Alas, how soon were events to show our young neophyte that intelligence, that tenacity--that patience, ingenuity, courage, force of will--that the most indisputable military qualities may be associated with inhuman, with indeed a devilish perversity! But Ernest did not live long enough to learn all the ripe iniquity of his enemy. He fell in the very beginning of the war, at Rossignol, on the frontiers of Luxembourg, midway between Virton and Montmédy--quite close to Sedan, in fact; and the Germans thought to make another great haul there.... The fight at Rossignol was a sort of southern branch of that terrible battle of Charleroi which no living European can ever forget. The French Headquarters, perceiving the ruse and danger of the enemy’s plan, set on the low hill of Rossignol some twelve thousand men, with orders to hold the heights to the last man and shield the road beneath where the French troops were passing in one constant stream; and the men who died there were not less heroic than those of Thermopylæ. Twelve thousand, they were; and I am told that scarce one of them survived.... A few are prisoners of war in Germany. Picked men, famous regiments, the nearest thing the French possessed to our time-hardened professional soldiers, for they were the Colonial Infantry and Artillery. The batteries were set up, and then the storm began. They fought all day--thirteen hours--against more than a hundred thousand Germans, holding the passage (one cannot call it a pass, for the hills there are too low), and, towards evening, they saw on the horizon a moving gray mass, and thought for a moment that this meant reinforcements. Oh, despair! they were German reinforcements! I say, despair! for such a feeling indeed fills my breast at reading of this supreme deception; but the young officer who gave this account to Psichari’s mother, affirms that even then (feeling how useful was the part they played) not despair but a noble exhilaration was the intimate feeling of those heroes on the hill. At last the German army, creeping steadily nearer, and distant now by no more than thirty metres, prepared to take the last irreducible French batteries by assault. At this moment Lieutenant X saw Ernest Psichari lead his Captain, grievously wounded, to the _poste de secours_, immediately returning to face the enemy. He came on with that quick half-racing, half-dancing step which the soldiers call the ‘pas gymnastique,’ on his face a bright excited smile, and ran with this springing gait to his battery, standing there a moment, still smiling, as he watched the oncoming mass. And then he fell right across his cannon--slipped heavily to the ground; a ball in the temple had shattered that young head, so full of dreams.