The army, of course, was all at once in the ascendant.

The officers ran here and there, full of business, buying maps, and drinking toasts in all sorts of wines.

The soldiers wrote home to get money if possible, and to send more or less loving greetings to their sweethearts.

Numberless young clerks grew pale; numberless mothers knit strong stockings through their tears, and providently made lint for their poor sons; numberless fathers spoke with an unsteady voice of the duty of fighting for king and country, and braced themselves up by remembering the damage they had in their day done to that wicked Napoleon.
It was on a sunny autumn morning that the first positive intelligence of the Polish insurrection reached the capital.

Dark rumors had indeed excited the inhabitants on the previous evening, and crowds of anxious men of business and scared idlers were crowding the railway terminus.