Tell me how you fared in the light of evening, at the end of that bloody day." The old soldier was trembling.

There was no sign, no movement, from the crowd.

Across the fields came the sharpening of a scythe, the cry of the grasshoppers, and the sound of a mill-wheel arose near by.

In the mill itself, far up in a deep dormer window, sat Parpon with his black cat, looking down upon the scene with a grim smiling.
The sergeant saw that mist fronting Sonnenberg rise up, and show ten thousand splendid cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, with a king and a prince to lead them down upon those malleable but unmoving squares of French infantry.

He saw himself drumming the Prussians back and his Frenchmen on.
"Beautiful God!" he cried proudly, "that was a day! And every man of the Third Corps that time lift up the lid of hell and drop a Prussian in.
I stand beside Davoust once, and ping! come a bullet, and take off his chapeau.