The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

14 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. _ ‘*Rouselli!” she cried, ‘‘Rouselli! My child—my—my child, where are you? I had it here, I had it on my heart. My child— Mabel—Mabel! Oh, God! where is my beautiful child %” With frantic gestures she rose to her feet, and lookec wildly around her, Her eye suddenly fell upon the dead body of the French officer. The uniform must have been familiar to her, for, without ¢ mo- ment’s hesitation, she now flew toward him. ‘Tis be—’tis he!” she exclaimed. ‘‘ He has my child—my dar. Jing Mabel! Rouselli—Rouselli! dead—dead! and I living! where is the child? Not here—not—here! and he alone who could tell me of its fate—dead—dead! Oh! now, kind Heaven, send your lightnings on me, for I am weary of existence. Rouselli, I say. Rouselli, I demand of you my child!” She knelt down by the side of the corpse, and overcoming, from the stronger impulse of maternal affection, her dread of so fearful an object, she searched the folds of the cloak, which still-partially hung around the body, with the hope of finding somewhere the only object of her solicitude; but soon she be- came convinced that search was fruitless, and what pen can de- scribe the dreadful despair which then came over her mind, and nearly drove her to madness? Fora moment she clasped her hands, and cast an appealing look to Heaven, as if about to utter some prayer, but the intention deserted her. Her mental agony was too much even for prayer to soothe, and with wild screams that brought more fears into the heart of many a poor fellow, who lay at his last gasp on the damp earth, she fled over the field of battle. She bad no hope of finding the object of her love. Her flight from spot to spot, and the frantic manner in which she called upon her child, were rather mechanical movements than dictated by reason. In this state she neared the town of Huguemont, which had been the scene during the preceding; day of so much hard fight- ing, and where so many corpses lay strewn about in the wildest disorder. ‘* Mabel!” she still shouted, ‘‘ Mabel—Rouselli, my child! Give me back my child! Heaven, give me back my child! Why, oh, why delight me with such a gift, but again to tear it from my doting heart? Mabel—Mabel! My child—my child!” Suddenly, then, from among the ruins of the town-house, there darted out the figure of a man, and heedless of where he trod, whether it was on the dead or dying, he rushed toward the feroale who there stood in such an attitude of woe. With a fiendish laugh he seized her wrist, and throwing off the undress military cap he wore, he cried, in scarcely less wild accents than she herself had been speaking in,— “ Do you know me?” She turned her eyes upon his face for an instant, and then, at the same moment that she made a vain effort to escape om the clutch he had fastened upon her she shouted the name @) — ‘* Sternholde!” comicbooks. com