In the market-place was a hay-cart in which were lying three wounded Uhlans. An officer, his hands behind his back, was walking up and down in front of the cart. Some women and children were standing round them in a group, silently contemplating the Germans. One or two of the gunners joined them out of curiosity. The Uhlans looked at them with sad and troubled blue eyes.
"They aren't such an ugly set as I should have thought," declared Tuvache.
"No?" said Millon. "I suppose you thought they had got a third eye in the middle of their foreheads, like the inhabitants of the moon!"
Tuvache shrugged his shoulders:
"No, only I had an idea they were uglier. They don't look as bad as all that!"
There was severe fighting this morning in the Beauclair Gap, through which the enemy tried to force a passage. The incessant din of the battle sounded from afar like the rising tide beating on a rocky shore.
"Forward! Trot!"
After having proceeded some three hundred yards down the Beauclair road we again halted. Soldiers were coming back from the lines, some of them wounded in the hands or arms, and others in the shoulders. All of them were bandaged. They stopped to ask us for water or cigarettes, and we exchanged a few words with them: