He saw it all well enough--he the man with the far-seeing mind and the eagle-eyes that missed nothing--neither a look of indecision, nor an indication of revolt. He saw it all but he could do nothing, for he too felt overwhelmed by that wave of indecision and of discouragement. Faith in himself, energy in action, had gone. He envisaged the possibility of a vanquished and dismembered France. Above all he had lost belief in his Star: the star of his destiny which, rising over the small island of Corsica, shining above a humble middle-class home, had guided him step by step, from triumph to triumph, to the highest pinnacle of glory to which man's ambition has ever reached. That star had been dimmed once, its radiance was no longer unquenchable: "Destiny has turned against me," he said, "and in her I have lost my most valuable helpmate." And now the whole of Europe had declared war against him, and in a final impassioned speech he turns to his ministers and to the representatives of his people: "Help me to save France!" he begs, "afterwards we'll settle our quarrels." One hundred days after he began his dream-march, from the gulf of Jouan in the wake of his eagle, he started from Paris with the Army which he loved and which alone he trusted, to meet Europe and his fate on the plains of Belgium. II And in Brussels they danced, danced late into the night. No one was to know that within the next three days the destinies of the whole world would be changed by the hand of God. And how to hide from timid eyes the sense of this oncoming destiny? how to stop for a few brief hours the flow of women's tears? The ball should have been postponed--Her Grace of Richmond was willing that it should be so. How could men and women dance, flirt and make merry while Death was already reckoning the heavy toll of brave young lives which she would demand on the morrow? But who knows England who has not seen her at the hour of danger? Put off the ball? why! perish the thought! The timid townsfolk of Brussels or the ladies of the French royalist party who were in great numbers in the city might think there was something amiss. What was amiss? some gallant young men would go on the morrow and conquer or die for England's honour! there's nothing amiss in that! Why put off the ball? The girls would be disappointed--they who like to dance--why should they be deprived of partners, just because some of them would lie dead on the battlefield to-morrow? Open your salons, Madame la Duchesse! The soldiers of Britain will come to your ball. They will laugh and dance and flirt to-night as bravely as they will die to-morrow. The sands of life are running low for them: in a few hours perhaps a bullet, a bayonet, who knows? will cut short that merry laugh, still the gallant heart that even now takes a last and fond farewell from a blushing partner, after a waltz, in a sweet-scented alcove with sounds of soft and distinct music around that stills the coming cannon's roar.