“The outposts of the eleventh, Captain,” exclaimed Giraud impulsively, as he pointed to the figures on the hills; “we must have missed them when we rode out yesterday. The General speaks of the heads of columns, and he is right. There will be no army corps here to-day. They say that the Bavarians are in force at Görsdorf, but Ducrot is there and Raoult holds Froeschweiler. It will be a strong division which takes Froeschweiler! Look at the slopes of it. And the engineers have been at work. If the battle must be, to-day is our time. We shall find no better position. And we have sixty thousand men in the hills.”
“I doubt that,” said Lefort quickly. “We were short in Strasburg, and our numbers cannot have been completed here. Why do the gunners not begin? The men are falling yonder; look at the ambulances, busy already. It is a good position, certainly, for those who defend. But why are we the defenders always? It was so at Weissenburg, they tell me. You cannot keep up the moral of troops who must always stand for targets. Believe me, Giraud, I cannot help seeing these things. No man, who is not blind, can fail to see that we have neither the men nor the generals to do any of those things which France is asking us to do.”
The lieutenant, his oldest friend, laid his hand upon his arm in a gesture of affection.
“Mon ami,” he said, “if it is as you say, our work is to alter it. But is it? I repeat, look at Froeschweiler. You could hold it against a nation. When the time for advance comes, it will be the cavalry who will send the answer to Paris. I know well how you feel this morning. Madame is up there in your home. You will go back to-night to tell her all about it. She can see Froeschweiler almost from your gardens. She will count the Prussians who die. Let us go and breakfast and pledge her in a bottle of champagne. I have two on my holsters now. There is nothing like champagne when you feel that way. I know it—and I have not a little wife waiting for me.”
The hard expression passed from the face of Lefort.
“Confess,” he said, “how many wait in Paris, Giraud—to how many did you write yesterday?”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
“Come, then,” he said, “why do we fight if it is not to tell those others about it? Applause is the food of glory—I do not want to grow thin. Let us breakfast, mon ami, and drink to all the pretty ones in France.”
The lancers were bivouacked almost upon the north-west edge of the wood. Lefort, having exchanged cheery words with the men of his own company, sat down upon a log beneath a vast chestnut tree and took the biscuits and the wine his young comrade offered generously. Away upon his left hand was the steep hill of Froeschweiler, its wooded slopes running down sharply toward the town of Wörth. He could see Raoult’s brigade already busy upon it; the blue tunics and the red breeches of infantry soldiers flashed beneath the trees; even the quaint uniforms of the zouaves, and the black Turcos, were to be seen. From the extreme north there came an echo of rifle shots, even of artillery; and it was there, Giraud said, that Ducrot was driving back the Bavarians. Fitfully, indeed, along the whole line of the valley, the firing was now sustained. Yet few fell. Lefort believed with an effort only that this was battle, this the working of a nation’s destiny.
“Look,” he said, “how odd it is! A strip of valley land, vineyards and villages in the sunlight, the birds still singing in the woods, who knows, even the labourer in the fields. And yet to-morrow all Europe will hear of it. A great battle will have been fought. We are fighting it now. Men are looking at the sky who will never see another sun. Do you realise it yourself, Giraud; do you understand it all?”