ardiest and most courageous among us wore a discontented air. It
is true that the bands played marches for their regiments, that the
trumpets of the cavalry, the drums of the infantry, and the trombones
mingled their tones and produced a terrible effect, as they do always.

It is also true that these thousands of men marched briskly and in good
order, with their knapsacks at their backs, and their muskets on their
shoulders, the white lines of the cuirassiers followed the red, brown,
and green of the dragoons, hussars, and lancers, with their little
swallow-tailed pennons filling the air; the artillerymen in the
intervals between the brigades, on horseback around their guns, which
cut through the ground to their axles,--all these moved straight
through the grain, not a head of which remained standing behind them,
and truly there could not be a sight more dreadful.

The English drawn up in perfect order in front, their gunners ready
with their lighted matches in their hands, made us think, but did not
delight us quite so much as some have pretended, and men who like to
receive cannon-balls are still rather rare.

Father Goulden told me that the soldiers sang in his time, but then
they went voluntarily and not from force. They fought in defence of
their homes and for human rights, which they loved better than their
own eyes, and it was not at all like risking our lives to find out
whether we were to have an old or a new nobility. As for me, I never
heard any one sing either at Leipzig or Waterloo.

On we went, the bands still playing by order from head-quarters.

The music ceased, and the silence which followed was profound. Then we
were at the edge of the little valley, and about twelve hundred paces
from the English left. We were in the centre of our army, with the
chasseurs and lancers on our right flank.

We took our distances and closed up the intervals. The first brigade
of the first division turned to the left and formed on the highway.
Our battalion formed a part of the second division, and we were in the
first line, with a single brigade of the first division before us. The
artillery was passed up to the front, and that of the English was
directly opposite and on the same level. And for a long time the other
divisions were moving up to support us. It seemed as if the earth
itself was in motion. The veterans would say: "There are Milhaud's
cuirassiers! Here are the chasseurs of Lefebvre-Desnoettes!