e impression of physical and moral prostration that
overcame us then.

The regiment was sleeping--tired out.

Alone, calm, phlegmatic, the Colonel kept watch, standing in the
middle of the road. With his pipe between his teeth, beneath his ruddy
drooping moustache, his cap pulled over his eyes, his arms crossed on
his light-blue tunic, he seemed to be the ever-watchful shepherd of
that immense flock. At such moments the chief must be able to seem
unconscious of the self-abandonment, the disorder and the exhaustion
of his men. Human powers have their limits. They had been expended for
days without stint. Every moment of cessation from actual fighting had
to be a moment of repose. The important thing is that the chief should
keep watch. Brave little Chasseurs! sleep in peace; your Colonel is
watching over you.

I looked at the men of my troop, on the ground in front of their
horses. How could I recognise the smart, brilliantly accoutred
horsemen, whose uniforms used to make such a gay note in the
old-fashioned streets of the little garrison town?

Under the battered shakoes with their shapeless peaks, the tanned and
emaciated faces looked like masks of wax. Youthful faces had been
invaded by beards which made them look like those of men of thirty or
more. The dust of roads and fields, raised by horses, waggons, and
limbers, had settled on them, showing up their wrinkles and getting
into eyes, noses, and moustaches.

Their clothes, patched as chance allowed during a halt under some
hedge, were enamels of many-coloured pieces. A few more days of such
unremitting war, and we should have vied with the glorious
tatterdemalions of the armies of Italy and of the Sambre et Meuse, as
Raffet paints them.

With their noses in the air, their mouths open, their eyes half shut,
my Chasseurs lay stretched out among the legs of their horses and
slept heavily. Poor horses! Poor, pretty creatures, so delicate, so
fiery, in their glossy summer coats! They had followed their masters'
fortunes. How many of them had already fallen under the Prussian
bullets; how many had been left dying of exhaustion or starvation
after our terrible rides! They seemed to sleep, absorbed in some
miserable dream of nothing but burdens to carry, blows to bear, and
wounds to suffer. They were hanging their heads, but had not even the
strength to crop the green blades growing here and there among the
stalks of corn.

I felt uneasy, wondering whether they