The division stopped on the road and the gunners ran out at intervals and put their pieces in line fifty paces in front, with their caissons in the rear.
We were opposite Ligny. We could only see a white line of houses half hidden in the orchards, with a church spire above them—slopes of yellow earth, trees, hedges, and palisades. There we were, twelve or fifteen thousand men without the cavalry, waiting the order to attack.
The battle raged fiercely about St. Amand, and great masses of smoke rose over the combatants toward the sky.
While waiting for our turn, my thoughts turned to Catherine with more tenderness than ever, the idea that she would soon be a mother crossed my mind, and then I besought God to spare my life, but with this, came the comfort of feeling that our child would be there if I should die to console them all, Catherine, Aunt Grédel, and Father Goulden. If it should be a boy they would call it Joseph, and caress it, and Father Goulden would dandle it on his knee, Aunt Grédel would love it, and Catherine would think of me as she embraced it, and I should not be altogether dead to them. But I clung to life while I saw how terrible was the conflict before us.
Buche said to me, "Joseph, will you promise me something?—I have a cross—if I am killed."
He shook my hand, and I said: "I promise."
"Well!" he added, "it is here on my breast. You must carry it to Harberg and hang it up in the chapel in remembrance of Jean Buche, dead in the faith of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
He spoke very earnestly, and I thought his wish very natural. Some die for the rights of Humanity; with some, the last thought is for their mother, others are influenced by the example of just men who have sacrificed themselves for the race, but the feeling is the same in every case, though each one expresses it according to his own manner of thinking.
I gave him the desired promise and we waited for nearly half an hour longer. All the troops as they left the wood came and formed near us, and the cavalry were mustering on our right as if to attack Sombref.
Up to half-past two o'clock not a gun had been fired, when an aid-de-camp of the Emperor arrived on the road to Fleurus, at full speed, and I thought immediately, "Our turn has come now. May God watch over us, for, miserable wretches that we are, we cannot save ourselves in such a slaughter as is threatening."