"Your good health, corporal!" said Chouteau in a respectful, whining
tone.

"Thank you; here's hoping that you may bring back your head and all
your legs and arms!" Jean politely replied, while the others laughed
approvingly.

But the column was about to move; Captain Beaudoin came up with a
scandalized look on his face and a reproof at the tip of his tongue,
while Lieutenant Rochas, more indulgent to the small weaknesses of his
men, turned his head so as not to see what was going on. And now they
were stepping out at a good round pace along the Chalons road, which
stretched before them for many a long league, bordered with trees on
either side, undeviatingly straight, like a never-ending ribbon
unrolled between the fields of yellow stubble that were dotted here
and there with tall stacks and wooden windmills brandishing their lean
arms. More to the north were rows of telegraph poles, indicating the
position of other roads, on which they could distinguish the black,
crawling lines of other marching regiments. In many places the troops
had left the highway and were moving in deep columns across the open
plain. To the left and front a cavalry brigade was seen, jogging along
at an easy trot in a blaze of sunshine. The entire wide horizon,
usually so silent and deserted, was alive and populous with those
streams of men, pressing onward, onward, in long drawn, black array,
like the innumerable throng of insects from some gigantic ant-hill.

About nine o'clock the regiment left the Chalons road and wheeled to
the left into another that led to Suippe, which, like the first,
extended, straight as an arrow's flight, far as the eye could see. The
men marched at the route-step in two straggling files along either