_Ten o’clock._—The different convoys move off. 16th, 22nd, 9th, 28th, 32nd Dragoons, etc. All at once we are stupefied by seeing a battalion of the 33rd of the line, or rather what remains of the battalion, some thirty terrifying beings, livid, stumbling along, with horrible wounds. One has his lips carried away, an officer has a crushed hand, another has his arm fractured by a shell splinter. Their uniforms are torn, white with dust and drip with blood. Amongst the last comers the wounds are more villainous; in the waggons one sees bare legs that hang limp, bloodless faces. They come from Dinant, where the French have fought like lions. Our artillery arrived too late, but they had the fine courage to charge the German guns with the bayonet. The guns spit shell without cease and the crackle of musketry does not stop. We go across country to billet at Florennes. These last days of tropical heat give place to damp cold. It is raining. We meet long convoys of inhabitants who, panic-stricken, quit their houses to go and camp anywhere at all. It is lamentable. Two kilomètres from Florennes we “incline.” The cold is biting, in spite of the cloak I wear. We arrive in black darkness at a village where we bivouac in spite of the torrential rain. I rejoin the regiment with infinite trouble; clothes, kit, horses are dripping wet. They must stay so all night. I do a stable guard at three in the morning without a lantern. The horses are tied up by groups to a horseshoe. They kick and rear, upsetting the kit and the lances in the mud; I dabble about and lose myself in the night. The village is called Biesmérée. _Sunday, 16th August._—The weather has cleared up. I leave again with the regiment. We are going to put up at Maisons-Saint-Gérard. Just before arriving there a storm bursts and wets us through; the water runs down into our breeches. I am as wet as if I had been dipped in a river; and one must sleep like that ... and yet one does not die! _17th August._—Off at 5 o’clock. We bivouac at Saint-Martin in the meadow between two small streams. I have hurt my left foot badly, and at times I feel an overpowering fatigue, but one must carry on all the same. The bivouac is admirable. Big fires warm up the soup for the troops. The little stream shimmers, all red, and encircles the bivouac. The day ends; splendid. Some Cuirassiers bivouac a little higher up on the village green. We hear them singing the _Marseillaise_. We sleep in a barn in heaps one on the top of the other.