XII
But, as Sergeant Pinto said, all we had yet seen was but the prelude to the ball; the dance was now about to commence.
Meanwhile we did duty at the citadel with a battalion of the Twenty-seventh, and from the top of the ramparts we saw all the environs covered with troops, some bivouacking, others quartered in the villages.
The sergeant had formed a particular friendship for me, and on the eighteenth, on relieving guard at Warthau gate, he said:
"Fusilier Bertha, the Emperor has arrived."
I had yet heard nothing of this, and replied, respectfully:
"I have just had a little glass with the sapper Merlin, sergeant, who was on duty last night at the general's quarters, and he said nothing of it."
Then he, closing his eye, said, with a peculiar expression:
"Everything is moving; I feel his presence in the air. You do not yet understand this, conscript, but he is here; everything says so. Before he came, we were lame, crippled; only a wing of the army seemed able to move at once. But now, look there, see those couriers galloping over the road; all is life. The dance is beginning: the dance is beginning! Kaiserliks and the Cossacks do not need spectacles to see that he is with us; they will feel him presently."