Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/175

 M'llKX ABANDONED BV Till' AK.MV. 1 ITi direction, like some govcnied luice in inecliauics, ciiAf. fVoin the will and the iiiiiul of one man. ^^' Colonel de Todleben, it would seem, was in- xodiebens stinctively conscious that the power he was afrcctrn- wielding depended very niudi upon his actual iiii.crson' [•resence. lie never wrote, lie did not even read the communications which poured in upon liim ; for, believing tiiat he saw his way clear M'ithout the help of uthers, and being, it would seem, accustomed as an engineer to let his thoughts take the form of estimates and reckon- ings, he made, as it were, a computation, by which he assured himself that the probability of there being superlatively important matters in the papers before him was not great enough to compensate the distraction and the expendi- ture of most precious time which must be occa- sioned by reading them, and that, therefore, if he were to leave them unheeded, he would avoid a waste of power.* It was with his own eyes, with his own voice, that he defended Sebastopol. At a later period, when the besiegers could rest their field-glasses on the gabions which covered their batteries, they grew to be familiar with the aspect of an officer on a black charger, who was constantly seen in the Russian lines of defence ; and they more than once pointed their ordnance with design to extinguish that untiring activity and papers which had aocumulated was examined. It then ap- ]>piired that there were three or four papers which, at the tin:e they were sent, might have been read with advantage, but that the perusal of tiie rest would have done no good. VOL. IV. £
 * When the contiict was over, the mass of unopened letters