From that night on she remained almost forgotten by the forester and his household. Great days were on the way. The Swiss federation was humming like a beehive with war's alarum. Those events were in the making which in history are known as the Burgundian War. When spring had come and the great day of Grandison approached, the town of Seldwyla, too, like Ruechenstein and many others, sent her embattled citizens into the field, and it was for the forester as well as for Dietegen a happy release to be able to leave the disturbed harmony and comfort of the house and to step into the clear, rugged atmosphere of war. With firm tread they both went along with their banner, though perhaps more silent than most, and joined with the other hurrying detachments the mighty battle array of the federated Swiss allies, coming most opportunely to the armed aid of the latter. Like unto an iron garden stood the long square of the fighting men, and in its midst waved the standards and pennons of the cantons and towns there represented. In serried ranks they stood, many thousands of them, each in his independence and reliability again a world in himself; in fearlessness and will each could depend on his neighbor, and yet all of them together, after all, but a throng of fallible human beings. There was the spendthrift and the light-hearted side by side with the curmudgeon and the cautious, each awaiting the hour of supreme sacrifice. The quarrelsome and the peaceable had to stay on with equal patience. He whose heart was heavy within his bosom was no more taciturn than the talkative and the braggart. The poor and indigent stood in equal pride next to the wealthy and domineering. Whole squares made up of neighbors ordinarily disagreeing were here one single unit. And envy or jealousy held spear or halberd as manfully and firmly as did generosity or reconciliation, and unjust as just aimed for the nonce both of them to fulfil the duty immediately urgent. Whoever had done with life and meant to sacrifice without regrets the mean remnant of it, was no more or less than the reckless red-cheeked youth upon whom his mother had built all her hope and in whom rested the future. The morose submitted without protest to the silly sallies of the jester or buffoon, and the latter on his part saw without ridicule the prosaic conceits of the small-souled philistine.