The women's open faces, framed in their dark brown hair, were perfectly calm. Fat little children, like cherubs sprung to life from some canvas of Rubens, ran by the side of the column as we moved on, and others, a little bigger, kept crying: "Hurrah for the French!" Our batteries joined up behind a group of the 26th Artillery on the Ethe road--a fine straight highway, flanked by tall trees. In the fog the sheaves in the fields looked so much like infantry that for a moment one was deceived. A few ambulances were installed in one of the villages. A little farther on some mules, saddled with their cacolets, were waiting at the end of a sunken road. We had hardly passed the last houses when suddenly rifle-fire broke out with a sound like that of dry wood burning. A machine-gun also began to crackle, staccato, like a cinema apparatus. Fighting was going on quite close, both in front of us and also to the right, somewhere in the fog. I listened, at every moment expecting to hear the hum of a bullet. "About turn!" "Trot!" What had happened? Where were the batteries which had preceded us? We turned off to the right. The firing ceased. The march in the fog, which kept getting thicker, became harassing after a while. At all events we were sure, now, that the enemy was not far off. Finally, at about seven o'clock, we halted. Not a sound of the battle was to be heard. We unbridled our horses and gave them some oats. The men lay down by the side of the road and dozed. Suddenly the fusillade broke out again, but this time on the left. I asked myself how our position could have altered so in relation to that of the enemy. A few minutes ago the fighting was on our right. Perhaps it was only a patrol which had gone astray. I gave up thinking about it. Doubtless the fog had confused my sense of direction. This time the firing sounded more distant. A single detonation, like a signal, was heard. I thought at first that it was one of the drivers whipping up his team, but a minute later the crackling of rifles broke on our ears in gusts, as if carried by a high wind. And yet the air was quite still, and the fog floated, motionless, on all sides. Suddenly the sun broke through and the mists disappeared as if by magic, like large gauze curtains rapidly lifted. In a few moments the whole stretch of countryside became visible. The cannonade began at once. On the right were some meadows in which flocks were feeding, and, farther on, a line of wooded hills, in the lap of which nestled a tiny village. On the left and towards the north the horizon was hidden by a semicircle of hills through which a river wound its tortuous course, draining the stubble-fields on either side. A large, bowl-shaped willow-tree made a solitary green blotch on the background.