Our situation was almost desperate. For three days we had touched not a morsel of bread, not a biscuit, our horses not a handful of corn. The reserve rations were exhausted; and the patrols, which came in one after the other, brought sad news. The Germans were masters of all the issues from the forest, and we were taken in a vice, prisoners in this gulf of trees and reduced to dying of hunger and thirst. A little way off, the officers—Major Jouillié, Captain de Salverte, Captain de Tarragon, Monsieurs Chatelin, Cambacérès, Roy and de Thézy—deliberated with glum faces. Each stood near his horse so as to be able to jump on in case of surprise. In spite of everything the men’s spirits remained admirable. All had a jest on their lips, and the more serious amongst them wrote a line to their wives or mothers. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, I scribbled on two letter-cards, found in my wallets, two short notes of adieu. The day passed with depressing slowness. Towards four o’clock two officers of Uhlans appeared on a little road which, so to speak, hung above us. At once all eyes were fixed on these two thin silhouettes. They advanced, talking quietly, with their reins loose on their horses’ necks. How great was the temptation to shoulder one’s carbine, take steady aim, feel one’s man at the end of the muzzle and kill him dead with a ball through the heart! Everyone understood, however, that it was necessary to keep quiet and let off the prey so good a mark was it, for doing so would have given the alarm and signalised our presence. Now they were right on us, so near that we could have touched them, and yet they did not know that there were two hundred carbines which could have knocked them over at point-blank range. Even now I can distinctly see the face of the first, as if it were photographed on my brain. He was quite young, with an eye-glass well screwed into the eye, his face was red and insolent, just as the Prussian officer is always represented. He had a whip under his arm, and he even had a cigar. Suddenly his face and that of his companion contracted, as if confronted by some apparition. This French regiment must have seemed to them a phantom of the forest, some impossible and illusory vision seen in the shadow of the leaves. Their horses stopped short and, for the space of a second, their riders looked like two figures in stone. Then in a flash they understood and fled at full speed. For an instant we heard the stones fly under their horses’ shoes, but the sound grew fainter and fainter, and a deep silence reigned again.