-Ferruch. Look, below there, that fellow in the blue burnous, that's El Hadji Ali.'

'What the devil can the rascal have to say to us?'

The parlementaire was led before the staff. In a French variegated with Italian, and in a formula where Oriental affectation jostled Occidental platitude, he signified that, before the combat, the magnanimous and most illustrious Khaliph El Hadji Ali desired an interview with the commander of the French.

The Colonel came to the conclusion that he was justified in acceding to the request. A marabout about half way between both forces was the spot appointed for the meeting, and the two chiefs,

on horseback and without escort, proceeded thither.

The Colonel regarded this El Hadji Ali with some curiosity; for strange stories had been current in the army touching his romantic career. Rightly or wrongly, it was said that the name disguised a former officer of rank under the Empire, who had been erased from the rolls of the army after the Hundred Days, and had been cast by the whirligig of Fate amid the corsairs of Algeria, whose religion and mode of life he had adopted. The Colonel saw a large and robust patriarch, very gracefully draped in a rich burnous, and managing with consummate ease a thoroughbred charger. His countenance was cold, diplomatic, impenetrable. His thick ebon eyelashes, his piercing eye peeping from under a half-closed lid, and his swarthy complexion contrasted with the snowy beard, which fell fanlike upon his bosom.

After an interchange of salutes of the ceremonious order, the Khaliph began, in grave accents,

'Colonel, I shall not insist upon the situation. You see the overwhelming superiority of our forces. Expect no help from Algiers. The bones of your chasseurs are bleaching by the roadside. You can assure yourself of that fact by casting your eyes over some of the horses mounted by my men. Under these circumstances I come to offer you the chance of avoiding a disproportioned struggle, the issue of which cannot for a moment be-'

Halt, sir! I have heard that you are French. Can I believe it ?' interrupted the Colonel disdainfully.

The Khaliph replied, without any token of offence,

'Doubtless I have not made myself well understood, and you make a mistake as to my proposal. Yes, I am French; and I will prove to

you that I do not forget it. Can my sentiments be questioned the day I welcome, after so many years, those noble colours, that glorious flag, so bitterly regretted, for which my blood was freely shed on every battlefield of Europe?'

In thus speaking, in a tone almost theatrical, but perfectly self-possessed, the Khaliph fixed a scrutinising regard upon the features of the Colonel, as if to divine the impression his words created.

'I don't understand you,' exclaimed the Colonel, stupefied.

The other paused a few instants, and then, giving way to a gesture of astonishment, demanded,

'Is it possible, Colonel, you have not heard of the news from France which arrived yesterday?'

'What the devil business of yours is it, sir?'

'Ah, I understand,' replied El Hadji Ali impassively, it is not my province to inform you: that should be done officially. Hearken!'

A loud and multiplied report came echoing from the distance in the still hot air. It was repeated in repercussions from the mountains like rolls of thunder, volleying in quick succession from every side. It was the cannon of Algiers.

Was there a revolt in the city? Silence came again. Then a second concussion shook the atmosphere and made the earth quiver. A third and a fourth discharge succeeded, always at precise intervals.

What could be passing?

The Khaliph spurred his horse towards the other side of the marabout, from which the ramparts of Algiers could be discovered.

If you wish the explanation of what we hear, Colonel, just turn this way, and you can read it as plainly as in the columns of the Moniteur.

The Colonel did as he was asked. El Hadji Ali stretched out

his arm without uttering a word, and the young officer could not restrain a cry of surprise and grief.

He was witness to something unheard of, impossible.

It was no longer the flag of Henry IV. which floated from the summit of the Kasbah of Algiers. To his amazed vision the banner which was now shaken out over the nest of pirates, which had been captured, to the shouts of 'Live the King!' was the flag of the Revolution and the Empire-the tricolor.

'The Bourbons are dethroned,' quietly said the renegade, letting each word fall upon his listener like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. 'Charles X. has recrossed the English Channel. The ministers are in the hands of the people, who are preparing to cut off their heads. The Empire, with Napoleon II., is reëstablished.'

Never was man more suddenly or cruelly smitten to the heart. His Royalist devotedness, his dearest affections-family, country, the past and the future-all swam in misty confusion before his stunned vision. Pale, with a haggard gaze, trembling with emotion, he was the picture of one menaced by an apparition.

El Hadji Ali stood rigid as a statue, gloating on the poor officer's pitiable state, but still pointing with inexorable finger to the standard on the Kasbah.

'Now,' he said coldly at length, now you know why the guns of the army and the fleet are firing a salute!'

III.

IN the horrid whirlwind of feeling which enveloped and choked him, the Colonel suddenly recollected that there was one there, a wretch who was scrutinising him, who feasted on his astonishment, his