is was the way in
which the campaign opened for us.

The sky was without a cloud, and all the country and even the forest,
which lay three-quarters of a league before us, shone in the moonlight
like silver. I thought involuntarily of the wood at Leipzig, where I
had slipped into a clay-pit with two Prussian hussars, when poor
Klipfel was cut into a thousand pieces at a little distance from me.
All this made me very watchful. No one spoke, even Buche raised his
head and shut his teeth, and Zebede, who was at the left of the
company, did not look toward me, but right ahead into the shadow of the
trees, like everybody else.

It took us nearly an hour to reach the forest, and when within two
hundred paces the order came to "halt."

The hussars fell back on the flanks of the battalion, and one company
deployed as scouts. We waited about five minutes, and as not the
slightest noise or sound of any kind reached our ears, we resumed our
march. The road which we followed through the wood was quite a wide
cart-path. The column marked step in the shadows. At every moment
great openings in the forest gave us light and air, and we could see
the white piles of newly cut wood between their stakes, shining in the
distance from time to time.

Besides this, nothing could be heard or seen. Buche said to me in a
low voice, "I like the smell of the wood, it is like Harberg."

"I despise the smell of the wood," I thought; "and if we do not get a
musket-shot, I shall be satisfied."

At the end of two hours the light appeared again through the underwood,
and we reached the other side, fortunately without encountering either
enemy or obstacle. The hussars who had accompanied us returned
immediately, and the battalion stacked arms.

We were in a grain country, the like of which I had never seen. Some
of the grain was in flower, a little green still, though the barley was
almost ripe. The fields extended as far as the eye could reach. We
looked around in perfect silence, and I saw that the old man had not
deceived us. Two thousand paces in front of us, in a hollow, we saw
the top of an old church spire and some slated gables, lighted up by
the moon. That was Fleurus. Nearer to us on our right were some
thatched cottages, and a few houses; this was without doubt Lambusart.
At the end of the plain, more than a league distant and in the rear of
Fleurus, the surface of the country was broken into little hills, and
on these hill