nd were
smeared with soup up to their eyes.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_" Chouteau declared when he had finished, throwing
himself flat on his back; "I would rather take that than a beating, any
day!"

Maurice, too, whose foot pained him less now that he could give it a
little rest, was conscious of that sensation of well-being that is the
result of a full stomach. He was beginning to take more kindly to his
rough companions, and to bring himself down nearer to their level under
the pressure of the physical necessities of their life in common. That
night he slept the same deep sleep as did his five tent-mates; they
all huddled close together, finding the sensation of animal warmth not
disagreeable in the heavy dew that fell. It is necessary to state that
Lapoulle, at the instigation of Loubet, had gone to a stack not far
away and feloniously appropriated a quantity of straw, in which our six
gentlemen snored as if it had been a bed of down. And from Auberive to
Hentregiville, along the pleasant banks of the Suippe as it meandered
sluggishly between its willows, the fires of those hundred thousand
sleeping men illuminated the starlit night for fifteen miles, like a
long array of twinkling stars.

At sunrise they made coffee, pulverizing the berries in a wooden bowl
with a musket-butt, throwing the powder into boiling water, and settling
it with a drop of cold water. The luminary rose that morning in a bank
of purple and gold, affording a spectacle of royal magnificence, but
Maurice had no eye for such displays, and Jean, with the weather-wisdom
of a peasant, cast an anxious glance at the red disk, which presaged
rain; and it was for that reason that, the surplus of bread baked the
day before having been distributed and the squad having received three
loaves, he reproved severely Loubet and Pache for making them fast
on the outside of their knapsacks; but the tents were folded and the
knapsacks packed, and so no one paid any attention to him. Six o'clock
was sounding from all the bells of the village when the army put itself
in motion and stoutly resumed its advance in the bright hopefulness of
the dawn of the new day.

The 106th, in order to reach the road that leads from Rheims to
Vouziers, struck into a cross-road, and for more than an hour their way
was an ascending one. Below them, toward the north, Betheniville was
visible among the trees, where the Emperor was reported to have slept,
and when they reached the Vouziers