"Did you see him, Joseph?" asked Zébédé.
"I did," I replied; "I saw him well, and I will remember the sight all my life."
"It is strange," said my comrade; "he does not seem to be pleased. At Wurzen, the day after the battle, he seemed rejoiced to hear our "Vive l'Empereur!' and the generals all wore merry faces too. To-day they seem savage, and nevertheless the captain said that we bore off the victory on the other side of Leipsic."
Others thought the same thing without speaking of it, but there was a growing uneasiness among all.
We found the regiment bivouacked near Kohlgarten. In every direction camp-fires were rolling their smoke to the sky. A drizzling rain continued to fall, and the men, seated on their knapsacks around the fires, seemed depressed and gloomy. The officers formed groups of their own. On all sides it was whispered that such a war had never before been seen; it was one of extermination; that it did not help us to defeat the enemy, for they only desired to kill us off, knowing that they had four or five times our number of men, and would finally remain masters.
Toward evening of the next day, we discovered the army of the north on the plateau of Breitenfeld. This was sixty thousand more men for the enemy. I can yet hear the maledictions levelled at Bernadotte—the cries of indignation of those who knew him as a simple officer in the army of the republic, who cried out that he owed us all—that we made him a king with our blood, and that he now came to give us the finishing blow.
That night, as we drew our lines still closer around Leipsic, I gazed at the circle of fires which surrounded us, and it seemed as if the whole world was bent on our extermination. But I remembered that we had the honor of bearing the name of Frenchmen, and must conquer or die.
To Be Concluded In Our Next.