nd us, toward the road leading from the
old bridge of Poserna to Lutzen and Leipzig, I heard the rolling of
wagons, of artillery and caissons, rising and falling through the
silence.

Sergeant Pinto did not sleep; he sat smoking his pipe and drying his
feet at the fire. Every time one of us moved, he would try to talk and
say:

"Well, conscript?"

But they pretended not to hear him, and turned over, gaping, to sleep
again.

The clock of Gross-Gorschen was striking six when I awoke. I was sore
and weary yet. Nevertheless, I sat up and tried to warm myself, for I
was very cold. The fires were smoking, and almost extinguished.
Nothing of them remained but the ashes and a few embers. The sergeant,
erect, was gazing over the vast plain where the sun shot a few long
lines of gold, and, seeing me awake, put a coal in his pipe and said:

"Well, fusilier Bertha, we are now in the rearguard."

I did not know what he meant.

"That astonishes you," he continued; "but we have not stirred, while
the army has made a half-wheel. Yesterday it was before us in the
Rippach; now it is behind us, near Lutzen; and, instead of being in the
front we are in rear; so that now," said he, closing an eye and drawing
two long puffs of his pipe, "we are the last, instead of the foremost."

"And what do we gain by it?" I asked.

"We gain the honor of first reaching Leipzig, and falling on the
Prussians," he replied. "You will understand this by and by,
conscript."

I stood up, and looked around. I saw before us a wide, marshy plain,
traversed by the Gruna-Bach and the Floss-Graben. A few hills arose
along these streams, and beyond ran a large river, which the sergeant
told me was the Elster. The morning mist hung over all.

Turning around, I saw behind us in the valley the point of the
clock-tower of Gross-Gorschen, and farther on, to the right and left,
five or six little villages built in the hollows between the hills, for
it is a country of hills, and the villages of Kaya, Eisdorf,
Starsiedel, Rahna, Klein-Gorschen and Gross-Gorschen, which I knew
before, are between them, on the borders of little lakes, where
poplars, willows and aspens grow. Gross-Gorschen, where we bivouacked,
was farthest advanced in the plain, toward the Elster; Kaya was
farthest off, and behind it passed the high-road from Lutzen to
Leipzig. We saw no fires on the hills save those of our division; but
the entire corps occupied the villages scattered