His fears increase at every turn of the road and he almost swoons, when, in the silence of the night we are surprised with a shot from a guard, whom we do not see on account of the darkness. His terror knows no limit when we almost collide with a large, wide open umbrella which we vaguely catch sight of at the side of the road near a path leading to Volta. That poor umbrella, riddled with bullets and balls was, probably, a part of the baggage of some canteen-woman who had lost it during the storm of the twenty-fourth.
We were retracing the road to reach Borghetto. It was after 11 o'clock. We were making the horse gallop and our modest vehicle rolled across the space, almost without noise, on to the Strato Cavallara, when cries of "Who goes there? Who goes there? Who goes there? or I fire," came like a bolt from the mouth of an invisible sentinel. "France," replies immediately a loud voice, which adds, in giving his rank: "Corporal in the First Engineer Corps, Company Seventh." "Go on," is the reply. Without this presence of mind of the corporal we would have received a shot almost in the face.
Finally, at a quarter before twelve we reach, without other adventure, the first houses of Borghetto.
All is dark and silent. However, a light shines on the ground floor of a house on the principal street, where are at work in a low room the accounting officers. Although embarrassed in their work and very much astonished at our appearance at such an hour, they treat us very kindly. A paymaster, Signor Outrey, gives me a cordial invitation to be his guest. His orderly brings a mattress on which I throw myself, completely dressed, to rest for several hours, after drinking some excellent bouillon, which seems to me the more delicious as I am hungry and for several days have eaten nothing even passable. I can sleep quietly, not being, as in Castiglione, suffocated with fetid exhalations and tormented with the flies, which though satiated with corpses, attack also the living.
The corporal and the driver settled themselves simply in the carriage, remaining in the street, but the unfortunate Mantuan, always in great terror, could not shut his eyes during the whole night and the next day he was more dead than alive.