"That old wretch is Blücher. Ah, scoundrel! if I only had my gun!"
Turning my head, I saw an old sergeant, withered and thin, with long wrinkles in his cheeks, sitting against the door of the house, supporting himself with his hands on the ground, as with a pair of crutches, for a ball had passed through him from side to side. His yellow eyes followed the Prussian general; his hooked nose seemed to droop like the beak of an eagle over his thick mustache, and his look was fierce and proud.
"If I had my musket," he repeated, "I would show you whether the battle is won."
We were the only two living beings among heaps of dead.
I thought that perhaps I should be buried in the morning with the others, in the garden opposite us, and that I would never again see Catharine; the tears ran down my cheeks, and I could not help murmuring:
"Now all is indeed ended!"
The sergeant gazed at me and, seeing that I was yet so young, said kindly:
"What is the matter with you, conscript?"
"A ball in the shoulder, mon sergeant."
"In the shoulder! That is better than one through the body. You will get over it."