he plain and beheld upon the
hilltop Belleville, through which they had passed the day before, the
fact that they were retracing their steps was impressed more vividly on
their consciousness.

"Heavens and earth!" growled Chouteau, "do they take us for tops?"

And Loubet chimed in:

"Those cheap-John generals of ours are all at sea again! They must think
that men's legs are cheap."

The anger and disgust were general. It was not right to make men suffer
like that, just for the fun of walking them up and down the country.
They were advancing in column across the naked plain in two files
occupying the sides of the road, leaving a free central space in which
the officers could move to and fro and keep an eye on their men, but it
was not the same now as it had been in Champagne after they left Rheims,
a march of song and jollity, when they tramped along gayly and the
knapsack was like a feather to their shoulders, in the belief that soon
they would come up with the Prussians and give them a sound drubbing;
now they were dragging themselves wearily forward in angry silence,
cursing the musket that galled their shoulder and the equipments that
seemed to weigh them to the ground, their faith in their leaders gone,
and possessed by such bitterness of despair that they only went forward
as does a file of manacled galley-slaves, in terror of the lash. The
wretched army had begun to ascend its Calvary.

Maurice, however, within the last few minutes had made a discovery that
interested him greatly. To their left was a range of hills that rose
one above another as they receded from the road, and from the skirt of a
little wood, far up on the mountain-side, he had seen a horseman emerge.
Then another appeared, and then still another. There they stood, all
three of them, without sign of life, apparently no larger than a man's
hand and looking like delicately fashioned toys. He thought they were
probably part of a detachment of our hussars out on a reconnoissance,
when all at once he was surprised to behold little points of light
flashing from their shoulders, doubtless the reflection of the sunlight
from epaulets of brass.

"Look there!" he said, nudging Jean, who was marching at his side.
"Uhlans!"

The corporal stared with all his eyes. "They, uhlans!"

They were indeed uhlans, the first Prussians that the 106th had set eyes
on. They had been in the field nearly six weeks now, and in all that
time not only had they never s