salutes with eagerness and punctilio. CHAPTER XVIII. _July 8th._--Here I am in heaven, as it were--in _Colombes_!--in a _perfect paradise_! More of that hereafter. I am sitting scribbling at last in a handsome room, all to myself! But to begin at the beginning. This morning was (as usual of late) very fine and very hot. At an early hour we received orders to hold ourselves in readiness to march, and understood that we were about to move on the Loire, where the French army had mustered in force and refused to acknowledge the capitulation. Hitchins and I had just found a very pretty little house vacant near our bivouac, and little damaged. Into this we proposed getting to-day, and were rather disappointed when the order for moving came. It was no small comfort, however, to escape from Garges and all its horrors of plundered houses and bad water. The filth of the bivouac, from such long occupation, was becoming intolerable, and the water, bad as it was, was failing fast. Being sufficiently occupied, I did not notice at what hour we marched, but it must not have been late; for, notwithstanding delays, we arrived here early in the afternoon--the distance probably six or seven English miles. A column of cavalry, composed of our brigade and some other regiments of heavy dragoons, preceded us, and all together took the road to St Denis. Arrived at the point of junction of the three chaussées, instead of marching through the town we struck off to the right. This was not the road to the Loire, and we were puzzled. Wherever we were going the road was beautiful, and the cool shade of the green vault under which we marched peculiarly agreeable in so hot a day. All the country right and left was like a garden; laid out in little square plots of vegetables or roses, an astonishing quantity of which flower is grown in this neighbourhood. Passing through the pretty village of Epinay on the banks of the Seine, we soon after came to a singular ridge of chalky hills separating the road on which we marched from the river. Here then we quitted the chaussée for a cross-road skirting those hills on the side next the river, which we now understood was to be crossed by a pontoon bridge thrown across a little lower down.