e
center of the line, every officer at his post. The guns went rattling,
bounding by, accurately maintaining their prescribed distances, each
accompanied by its caisson, men and horses, beautiful in the perfect
symmetry of its arrangement; and in the 5th battery Maurice recognized
his cousin Honore. A very smart and soldierly appearance the
quartermaster-sergeant presented on horseback in his position on the
left hand of the forward driver, a good-looking light-haired man,
Adolphe by name, whose mount was a sturdy chestnut, admirably matched
with the mate that trotted at his side, while in his proper place among
the six men who were seated on the chests of the gun and its caisson
was the gunner, Louis, a small, dark man, Adolphe's comrade; they
constituted a team, as it is called, in accordance with the rule of the
service that couples a mounted and an unmounted man together. They all
appeared bigger and taller to Maurice, somehow, than when he first made
their acquaintance at the camp, and the gun, to which four horses were
attached, followed by the caisson drawn by six, seemed to him as
bright and refulgent as a sun, tended and cherished as it was by its
attendants, men and animals, who closed around it protectingly as if it
had been a living sentient relative; and then, besides, the contemptuous
look that Honore, astounded to behold him among that unarmed rabble,
cast on the stragglers, distressed him terribly. And now the tail end
of the regiment was passing, the _materiel_ of the batteries, prolonges,
forges, forage-wagons, succeeded by the rag-tag, the spare men and
horses, and then all vanished in a cloud of dust at another turn in the
road amid the gradually decreasing clatter of hoofs and wheels.

"_Pardi_!" exclaimed Loubet, "it's not such a difficult matter to cut a
dash when one travels with a coach and four!"

The staff had found Altkirch free from the enemy; not a Prussian had
shown his face there yet. It had been the general's wish, not knowing
at what moment they might fall upon his rear, that the retreat should
be continued to Dannemarie, and it was not until five o'clock that the
heads of columns reached that place. Tents were hardly pitched and fires
lighted at eight, when night closed in, so great was the confusion of
the regiments, depleted by the absence of the stragglers. The men were
completely used up, were ready to drop with fatigue and hunger. Up to
eight o'clock soldiers, singly and in squad