The King and the Chancellor first rode to the field where the heavy artillery had been at work. I followed them after I had jotted down my notes. This field lies about 800 to 1000 paces to the right of the road that brought us here. In front of it towards the wood at the bottom of the valley were some fields surrounded by hedges in which lay about a thousand German dead, Thuringians of the 31st Regiment. The camp itself presented a horrible appearance, all blue and red from the French dead, most of them being killed by the shells of the 4th Corps, and fearfully disfigured. The Chancellor, as he afterwards told me, noticed among some prisoners in a quarry a priest who was believed to have fired at our men. “On my charging him with having done so he denied it. ‘Take care,’ I said to him, ‘for if it is proved against you, you will certainly be hanged.’ In the meantime I gave instructions to remove his cassock.” Near the church the King saw a wounded musketeer, with whom he shook hands, although the man was rather tattered and dirty from the work of the previous day, doubtless to the surprise of the French officers who were present. The King asked him what his business was. He replied that he was a Doctor of Philosophy. “Well, then, you will have learnt to bear your wounds in a philosophical spirit,” said the King. “Yes,” answered the musketeer, “I have already made up my mind to do so.” Near the second village we overtook some common soldiers, Bavarians, who had broken down on the march, and were dragging themselves slowly along in the burning sun. “Hullo, countryman!” called out the Minister to one of these, “will you have some brandy?” “Why, certainly;” and so would a second and a third, to judge from their looks. All three, and a few more, after they had had a pull at the Minister’s flask and at mine, received a decent cigar in addition. At the village of Crehanges, where the princely personages of the second section of the King’s suite were quartered, together with some gentlemen of the Crown Prince’s retinue, the King ordered a lunch, to which Bismarck was also invited. In the meantime I sat on a stone by the roadside and wrote up my diary, and afterwards assisted the Dutch Ambulance corps, who had erected a bright green tent for the wounded in the vicinity of the village. When the Minister returned he asked me what I had been doing, which I told him. “I would rather have been there than in the company I was in,” he said, breathing deeply, and then quoted the line from Schiller’s _Diver_, “_Unter Larven die einzige fühlende Brust_” (the only feeling heart amongst all those masks). During the rest of the drive the conversation moved for a considerable time in exalted regions, and the Chief readily gave me full information in answer to my inquiries. I regret, however, that I cannot for various reasons publish all I heard.