Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 5 by Various
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page 32 of 579 (05%)
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quickly intoxicated as discouraged, and I have the ungrateful task of
pouring water in the foaming wine, and making them see that we are not living alone in Europe, but with three neighbors still. The Austrians are in Moravia, and we are already so bold that their positions to-day are fixed for our headquarters to-morrow. Prisoners are still coming in, and one hundred and eighty guns since the 3d up to to-day. If they call up their southern army, with God's good help we shall beat them again. Confidence is universal. I could hug our fellows, each facing death so gallantly, so quiet, obedient, well-behaved, with empty stomachs, wet clothes, wet camp, little sleep, the soles of their boots falling off, obliging to everybody, no looting, no incendiarism, paying where they can, and eating moldy bread. There must after all abide in our man of the soil a rich store of the fear of God, or all that would be impossible. News of acquaintances is difficult to obtain; people are miles apart from one another; no one knows where the other is, and nobody to send; men enough, but no horses. I have had Philip searched for, for four days; he is _slightly_ wounded in the head by a lance, as G---- wrote to me, but I cannot find out where he is, and now we are already forty miles farther on. The King exposed himself very much indeed on the 3d, and it was a very good thing that I was with him; for all warnings on the part of others were of no avail, and no one would have ventured to speak as I allowed myself to do the last time, and with success, after a heap of ten men and fifteen horses of the Sixth Regiment of cuirassiers were wallowing in their blood near us, and the shells whizzed round the sovereign in the most unpleasant proximity. The worst luckily did not burst. But after all I like it better than if he should err on the other side. He was enchanted with his troops, and rightly, so that he did not seem to remark all the whistling and bursting about him; as quiet and |
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