Again the brave French came headlong on, led now by jovial old De Bourmont; who, with the tricolor in one hand and his cocked hat in the other, scrambled up the loose stony breach in his clumsy jack-boots with an agility astonishing in one of his years and size. The gold cross of the Legion, the silver badges of Lodi, Arcola, of Marengo, and other scenes of honourable service—his bald head and silver hair—shone amid the glaring fire-balls and flashing musketry, as the desperate stormers swept on. "Vive l’empereur! Avancez! Avancez!" cried he. "Tué! tué!" yelled the forlorn band; and the whole of Regnier’s division sent up the _cri des armes_ from the hills to heaven. On came the infuriated assailants—on—on—rushing up the frightful path; but the deadly fire we rained upon them, and the fast falling corpses (every bullet killing double) soon kept them thoroughly in check. Regardless of danger, I stood on the summit of the breach, that my soldiers might not want example: I felt the wind of the flying balls as they whistled past me; one carried away my right epaulette, a second broke the hilt of my sabre, and I lost a spur by a third. "Soldiers, courage!" cried Santugo, who kept close by my side, and brandished his sabre with hot impatience; "courage, and they must again fly before you! Viva Ferdi—O, Madonna mia!" he suddenly ejaculated, in a gasping voice, as a ball struck him, and he sank at my feet. The soldiers at the howitzer dragged him back from the enemy’s fire; and as they did so, a musket bullet dropped from his left shoulder: he caught it, all dripping as it was with his blood, and giving it to the corporal, exclaimed, like the soldier of Julian Estrado: "With _this_ will I avenge myself! Signor Bombardiere, be so good as to load me a musket, and ram this bullet well home." It was done in a twinkling; and while from sheer agony his frame quivered and his teeth were clenched like a vice, he levelled the piece over the wheel of the howitzer and shot poor De Bourmont; who fell dead and rolled to the bottom of the rocks. The concussion threw Santugo backwards: but he was again dragged out of the press by the gunners, and taken to a sheltered place, where Macnesia attended to his wound. The instant Colonel Bourmont fell, another officer snatched the tricolor from the hand of the corpse as it rolled past, and supplied his place; and once more the storming party rushed up the steep ascent: regardless as before of falling men and rolling stones, of the shot showered on them from every point, and the hedge of keen bayonets bristling at the summit of the breach above them.