Sister Eila and Sister Félicité had descended to the road and seated themselves on the grassy bank, where they conversed in low tones and looked calmly into the woods.
Asticot, possessed of a whole pack of cigarettes, promenaded his good fortune and swaggered up and down the road, ostentatiously coming to salute when an automobile full of officers came screaming by.
The military chauffeur dozed over his steering wheel. Two white butterflies fluttered persistently around his head, alighting sometimes on the sleeves of his jacket, only to flit away again and continue their whirling aerial dance around him.
For an hour the roar of the fusillade continued, not steadily, but redoubling in intensity at times, then slackening again, but continuing always.
Hussars came riding out from among the trees. One of them said to Warner that the ambulances across the Récollette were very busy.
Another, an officer, remarked that the Forest was swarming with Uhlans who were fighting on foot. Asked by Asticot whether the Battalion d'Afrique had gone in, the officer answered rather coolly that it was going in then with the bayonet, and that the world would lose nothing if it were annihilated.
After he had ridden on up the road, Asticot spat elaborately, and employed the word "coquin"—a mild explosion in deference to Sister Eila.
More cavalry emerged from the woods, coming out in increasing numbers, and all taking the direction of Ausone.
An officer halted and called out to Sister Eila.
"It goes very well for us. The Bat. d'Af. got into them across the river! The Uhlans are running their horses!—Everywhere they're swarming out of the woods like driven hares! We turn them by Ausone! A bientôt! God bless the Grey Sisters!"