The little cart halted; Fabrizio awoke with a start. The sun had set some time back; he was quite astonished to see that it was almost night. The troops were running in all directions in a confusion which greatly surprised our hero; they looked shame-faced, he thought.
"What is happening?" he asked the cantinière.
"Nothing at all. Only that we're in the soup, my boy; it's the Prussian cavalry mowing us down, that's all. The idiot of a general thought at first they were our men. Come, quick, help me to mend Cocotte's trace: it's broken."
Several shots were fired ten yards off. Our hero, cool and composed, said to himself: "But really, I haven't fought at all, the whole day; I have only escorted a general.—I must go and fight," he said to the cantinière.
"Keep calm, you shall fight, and more than you want! We're done for.
"Aubry, my lad," she called out to a passing corporal, "keep an eye on the little cart now and then."
"Are you going to fight?" Fabrizio asked Aubry.
"Oh, no, I'm putting my pumps on to go to a dance!"
"I shall follow you."
"I tell you, he's all right, the little hussar," cried the cantinière. "The young gentleman has a stout heart." Corporal Aubry marched on without saying a word. Eight or nine soldiers ran up and joined him; he led them behind a big oak surrounded by brambles. On reaching it he posted them along the edge of the wood, still without uttering a word, on a widely extended front, each man being at least ten paces from the next.