"Accustomed, as I have said, to every kind of cruel severity, unmoved and stoically the Dutch looked on with their gray, lacklustre eyes, dull, unmeaning, and passionless in their stolidity, contrasting strongly with the expression of startled horror depicted in the strained eyeballs and bent brows of the victim's brother, when after a time he dared to look on this revolting punishment. Save an ill-repressed sob, or half-muttered interjection from the suffering man, no other sound broke the stillness of the place, where a thousand horsemen stood in close order, but the sputtering of the torches, in the red light of which our breaths were ascending like steam. Yes! there was one other sound, and it was a horrible one--the monotonous whiz of the scourge, as it cut the keen frosty air and descended on the lacerated back of the fainting prisoner. Sir, I see that my story disturbs you. "A corpulent Provost Mareschal, with a pair of enormous moustachios, amid which the mouth of his meerschaum was inserted, stood by smoking with admirable coolness, and marking the time with his cane, while a drummer tapped on his kettledrum, and four trumpeters had, each in succession, given their twenty-five lashes and withdrawn; twice had the knotted scourge been coagulated with blood, and twice had it been washed in the snow that now rose high around the feet of our champing and impatient horses; and now the fifth torturer approached, but still the compressed lips and clammy tongue of the proud Frenchman refused to implore mercy. His head was bowed down on his breast, his body hung pendant from the cords that encircled his swollen and livid wrists; his back from neck to waist was one mass of lacerated flesh, on which the feathery snowflakes were melting; for the agony he endured must have been like unto a stream of molton lead pouring over him; but no groan, no entreaty escaped him, and still the barbarous punishment proceeded. "I have remarked that there is no event too horrible or too sad to be without a little of the ridiculous in it, and this was discernible here. "One trumpeter, who appeared to have more humanity, or perhaps less skill than his predecessors, and did not exert himself sufficiently, was soundly beaten by the rattan of the trumpet-major, while the latter was castigated by the Provost Mareschal, who, in turn for remissness of duty, received sundry blows from the speaking-trumpet of the Baron; so they were all laying soundly on each other for a time. "'Morbleu!' said the Frenchmen, with a grim smile, ''twas quite in the Dutch taste, that.' "The Provost Mareschal continued to mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes had been given, Van Wandenberg and half his Dutchman were asleep in their saddles.