d
the little islands swaying in the wind, I thought: "Poor soldiers! poor
comrades! What are you doing now? Where are you? On the high road
perhaps, or in the open fields!"

And despite my sadness at living where I was, I remembered that I was
less to be pitied than they. But one day the old Surgeon Tardieu made
his round and said to me:

"Your arm is strong again--let us see--raise it for me. All right! all
right!"

The next day at roll-call, they passed me into a hall where there were
clothing, knapsacks, cartridge-boxes and shoes in abundance. I
received a musket, two packets of cartridges, and marching papers for
the Sixth at Gauernitz, on the Elbe. This was the first of October.
Twelve or fifteen of us set out together, under charge of a
quartermaster of the Twenty-seventh named Poitevin.

On the road, one after another left us to take the way to his corps;
but Poitevin, four infantry men and I, kept on to the village of
Gauernitz.

XVII

We were following the Wurtzen high road, our muskets slung on our
backs, our great-coat capes turned up, bending beneath our knapsacks,
and feeling down-hearted enough, as you may imagine. The rain was
falling, and ran from our shakos down our necks; the wind shook the
poplars, and their yellow leaves, fluttering around us, told of the
approach of winter. So hour after hour passed.

From time to time, at long intervals, we came upon a village with its
sheds, dunghills and gardens, surrounded with palings. The women
standing behind their windows, with little dull panes, gazed at us as
we went by; a dog bayed; a man splitting wood at his threshold turned
to follow us with his eyes, and we kept on, on, splashed and muddied to
our necks. We looked back; from the end of the village the road
stretched on as far as one could see; gray clouds trailed along the
despoiled fields, and a few lean rooks were flying away, uttering their
melancholy cry.

Nothing could be sadder than such a view; and to it was added the
thought that winter was coming on, and that soon we must sleep without
a roof, in the snow. We might well be silent, as we were, save the
quartermaster Poitevin. He was a veteran,--sallow, wrinkled, with
hollow cheeks, mustaches an ell long, and a red nose, like all brandy
drinkers. He had a lofty way of speaking, which he interspersed with
barrack slang. When the rain came down faster than ever, he cried,
with a strange burst of laughter: "Ay, ay,