Life at headquarters proved to be much what I had anticipated. In attending the movements of the army, we officials had sometimes very little work; sometimes, especially when the troops remained a few days stationary, a great deal. While they moved from day to day, we seldom had much to do but to follow them, and make ourselves as comfortable as we could at the end of the day's march. The military movements from Aire to Toulouse were curious. From Aire we went right down to the south, as far as Tarbes and Vic Bigorre--a course which almost brought us back again to the Spanish frontier and the foot of the Pyrenees; then up again to the Garonne and Toulouse. A sailor would have called it tacking. Of course, one could not follow even an advancing and victorious army without undergoing some hardships. On one occasion, after much previous fatigue, in passing a wild and mountainous district, we were suddenly overtaken by a snow-storm. While nodding on Sancho's back from sheer exhaustion, I was caked on the left, from head to foot, with snow, which first began to melt with the warmth of the body, then froze hard with the keenness of the wind. The next moment the sun blazed forth, to the right, with scorching heat. Thus roasted on one side, and frozen on the other, I dozed and nodded on, with just sufficient consciousness to form virtuous resolutions of knocking off the snow, but without sufficient energy to carry them into effect. After all, though, a civilian following the army, supplied pretty regularly with rations for himself, pony, and servant--tolerably sure, too, of a good billet at night, and generally provided with a few dollars, easily convertible into francs--has no business to talk of hardships. The real hardships of a campaign fall on the marching officers and privates. What they endure is past conception. Gingham and I were much together, and carried out our plan of campaigning in company as far as circumstances would allow. At headquarters, also, I fell in again with my old acquaintance and fellow-voyager, Mr Commissary Capsicum, who gloried in giving good dinners. He was never better pleased than when I accepted his invitations, but always gave me a good blowing-up if I dined with Gingham in preference.