"Advance one and give the countersign."
Things were all conducted in proper military order, as will be seen.
"Who is in command here?" asked Charras.
"General Exelmans."
"I congratulate him: take me to him."
They gratified his wish, which seemed quite reasonable. The general was asleep under a plum tree, wrapped in his cloak, to the left of the roadside. His son was asleep near him. Charras laid bare the object of his coming.
"Do you know," Exelmans replied, "that we too are all famishing of hunger?"
"General, it is through no fault of General Pajol's; he sent Colonel Jacqueminot to Versailles to order ten thousand rations of bread at eleven o'clock this morning."
"To whom?"
"To the prefect."