lain, the ears of grain stood erect and motionless, and in
the distance the village clocks struck nine, ten, and eleven, but at
last I dropped asleep. This was the night of the 14th and 15th of
June, 1815. Between two and three in the morning Zebede came and shook
me. "Up!" said he, "come!" Buche had stretched himself beside me
also, and we rose at once. It was our turn to relieve the guard. It
was still dark, but there was a line of light along the horizon at the
edge of the grain fields. Thirty paces farther on, Lieutenant
Bretonville was waiting for us, surrounded by the picket. It is hard
to get up out of a sound sleep after a march of ten hours. But we
buckled on our knapsacks as we went, and I relieved the sentinel behind
the hedge opposite Roly. The countersign was "Jemmapes and Fleurus,"
this struck me at once, I had not heard this countersign since 1813.
How memory sleeps sometimes for years! I seem to see the picket now as
they turn into the road, while I renew the priming of my gun by the
light of the stars, and I hear the other sentinels marching slowly back
and forth, while the footsteps of the picket grew faint and fainter in
the distance. I marched up and down the hedge with my gun on my arm.
There was nothing to be seen but the village with its thatched roofs
and the slated church spire a little farther on; and a mounted sentinel
stationed in the road with his blunderbuss resting on his thigh looking
out into the night. I walked up and down thinking and listening.
Everything slept. The white line along the horizon grew broader.
Another half hour and the distant country began to appear in the gray
light of morning. Two or three quails called and answered each other
across the plain. As I heard these sounds I stopped and thought sadly
of Quatre Vents, Danne, the Baraques-du-bois-de-chenes, and of our
grain fields, where the quails were calling from the edge of the forest
of Bonne Fontaine. "Is Catherine asleep? and Aunt Gredel and Father
Goulden and all the town? The national guard from Nancy has taken our
place." I saw the sentinels of the two magazines and the guard at the
two gates; in short, thoughts without number came and went, when I
heard a horse galloping in the distance, but I could see nothing.

[Illustration: A mounted hussar was looking out into the night.]

In a few minutes he entered the village, and all was still except a
sort of confused tumult. In an instant after, the