The Marquis de Toneins, a youth who had seen more battles and sieges than he could count years--the idol of Anne of Austria's maids of honour--made our sixth attempt to storm the Bastion de Louise; but was repulsed with unusual slaughter, and lost nearly all his men by their being hurled over the rocks into the river below. De Toneins was wounded by the Prince of Vaudemont, who had singled him out during the assault; and when he was borne bleeding into my tent, the remarkable conversation I had overheard at Sezanne, concerning the divorced Duchess de Charost, recurred to me; when de Toneins fell wounded, Raoul d'Ische tried hard to despatch him by a pike-thrust. Turenne, the young Marquis's rival alike in love and war, next day made the seventh assault on the same bastion, with the same success, though ably seconded by the Chevalier Ramsay, Knight of St. Lazarus, with his company of the regiment of Hepburn. During these disastrous attacks, we, with the other cavalry, were employed in scouring the whole province of Alsace, of which we had taken full possession in the name of Louis XIII., who required only La Mothe and one or two other places to complete his conquest. The firing was incessant. Cannon, mortars, and bombardes, muskets and arquebuses, environed the walls the livelong day with fire and smoke; and our fellows returned the compliment with the same amiable inventions; and in bulwark, trench, and battery, familiarity with danger soon bred contempt alike for shot and shell. But the fire maintained from the Bastion de Louise, from daybreak to sunset, was the most terrible and destructive that we had to encounter; and the extinction of this battery, before we could reach the gate (our only avenue to the town) was imperative. I conceived the idea of achieving this, by nailing up the cannon; and having spoken of it, in the hearing of several officers, one night, as we sat under the shelter of a haystack, drinking stroh wine out of cups and jars, my observations reached the ears of Sir John Hepburn, who sent for me, and with one of his quiet smiles which rather piqued me, he said, 'What is this I hear, Mr. Blane--you have conceived a project to silence that devil of a bastion which is so destructive to us?' I bowed, and he continued with the same smile. 'I am glad to hear of it, for, by Jove! if we stay here another month, our horses' bones will stand through their skins, like the ribs of a gridiron, as we have foraged and eaten up the whole of Alsace! And now for the project?' I reddened with vexation and confusion, for my words were heedlessly spoken, though seriously conveyed by some meddling gabbler; and as I stood before this well-tried soldier, who had fought in the Scoto-Bohemian bands at Fleura, commanded an army on the Vistula, stormed Frankfort and Marienbourg, and who had led the final charge of the Scots brigades at Leipzig, I trembled to be deemed by him an empty boaster, and so replied--