Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/371

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AXD THE SULTAN. 329 a few hundred yards of the barricades which it chap. was to attack. The order to advance did not _____ come. Somewhere, there was hesitation, and the Generals could not but know that even a little hesitation at such a time was both a sign and a cause of danger ; but when they saw it continuing through all the morning hours of a short Decem- ber day, they could hardly have failed to appre- hend that the plot of the Elysde was collapsing for want of support, and they could not but know that, if this dread were well founded, their fate was likely to be a hard one. The temperament of Frenchmen is better fitted for the hour of combat than for the endurance of this sort of protracted tension ; and the anxiety of men of their race, when they are much per- turbed and kept in long suspense, will easily degenerate into that kind of alarm which is apt to become ferocious. This was the kind of stress to which the troops were put on that 4th of December ; and in the case of Magnan and the Generals under him, the pangs of having to wait upon the brink of action for more than two-thirds of a day were sharpened by a sense of political danger; for they felt that if, after all, the scheme of the Elysdo should fail, their meeting of the 27th might cause them to be brought to trial. Any one knowing what those twenty-one Gen- erals had on their minds, and being also some- what used to the French army, will almost be able to hear the grinding of the teeth and tho rumbling of the curses which mark the armed