356 ADVANCE TO THE BELBEC. CHAP. IV. The advance at length resumed, but without any fixed determi- nation to attack the ' North ' Side.' Sobastopol m .sight. Marshal St Arnaud : liis state. Hend in the direction of the march. It seems to have been ultimately agreed that the Allies should continue their march upon the Belbec, though without committing themselves to an attack of the Severnaya, or encountering the new field -VFork; and accordingly, at about ten o'clock the advance was resumed. Soon, crown- ing the ridge of the hills which divide the Kat- cha from the Belbec, and then, gazing eagerly southwards, the two armies looked down on Sebastopol. On this summit, the Allies for a while re- mained halted. Marshal St Arnaud quitted his saddle and lay upon the ground. According to the accounts of the French historians, he was within a few hours of the period when the physicians pronounced him to be suffering from cholera; and although, at this time, his appear- ance and manner spoke more of downcast spirits than of mortal disease, it may well be imagined that nothing other than bodily illness had made him joyless at this the moment of his first look- ing down on Sebastopol. He was unspeakably sad. Contrasting the hard enterprise before him with the work of happier days in the country of the Arabs and the Kabyles, he sighed as men sigh when they have to endure without hope. Again the Allies marched forward ; but by the time that their line of march was developed, an observer who knew the ground might have in- ferred, from the direction they took, that already they were swerving from their purpose. Shun- ning the imagined strength of the new field-work
