Charles, who had not lost his religious feelings in the midst of this age of irreligion, said his silent prayer, and went to sleep as peacefully as he would have done in his own room at Besançon.
Advance posts placed in the woods, and as sentinels on the flanks, which were relieved every half hour, watched over the safety of the little army. About four o'clock they were awakened by a shot fired by one of the sentinels, and, in an instant, every one was on his feet.
Pichegru glanced at Charles; he had run to his horse, taken the pistols from their holsters, and returned to the general's side, where he remained standing with a pistol in either hand.
The general sent twenty men in the direction whence the shot had been fired; as the sentinel had not repeated the shot, the probability was that he had been killed. But when they approached the spot where he had been posted, the men heard him calling for help; they hastened their steps, and saw, not men, but beasts, who were put to flight by their appearance.
The sentinel had been attacked by a band of five or six famished wolves, who had at first prowled around him, and then, seeing that he stood perfectly still, had become bolder. In order not to be attacked from behind, he had put his back to a tree and for a time had defended himself silently with his bayonet; but finally a wolf had seized the bayonet in his teeth, and then the sentinel had fired upon him, shooting the beast through the head. The wolves, frightened by the report, had at first slunk away, but then, driven by hunger, they had returned, perhaps as much for the sake of eating their comrade as to attack the sentinel. They came back so swiftly that the soldier had not had time to reload his gun. He had therefore defended himself as best he could, and they had already made several attempts to bite him when his comrades came to his aid and drove away the unexpected enemy.
The sub-lieutenant who commanded the squad left four men on guard in the sentinel's place and returned to the camp, taking with him as trophies the skins of the two wolves, the one killed by a bullet, the other by a bayonet. The skins, thickly furred for the winter time, were to be made into rugs for the general.
The soldier was taken before Pichegru, who received him coldly, thinking that the shot was due to carelessness; his brow grew darker and darker as he listened, and learned that the soldier had fired to defend himself from the wolves.
"Do you know," said he, "that I ought to have you shot for firing upon anything except the enemy?"