as the sound of the bugles died in
the distance, and the long, white road curled away in front of me
through plain and forest and mountain, with France somewhere beyond the
blue haze which lay upon the horizon.

It is interesting, but it is also fatiguing, to ride in the rear of an
army. In the harvest time our soldiers could do without supplies, for
they had been trained to pluck the grain in the fields as they passed,
and to grind it for themselves in their bivouacs. It was at that time of
year, therefore, that those swift marches were performed which were the
wonder and the despair of Europe. But now the starving men had to be
made robust once more, and I was forced to draw into the ditch
continually as the Coburg sheep and the Bavarian bullocks came streaming
past with waggon loads of Berlin beer and good French cognac. Sometimes,
too, I would hear the dry rattle of the drums and the shrill whistle of
the fifes, and long columns of our good little infantry men would swing
past me with the white dust lying thick upon their blue tunics. These
were old soldiers drawn from the garrisons of our German fortresses, for
it was not until May that the new conscripts began to arrive from
France.

Well, I was rather tired of this eternal stopping and dodging, so that I
was not sorry when I came to Altenburg to find that the road divided,
and that I could take the southern and quieter branch. There were few
wayfarers between there and Greiz, and the road wound through groves of
oaks and beeches, which shot their branches across the path. You will
think it strange that a Colonel of hussars should again and again pull
up his horse in order to admire the beauty of the feathery branches and
the little, green, new-budded leaves, but if you had spent six months
among the fir trees of Russia you would be able to understand me.

There was something, however, which pleased me very much less than the
beauty of the forests, and that was the words and looks of the folk who
lived in the woodland villages. We had always been excellent friends
with the Germans, and during the last six years they had never seemed to
bear us any malice for having made a little free with their country. We
had shown kindnesses to the men and received them from the women, so
that good, comfortable Germany was a second home to all of us. But now
there was something which I could not understand in the behaviour of the
people. The travellers made no answer to my sal