What "Tristram Shandy" was to me once under fire near Nijnieff, and "Red-gauntlet" on an awful morning when our whole Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the evening--with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the garden with M.Jammes.
As I walked along the little paths through a tangle of wood and green that might very well have presented the garden of the Sleeping Beauty, I heard now and then a sound that resembled the swift flight of a bird or the sudden "ting" of a telegraph-wire.

The Austrians were amusing themselves; sometimes a bullet would clip a tree in its passing or one would see a leaf, quite suddenly detached, hover for a moment idly in the air and then circle slowly to the ground.

Except for this sound the garden was fast held in the warm peace of a summer afternoon.

I found a most happy little neglected orchard with old gnarled apple-trees and thick waving grass.

Here I lay on my back, watching the gold through the leaves, soaked in the apathy and somnolence of the day, sinking idly into sleep, rising, sinking again, as though rocked in a hammock.