Novissima Hora
saddle; there was a little eminence from which he saw a plain. Slight as the beast was his seat galled him. He sat his mount badly, and he dreaded lest it should start with him as it had started the day before. But even as he so worried himself on his bad horsemanship, all his mind changed at quite another sight.
For in the plain below that little height the great battalions went forward, rank upon rank upon rank; it was a review and it was a battle and it was a campaign. Mad imagery! the uniforms were the uniforms of gala, the drum-majors went before the companies of the Guard, gigantic, twirling their gigantic staves; the lifted trumpets of the Cuirassiers sounded as though upon some great stage, for the mere glory of the sound. And mass upon mass, regular, instinct with purpose, innumerable, the army passed below. There was no end to it. He knew, he was certain, as he strained his eyes, that it would never end. It was afoot, and it would march for ever. Far off, beyond the line, upon the flank of it, distant and terrible went the packed mass of the guns, and you could hear faintly amid the other noises of the advance the clatter-clank-clank of the limber. And from so far off he saw the leading sabres of commanders saluting him from his old arm. Here again was a mixture for him of things that do not mix in the true world: Glory and Despair. This endless army was his, and yet would go on beyond him. It was his and not his. There
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