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Updated: June 20, 2025
She was sitting on an old chair with her withered hands crossed over her knee, and she said: "I no longer have any, they have taken all. My God! all! all!" Her gray hair was hanging down over her face, and I felt like weeping for her and for ourselves. "Well!" I said, "we must look for ourselves, Buche."
That happiness does not depend upon us, and the best will in the world helps nothing. I sent off my letter by the post, and we stayed all that day at the inn of the "Golden Sheep." After we had eaten a good supper, we went up to our beds, and I said to Buche, "Ha! Jean, to do what you please is quite a different thing from being forced to respond to the roll-call."
As we waited, Buche with his bayonet fixed and I with my musket at my shoulder, we heard a galloping on the road. This frightened us, for we thought more Prussians were coming, but they were our lancers. The hussars then turned off into the grain, and Buche hastened to re-load his gun. Our lancers passed and we followed them on the run.
We looked back from time to time, and Buche said: "Joseph, you did well to bring me away, had it not been for you, I might have been stretched out over there by the road-side, killed by a Frenchman. I was too hungry. But where shall we go now?" I answered, "Follow me!" We passed through a large and beautiful village, pillaged and abandoned also.
My head swam in a minute after I seemed to come out of a dream; I saw the room, Mr. Goulden, Jean Buche, and Catherine; and I began to sob so violently, that you would have thought some great misfortune had happened. I held Catherine on my knee and kissed her, and she cried too. After a long while I exclaimed: "Ah! Mr. Goulden, pardon me!
I looked about me, but I could not see either Buche or Zébédé or any others of our company, the marshal had disappeared also. Our rage redoubled; and as the timbers went back and forth, we grew furious to find that the door would not come down, when suddenly we heard shouts of "Vive l'Empereur" from the court, accompanied with a most horrible uproar.
We stood waiting with shouldered arms, when about three o'clock Buche looked behind him on the road and said, "The Emperor is coming!" And others in the ranks repeated, "Here is the Emperor." The smoke was so thick that we could barely see the bear-skin caps of the Old Guard on the little hill of Rossomme.
The enemy attacked us in the suburbs of Issy about one o'clock in the afternoon, and we fought till midnight for our capital. The people aided as much as possible; they carried off the wounded from under the enemy's fire; even the women took pity on us. What we suffered from being driven to this, I cannot describe. I have seen Buche himself cry because we were in one sense dishonored.
At every moment great openings in the forest gave us light and air, and we could see the white piles of newly cut wood between their stakes, shining in the distance from time to time. Besides this, nothing could be heard or seen. Buche said to me in a low voice, "I like the smell of the wood, it is like Harberg."
Between two and three in the morning Zébédé came and shook me. "Up!" said he, "come!" Buche had stretched himself beside me also, and we rose at once. It was our turn to relieve the guard. It was still dark, but there was a line of light along the horizon at the edge of the grain fields. Thirty paces farther on, Lieutenant Bretonville was waiting for us, surrounded by the picket.
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