On his return the messenger told me the prince laughed heartily; and, entering into the spirit of the thing at once, bade me follow out my plan according to my own proposal. It took some time, indeed, to get out the culverine, to place it in such a position that it could be fired without danger, and to draw out a nail which had been driven into the touchhole. This was all accomplished, however, before the hour appointed; and no sooner was the gun fired from the quarters of the Prince de Condé, than the admiral on one hill and I on the other shot off our ordnance, doubtless much to the surprise, and somewhat to the consternation, of the camp below. Indeed, our position formed a scene altogether not a little striking and beautiful; and somewhat imposing and majestic it must have appeared to the enemy, who could see it all at once. I had gone forth to fire the culverine myself, fancying that, what between its antiquity and the quantity of powder with which it had been crammed, in order to make the report the louder, it might do what it did not, and burst under the operation. I then gazed, with feelings near akin to awe, along the range of the camp, and the immense numbers of fires lighted all along the lines to keep the people warm, blazing lightly over a great extent of the opposite hill, and sweeping quite down across the mouth of the valley where the Prince de Condé's division remained, till the illumination was taken up again by the people who were with me on those heights. There, too, at about the distance of three quarters of a mile, were the fires and lights of various kinds in the camp of the Duke of Anjou, while between that globe of flame and the semicircle of fire that surrounded it on our side, there remained a dark black ring, on which the struggle of the morning had been carried on, and in which nothing was now to be seen but a single lantern, or a torch wandering here and there, and seeking for the wounded or the dead. As I stood and gazed, the murmur of merriment which was kept up by the varlets and the people of the little encampment behind me was carried away by the wind, which blew strong from the northeast, and borne upon its wings from the camp of the admiral came suddenly one of the Protestant psalms, sung by several thousands of voices at once, and sweeping mournfully but sweetly through the dark and solemn night. If I joined not in the melody, I joined at least in the prayer that it conveyed on high; and I was listening still with no small delight, when the youth Andriot plucked me by the sleeve, and told me that there was somebody who wished to speak with me in the encampment.