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Hang it, it must have been left behind at Villequier Aumont. The Germans had probably got it by now. It was half-past twelve before the colonel returned. "I'll have my camp-bed put up there," he said promptly, indicating an airy cart-shed, and he refused altogether to look at the empty cottage.
Many, many years ago, at the close of a sultry summer's day, a man of middle age was slowly toiling up a hill in the environs of the pleasant village of Aumont, a small town in the south of France.
"Madame," said he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "Ne bougez pas," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too."
2.30 P.M.: The colonel had selected the new positions for the batteries, and two of them were already in. While we waited the arrival of the others, we flung ourselves down in a hay-field and watched the now continuous stream of men, batteries, transport lorries, and ambulance cars coming up the hill leading from Villequier Aumont, and toiling past us towards Ugny.
In 1840 the winner was Tontine, belonging to M. Eugène Aumont, but Lord Seymour, whose horse had come in second, asserted that another horse had been substituted for Tontine, and that under this name M. Aumont had really entered the English filly Hérodiade, while the race was open only to colts foaled and raised in France.
A lawsuit was the result, and while the courts refused to admit Lord Seymour's claim, the racing committee declared the mare disqualified, and M. Aumont sold his stable. In 1843 there was a dead heat between M. de Pontalbra's Renonce and Prospero, belonging to the trainer Th. Carter, and, as often happens, the worse horse in this case it was Renonce won the second heat.
The Victor stud belonging to M. Aumont, that of Fervacques, the property of M. de Montgomery, and the baron de Rothschild's establishment at Meautry, are all in the immediate neighborhood of Déauville; but even these advantages do not compensate for the unfavorable character of the track, laid out, as we have said, upon land from which the sea had receded, and which, as might have been expected, was sure to be hard and cracked in a dry season.
A smile and a cheering word from the General, who said, "I've just seen the colonel, and I've put two of your batteries farther forward. They'll help to hold Villequier Aumont a bit longer."
I caught up Fentiman of D Battery, who said he was shifting his waggon lines back to Villequier Aumont. "The water and the standings are so much better there," he said.
Something is sure to be doing farther north, where we are so much stronger. Breakfast and a shave; then a move forward to find the colonel, and to learn whether he wanted the waggon lines brought up again. It was a lovely morning. A beautiful stretch of meadowland skirted the road leading back to Villequier Aumont, and my horse cantered as if the buoyancy of spring possessed him also.
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