drops, as pellucid and luminous as brilliants of the fairest water.

"Sight for four hundred yards," the captain ordered.

Maurice rested the barrel of his musket on a cabbage that reared its
head conveniently before him, but it was impossible to see anything in
his recumbent position: only the blurred surface of the fields traversed
by his level glance, diversified by an occasional tree or shrub. Giving
Jean, who was beside him, a nudge with his elbow, he asked what they
were to do there. The corporal, whose experience in such matters was
greater, pointed to an elevation not far away, where a battery was just
taking its position; it was evident that they had been placed there to
support that battery, should there be need of their services. Maurice,
wondering whether Honore and his guns were not of the party, raised his
head to look, but the reserve artillery was at the rear, in the shelter
of a little grove of trees.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" yelled Rochas, "will you lie down!"

And Maurice had barely more than complied with this intimation when a
shell passed screaming over him. From that time forth there seemed to
be no end to them. The enemy's gunners were slow in obtaining the range,
their first projectiles passing over and landing well to the rear of the
battery, which was now opening in reply. Many of their shells, too, fell
upon the soft ground, in which they buried themselves without exploding,
and for a time there was a great display of rather heavy wit at the
expense of those bloody sauerkraut eaters.

"Well, well!" said Loubet, "their fireworks are a fizzle!"

"They ought to take them in out of the rain," sneered Chouteau.

Even Rochas thought it necessary to say something. "Didn't I tell you
that the dunderheads don't know enough even to point a gun?"

But they were less inclined to laugh when a shell burst only ten yards
from them and sent a shower of earth flying over the company; Loubet
affected to make light of it by ordering his comrades to get out their
brushes from the knapsacks, but Chouteau suddenly became very pale and
had not a word to say. He had never been under fire, nor had Pache and
Lapoulle, nor any member of the squad, in fact, except Jean. Over eyes
that had suddenly lost their brightness lids flickered tremulously;
voices had an unnatural, muffled sound, as if arrested by some
obstruction in the throat. Maurice, who was sufficiently master of
himself as yet, endeavored to diagnose his sy