tents were folded and the knapsacks packed, and so no one paid any
attention to him. Six o'clock was sounding from all the bells of the
village when the army put itself in motion and stoutly resumed its
advance in the bright hopefulness of the dawn of the new day.

The 106th, in order to reach the road that leads from Rheims to
Vouziers, struck into a cross-road, and for more than an hour their
way was an ascending one. Below them, toward the north, Betheniville
was visible among the trees, where the Emperor was reported to have
slept, and when they reached the Vouziers road the level country of
the preceding day again presented itself to their gaze and the lean
fields of "lousy Champagne" stretched before them in wearisome
monotony. They now had the Arne, an insignificant stream, flowing on
their left, while to the right the treeless, naked country stretched
far as the eye could see in an apparently interminable horizon. They
passed through a village or two: Saint-Clement, with its single
winding street bordered by a double row of houses, Saint-Pierre, a
little town of miserly rich men who had barricaded their doors and
windows. The long halt occurred about ten o'clock, near another
village, Saint-Etienne, where the men were highly delighted to find
tobacco once more. The 7th corps had been cut up into several columns,
and the 106th headed one of these columns, having behind it only a
battalion of chasseurs and the reserve artillery. Maurice turned his
head at every bend in the road to catch a glimpse of the long train
that had so excited his interest the day before, but in vain; the
herds had gone off in some other direction, and all he could see was
the guns, looming inordinately large upon those level plains, like
monster insects of somber mien.

After leaving Saint-Etienne, however, there was a change for the