"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_" Chouteau declared when he had finished, throwing
himself flat on his back; "I would rather take that than a beating,
any day!"

Maurice, too, whose foot pained him less now that he could give it a
little rest, was conscious of that sensation of well-being that is the
result of a full stomach. He was beginning to take more kindly to his
rough companions, and to bring himself down nearer to their level
under the pressure of the physical necessities of their life in
common. That night he slept the same deep sleep as did his five
tent-mates; they all huddled close together, finding the sensation of
animal warmth not disagreeable in the heavy dew that fell. It is
necessary to state that Lapoulle, at the instigation of Loubet, had
gone to a stack not far away and feloniously appropriated a quantity
of straw, in which our six gentlemen snored as if it had been a bed of
down. And from Auberive to Hentregiville, along the pleasant banks of
the Suippe as it meandered sluggishly between its willows, the fires
of those hundred thousand sleeping men illuminated the starlit night
for fifteen miles, like a long array of twinkling stars.

At sunrise they made coffee, pulverizing the berries in a wooden bowl
with a musket-butt, throwing the powder into boiling water, and
settling it with a drop of cold water. The luminary rose that morning
in a bank of purple and gold, affording a spectacle of royal
magnificence, but Maurice had no eye for such displays, and Jean, with
the weather-wisdom of a peasant, cast an anxious glance at the red
disk, which presaged rain; and it was for that reason that, the
surplus of bread baked the day before having been distributed and the
squad having received three loaves, he reproved severely Loubet and
Pache for making them fast on the outside of their knapsacks; but the