In his short absence the three others were hidden in a barn by the girls. The door shut. In the dark, alone, the leader set out to climb the mound, thinking they had gone on.
He talked loudly to himself. Then he began to call their names, "Pierre! Jean! Georges!—GEORGES!" He reached the top to find himself alone with the lion and the stars.
A wild yell: the two barrels discharged in panic: a head over heels descent: and a huge roar of laughter from the men and girls who had crept out into the road, prolonged till it became the hysteria of overtried nerves.
Then, the growl of cannon in the far distance, and all suddenly were silent.
Unwilling to precipitate, by my night attack, the arrangements of the peasants for escaping by their windows if the wandering Uhlans arrive, I have come down the battlefield to sleep, in a coat, under the stars.
The night is extraordinarily still. Twice the cannon have droned for a short time far off. A nearer shot, that roused a momentary shouting and movement in the sleeping village behind me, must have come from some nervous or sleepy Civil Guard.
Earlier in the night there were lights winking far away, towards Genappe; probably French contingents signalling.
And the meteors have been falling, criss and cross, in the summer warm darkness, over the darker cloud above the waiting armies to the east.
1815; and what were the men then thinking who lay rolled up in their cloaks to sleep their last night on the fields about me?