At last the gap was made and I descended a steep slope between the thin stems of the birches, having been sent forward as scout by my Major, whom I was never to see again. Below, a figure in silhouette and bareheaded was resting on his sword in the middle of a clearing bathed in moonlight. He watched me coming, and I was astonished to recognise in him the officer of my troop. For a brief moment each had taken the other for an enemy, and at twenty mètres off we were each ready to fall on the other. Our mutual recognition was none the less cordial. M. Chatelin refused my horse, which I offered to him, deciding to try to regain our lines on foot under cover of night (which he did after having knocked over two German sentries). He warned me expressly against some skirmishers concealed in a thicket behind me, and after a hearty handshake and a “good luck,” which sounded supremely ironical between two such isolated individuals, lost in the heart of German “territory,” I watched his thin silhouette melt into the darkness. I made my way back to give an account of my mission and to tell the Major that this route was impracticable for the two squadrons. Above, the plain extended to infinity, white in the moonlight, with no vestige of a human being! All that was to be seen were two horses which galloped wildly to an accompaniment of clashing stirrups, and the uneasy neighs of lost animals—that whinny of the horse which has something so human in it gave me a shudder. How was it that two squadrons had had the time, during my brief absence, to melt and disappear?