ugh
the waters glittered like gold. All this seemed very beautiful.

[2] On the English map the river is the Rotha, not the Partha (or
Parde), and at the point here alluded to it joins the _Elster_, not the
_Pleisse_, as stated previously.--_Translator's Note_.

But if we had known that we would one day be forced to cross these
rivers under the enemy's cannon, after having lost the most fearful and
the bloodiest of battles, and that entire regiments would disappear
beneath those waters, which then gladdened our eyes, I think that the
sight would have made us sad enough.

At other times we would walk along the bank of the Pleisse as far as
Mark-Kleeberg. It was more than a league, and every field was covered
with harvests which they were hastening to garner. The people in their
great wagons seemed not to see us, and if we asked for information they
pretended not to understand us. Zimmer always grew angry. I held him
back, telling him that the beggarly wretches only sought a pretext for
falling upon us, and that we had, besides, orders to humor them.

"Very good!" he said; "but if the war comes this way, let them look
out! We have overwhelmed them with benefits and this is how they
receive us!"

But what shows better yet the ill-feeling of the people toward us was
what happened us the day after the conclusion of the armistice, when,
about eleven o'clock, we went together to bathe in the Elster. We had
already thrown off our clothes, and Zimmer seeing a peasant
approaching, cried:

"Holloa, comrade! Is there any danger here?"

"No. Go in boldly," replied the man. "It is a good place."

Zimmer, mistrusting nothing, went some fifteen feet out. He was a good
swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current
carried him away so quickly that he could not even catch the branches
of the willows which hung over him; and were it not that he was carried
to a ford, where he gained a footing, he would have been swept between
two muddy islands, and certainly lost.

The peasant stood to see the effect of his advice. I was very angry,
and dressed myself as quickly as I could, shaking my fist at him, but
he laughed, and ran, quicker than I could follow him, to the city.
Zimmer was wild with wrath, and wished to pursue him to Connewitz; but
how could we find him among three or four hundred houses, and if we did
find him, what could we do?

Finally we went into the water where there was foot