gether.
Nowhere could be found a girl so fresh and laughing. She was
fair-haired, with beautiful blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and teeth as white
as milk. She was approaching eighteen; I was nineteen, and Aunt
Margredel seemed pleased to see me coming early every Sunday morning to
breakfast and dine with them.

Catharine and I often went into the orchard behind the house; there we
bit the same apples and the same pears; we were the happiest creatures
in the world. It was I who took her to high mass and vespers; and on
holidays she never left my side, and refused to dance with the other
youths of the village. Everybody knew that we would some day be
married; but, if I should be so unfortunate as to be drawn in the
conscription, there was an end of matters. I wished that I was a
thousand times more lame; for at the time of which I speak they had
first taken the unmarried men, then the married men who had no
children, then those with one child; and I constantly asked myself,
"Are lame fellows of more consequence than fathers of families? Could
they not put me in the cavalry?" The idea made me so unhappy that I
already thought of fleeing.

But in 1812, at the beginning of the Russian war, my fear increased.
From February until the end of May, every day we saw pass regiments
after regiments--dragoons, cuirassiers, carbineers, hussars, lancers of
all colors, artillery, caissons, ambulances, wagons, provisions,
rolling on forever, like a river which runs on and on, and of which one
can never see the end.

I still remember that this began with soldiers driving large wagons
drawn by oxen. These oxen were in the place of horses, and were to be
used for food later on, when they should have used up their provisions.
Everybody said, "What a fine idea! When the soldiers can no longer
feed the oxen, the oxen will feed the soldiers." Unhappily those who
said this did not know that the oxen could only make seven or eight
leagues a day, and that for every eight days of marching, they must
have at least one day's rest; so that indeed, the poor animals' hoofs
were already dry and worn out, their lips drooping, their eyes standing
out of their heads, and little but skin and bone left of them. For
three weeks they kept passing in this way, all torn with thrusts of the
bayonet. Meat became cheap, for they killed many of the oxen; but few
wanted their flesh, the diseased meat being unhealthy. They never went
more than twenty leagues