When I believed that the fresh and sharp air of the night had sufficiently cooled my blood, I returned to the fire; I enveloped myself carefully in my mantle, and I closed my eyes, hoping not to open them before day. But slumber refused to come. Insensibly my thoughts took on a doleful hue. I told myself that I had not one friend among the hundred thousand men who covered that plain. If I were wounded, I should be in a hospital, treated without regard by ignorant surgeons. All that I had heard said of surgical operations recurred to my memory. My heart thumped with violence, and mechanically I arranged like a kind of cuirass the handkerchief and the portfolio I had in my bosom. Weariness overwhelmed me, I nodded every instant, and every instant some sinister idea reproduced itself with renewed force and startled me out of my sleep.
However, fatigue carried the day, and when they beat the reveille, I was sound asleep. We were drawn up in battle array, the roll was called, then we stacked arms, and everything indicated that we should pass a tranquil day.
About three o’clock, an aide-de-camp arrived, bringing an order. We were ordered to take up arms again; our skirmishers spread themselves over the plain; we followed slowly, and in about twenty minutes we saw all the Russian advance-posts fall back and reënter the redoubt.
One battery of artillery was established on our right, another at our left, but both well in advance of us. They opened a very lively fire upon the enemy, who replied vigorously, and soon the redoubt of Cheverino disappeared under the dense clouds of smoke.
Our regiment was almost covered from the Russian fire by a rise of ground. Their bullets, rarely aimed at us (for they preferred to fire at our gunners), passed over our heads, or at worst showered us with earth and little stones.
As soon as we had received the order to march forward, my captain looked at me with an attention which obliged me to pass my hand two or three times over my youthful mustache with an air as unconcerned as was possible to me. In truth, I was not frightened, and the sole fear that I experienced was lest he should imagine that I was afraid. The harmless bullets contributed still more to maintain me in my heroic calm. My self-esteem told me that I was going into real danger, since at last I was under battery fire. I was enchanted to be so at my ease, and I dreamed with pleasure of telling in the salon of Madame B——, rue de Provence, how the redoubt of Cheverino was taken.
The colonel passed before our company; he said to me: “Well, you are going to have hot work for your début.”
I smiled with a perfectly martial air as I brushed the sleeve of my coat, on which a bullet that had struck the earth thirty yards away had cast a little dust.
It appeared that the Russians had observed the ill success of their cannon-balls; for they replaced them with shells, which could more easily reach us in the hollow where we were posted. One rather big explosion knocked off my shako, and killed a man near me.
“My compliments,” said the captain, as I picked up my shako. “You are safe now for the day.” I knew that military superstition which believes that the axiom, non his in idem[12], finds its application on a field of battle as in a court of justice. I jauntily replaced my shako.