with convulsive pressure. "Bonaparte," the Prussian hissed, when Laurence glanced at him. Shocked, Laurence turned back around, leaning closer to the bramble for a better look: the man was not particularly stunted, as he had always imagined the Corsican to be from the depictions in the British newspapers, but rather compact than short. At present, animated with energy, his large grey eyes brilliant and his face a little flushed from the cold wind, he might even have been called handsome.
"There is no hurry," Bonaparte added. "We can give them another three-quarters of an hour, I think, and let them send another division onto the road. A little walking to and fro will put them in just the right frame of mind."
He spent most of this allotted time pacing back and forth along the ridge, gazing thoughtfully out at the plateau below, much of the raptor in his expression, while Laurence and Badenhaur, trapped, were forced to endure an agony of apprehension on the behalf of their fellows. A shudder by his side made Laurence look; Badenhaur's hand had crept towards his pistol, a look of terrible indecision crossing the lieutenant's face.
Laurence put his hand on Badenhaur's arm, restraining, and the young man dropped his eyes at once, pale and ashamed, and let his hand down; Laurence silently gave his shoulder a rough shake for comfort. The temptation he could well understand; impossible not to entertain the wildest thoughts, when scarcely ten yards distant stood the architect of all Europe's woes. If there had been any hope of making him prisoner, it should certainly have been their duty to attempt it, however likely to end in personal disaster; but no attack out of the brush could possibly have succeeded. Their first movement would alert Lien; and Laurence from personal experience knew well how quickly a Celestial could take action. Their only possible chance was indeed the pistol: an assassin's shot, from their concealed position, at his unsuspecting back: no.
Their duty was plain; they would have to wait, concealing themselves, and then bear the intelligence back to camp as quickly as they could muster, that Napoleon was closing upon them the jaws of a trap; the biter might yet be bit, and an honorable victory won. But in this task every minute should count, and it was a thorough-going torture to be forced to lie quiet and still, watching the Emperor at his meditations.
"The fog is blowing off," Lien said, her tail flicking uneasily; she was squinting narrowly down towards the positions of Hohenlohe's artillery, which had the mountain in their view. "You should not be risking yourself like this; let us go at once. Besides, you have had all the reports you need."
"Yes, yes, my nursemaid," Bonaparte said absently, looking again through his glass. "But it is a different thing to see with one's own eyes. There are at least five errors in the elevations on my maps, even without surveying, and those are not three-pounders but six with that horse artillery on their left."
"An Emperor cannot also be a scout," she said severely. "If you cannot trust your subordinates, you ought to replace them, not do their work."
"Behold me properly lectured!" Bonaparte said, with mock indignation. "Even Berthier does not speak to me like this."
"He ought to, when you are being foolish," she said. "Come; you do not want to provoke them into coming up here and trying to hold the summit," she added, cajolingly.
"Ah, they have missed their chance for that," he said. "But very well, I will indulge you; it is time we got about the business in any case." He put away his glass finally and stepped into her waiting cupped talons as though he had been used to be handled by a dragon all his life.
Badenhaur was scrambling heedlessly through the bramble almost before she was away. Laurence burst out into the clearing behind him and stopped to look over the prospect one last time, searching for the French Army. The fog was turning thin and insubstantial, wisping away, and now he could see clearly around Jena the corps of Marshal Lannes busy heaping up depots of ammunition and food, salvaging for their shelter wood and materials from the burnt-out husks of the buildings, putting up empty pens. But though Laurence pulled out his glass and looked in every direction, he could see no sign of any other mass of French troops immediately visible, certainly not this side of the Saale River; where Bonaparte meant to