A little further on than could be seen with the naked eye was the village itself.
An hour slipped away.
Two hours, three hours, four hours, followed in the track of the first.
The fugitives ought to have arrived in one hour at Pont-de-Somme-Vesles; and the time they had lost on the road made it half-past four, as we have said, before they arrived at Châlons.
M. de Choiseul was anxious.
Léonard was in despair.
About three o’clock, the numbers of peasants increased; their intentions became more hostile, and the tocsin began to sound.
The hussars were, perhaps, more unpopular than any other corps in the army, on account of their supposed plundering propensities. The peasants provoked them by all sorts of insults and menaces, and sang under their very noses—
“The hussars are forlorn,
And we laugh them to scorn.”