road the level country of the
preceding day again presented itself to their gaze and the lean fields
of "lousy Champagne" stretched before them in wearisome monotony. They
now had the Arne, an insignificant stream, flowing on their left, while
to the right the treeless, naked country stretched far as the eye could
see in an apparently interminable horizon. They passed through a village
or two: Saint-Clement, with its single winding street bordered by a
double row of houses, Saint-Pierre, a little town of miserly rich men
who had barricaded their doors and windows. The long halt occurred about
ten o'clock, near another village, Saint-Etienne, where the men were
highly delighted to find tobacco once more. The 7th corps had been cut
up into several columns, and the 106th headed one of these columns,
having behind it only a battalion of chasseurs and the reserve
artillery. Maurice turned his head at every bend in the road to catch
a glimpse of the long train that had so excited his interest the day
before, but in vain; the herds had gone off in some other direction,
and all he could see was the guns, looming inordinately large upon those
level plains, like monster insects of somber mien.

After leaving Saint-Etienne, however, there was a change for the worse,
and the road from bad became abominable, rising by an easy ascent
between great sterile fields in which the only signs of vegetation were
the everlasting pine woods with their dark verdure, forming a dismal
contrast with the gray-white soil. It was the most forlorn spot they had
seen yet. The ill-paved road, washed by the recent rains, was a lake of
mud, of tenacious, slippery gray clay, which held the men's feet like so
much pitch. It was wearisome work; the troops were exhausted and could
not get forward, and as if things were not bad enough already, the rain
suddenly began to come down most violently. The guns were mired and had
to be left in the road.

Chouteau, who had been given the squad's rice to carry, fatigued and
exasperated with his heavy load, watched for an opportunity when no one
was looking and dropped the package. But Loubet had seen him.

"See here, that's no way! you ought not to do that. The comrades will be
hungry by and by."

"Let be!" replied Chouteau. "There is plenty of rice; they will give us
more at the end of the march."

And Loubet, who had the bacon, convinced by such cogent reasoning,
dropped his load in turn.

Maurice was sufferi