in the retreat. Several times the Prussians
attacked us. We heard that the emperor had departed for Paris, and we
struggled on, only hoping to escape with our lives. At Charleroi the
inhabitants shut the city gates in our face, and Buche shared in the
general rage, and proposed to destroy the town. But I thought we had had
enough massacres, and that it was not right we should be killing our own
countrymen, and I persuaded Buche to come on with me.

In a few days we felt ourselves safe from pursuing Prussians, and at the
village of Bouvigny I wrote a letter to Catherine, telling her I was
safe. In this village some officers of our regiment, the 6th of the
Line, found us, and we had to rejoin. Presently we saw all that was left
of Grouchy's army corps in retreat, and a day or two later we heard of
the emperor's abdication. On July 1, we reached Paris, and outside the
city, near the village of Issy, we once more fell in with the Prussians;
for two days we fought them with fury, and then some generals announced
that peace had been made.

We believed that this truce was to give the enemy time to leave the
country, and that otherwise France would rise, as it rose in '92, and
drive them out.

Unhappily, we soon learnt that the Prussians and English were to occupy
Paris, and that the remains of the French army were to be kept beyond
the Loire. We all felt that we had been betrayed, and the old officers,
pale with anger, wept in their misery. Paris in the hands of the
Prussians! Besides, were we to go to the other side of the Loire at the
command of Bluecher?

Desertions began that very day, and I said to Buche, "Let us return to
Phalsbourg and Harberg, and take up our work, and live like honest men."
About fifty of us from Alsace-Lorraine were in the battalion, and we set
off together on the road to Strasbourg.

On July 8 we heard that Louis XVIII. was to come back, and already the
white banner of the Bourbons was being displayed in the villages.

In some places there were rascals who called us Buonapartists, and
gendarmes who took us to the town hall and made us shout "Vive le Roi!"
Buche and some of the old soldiers hated this; but what did it matter
who was king, and what these fools wanted us to shout?

Our little company got smaller and smaller as men halted in their own
villages, and when, on July 16, we reached Phalsbourg, Buche and I were
alone.

Buche went on to break the news of my return, but I could not wai