There was a pause. Picot, the taller of the two men, drained a glass of white wine, and then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, rejoined: 'Of course. It was the same at Frœschweiler. Only idiots would have thought of giving battle with affairs in such a state. My captain, an artful little beggar, said so. The truth is, the commanders can have known nothing. An entire army of those beasts fell on us when we were barely forty thousand. No fighting was expected that day, it seems; but the battle began little by little, without the officers wanting it. Of course, I didn't see everything, but I know well enough that the dancing went on all day, and that just when one thought it had ended the music began afresh. First at Wœrth, a pretty little village with a comical steeple, covered with earthenware tiles, which make it look like a stove. The devil, too, if I know why we were ordered out of Wœrth in the morning, for afterwards we had to fight, tooth and nail, to try and recapture it. But we didn't succeed. Ah! my boys, we did have a job there. You should have seen all the bellies ripped open and the brains scattered about. It was incredible. Then we had a set-to round another village--Elsasshausen, a beastly name to remember. We were being mowed down by a lot of guns which were firing at their ease from another cursed hill, which we had also given up in the morning. And then it was that I saw, yes, I myself saw the charge of the Cuirassiers. Ah! how the poor devils did get themselves killed! It was pitiful to send men and horses charging over such ground as that, a slope covered with scrub and full of ditches. And, besides, worse luck, it could be of no earthly use. All the same, however, it was brave, it was a grand sight to see. And after that? Well, after that it seemed as if we had no other course but to try and take ourselves off. The village was burning like tinder, the Badeners, the Wurtembergers, and the Prussians--the whole band, in fact--one hundred and twenty thousand of those beasts, had ended by surrounding us. But we didn't go off. The music began again round Frœschweiler. The plain truth is, MacMahon may be a duffer, but he's plucky. You should have seen him on his big horse in the midst of the shells! Any other man would have bolted at the outset, thinking it no shame to refuse battle when one isn't in force. But he, as the fighting had begun, determined to let the skull-cracking go on to the bitter end. And he managed it, too! In Frœschweiler we weren't like men fighting; we were like animals, eating one another. For a couple of hours the gutters ran with blood----. And then? Well, we had to skedaddle at last! And to think we learned just then that we had overthrown the Bavarians on our left! Ah! curse it, if we, too, had only had a hundred and twenty thousand men, if we had only had enough guns and not quite such duffing officers!'