In the centre of the Janissaries’ camp rose the many-colored tents of the court, and high above them all the crimson pavilion of Muhammad II. At daybreak he would appear in his doorway pale from the anxious vigil of the night, wearing a great turban to which was affixed a yellow plume, and a long blood-colored caftan. There he would stand, his eagle glance fixed upon the still unconquered city lying before him, one hand toying with his thick black beard, while with the other he fingered uneasily the silver handle of his curved dagger: around him would be gathered a group of his officers--Orbano, inventor of that huge cannon which was destined before many days to explode and scatter his own bones upon the esplanade of the Hippodrome; Admiral Balta-Ogli, already filled with uneasy presentiments concerning his future and the disgrace which the golden sceptre of his mighty lord was to bring about his ears; the hardy governor of the Epepolin, that great movable castle, surmounted by a tower and braced with iron, which was finally burned to the ground in front of the gate of San Romano; and a circle of poets and legislators bronzed by the suns of a hundred battlefields; a retinue of pashas, whose bodies were covered with wounds and their long caftans riddled with arrow-holes; a throng of gigantic Janissaries, with naked blades clasped in their hands, and sciaus armed with great steel clubs, ready to strike off the head or pound the flesh of rebel or coward alike; the flower of that boundless multitude of Asiatics, overflowing with youth, energy, and ferocity, only awaiting the signal to hurl themselves like a mighty torrent of fire and sword upon the feeble remnant of the Byzantine Empire. There they would stand, silent, motionless, in the rosy beams of the rising sun, looking with rapt gaze where, against the horizon, the thousand cupolas of the great city promised to them by the Prophet rose above the sobs and lamentations of its cowardly inhabitants. I saw them thus before me, their very postures, their arms, the folds of their long cloaks and caftans, their gigantic shadows falling athwart the earth seamed and scarred with the passage of heavy cannon and ponderous cars, when all at once, my eye chancing to fall upon a large stone half buried in the ground, I mechanically read the worn inscription upon its face. In a twinkling the imposing warlike scene disappeared, and in its stead the wide barren plain was peopled with a light-hearted multitude of Vincennes soldiers in their red breeches; I heard the cheerful songs of Normandy and Provence, saw Maréchal Saint-Arnaud, Canrobert, Forey, Espinasse, Pelissier, and recognized a thousand faces and brilliant uniforms, alive in my memory and dear to my heart ever since childhood, and read again, with an inexpressible sensation of surprise and delight, that meagre inscription: “Eugène Saccard, Caporal dans le 22° léger, 16 Juin, 1854.”