that I could do nothing until the Prussians had passed, so
I spent my time in observing them. I have no love for these people, but
I am compelled to say that they kept excellent discipline, for not a man
of them entered the inn, though their lips were caked with dust and they
were ready to drop with fatigue. Those who had knocked at the door were
bearing an insensible comrade, and having left him they returned at once
to the ranks. Several others were carried in in the same fashion and
laid in the kitchen, while a young surgeon, little more than a boy,
remained behind in charge of them.

Having observed them through the cracks in the floor, I next turned my
attention to the holes in the roof, from which I had an excellent view
of all that was passing outside. The Prussian corps was still streaming
past. It was easy to see that they had made a terrible march and had
little food, for the faces of the men were ghastly, and they were
plastered from head to foot with mud from their falls upon the foul and
slippery roads. Yet, spent as they were, their spirit was excellent, and
they pushed and hauled at the gun-carriages when the wheels sank up to
the axles in the mire, and the weary horses were floundering knee-deep
unable to draw them through.

The officers rode up and down the column encouraging the more active
with words of praise, and the laggards with blows from the flat of their
swords. All the time from over the wood in front of them there came the
tremendous roar of the battle, as if all the rivers on earth had united
in one gigantic cataract, booming and crashing in a mighty fall. Like
the spray of the cataract was the long veil of smoke which rose high
over the trees.

The officers pointed to it with their swords, and with hoarse cries from
their parched lips the mud-stained men pushed onward to the battle. For
an hour I watched them pass, and I reflected that their vanguard must
have come into touch with Marbot's vedettes and that the Emperor knew
already of their coming. "You are going very fast up the road, my
friends, but you will come down it a great deal faster," said I to
myself, and I consoled myself with the thought.

But an adventure came to break the monotony of this long wait. I was
seated beside my loophole and congratulating myself that the corps was
nearly past, and that the road would soon be clear for my journey, when
suddenly I heard a loud altercation break out in French in the kitchen.

"Y