Midnight came, the city was one blaze of light. Lights shone from the windows of every house, festoons of lamps hung across many a street; on every open space and at every street corner in the suburbs there blazed huge bonfires, encircling the city with a girdle of flames. The British sentries at the Plaza Miserere looked wonderingly upon these endless lines of fire, and listened anxiously to the rising hum of many thousand voices, which declared the whole city to be astir. That city, since sundown so dark and desolate, so sunken in sorrow and despair, was now a scene of wild excitement and of fierce resolve; men said only one to another, What shall we do? Men sought only for a leader. The defeat of the evening was an affair long past and forgotten; men thought only of the morrow, and of the stern duty which on that morrow they would surely do. In the midst of all this excitement Balviani's division returned to the city, marching swiftly along the illuminated streets, dragging their guns with them, which guns Balviani had directed to be spiked on receipt of the order from the Cabildo for his immediate return; but to his command the artillerymen paid no heed, harnessing themselves to the guns and dragging them through pantanos and mud, when their wearied cattle dropped with fatigue, while the rain poured down upon them in torrents. Yet in spite of the rain the people crowded round them as they marched along, saluting them with shouts and with many a warm pressure of the hand. Their march more resembled the triumphant entry of a victorious army than the return of the remnant of a beaten one.