The whole village was wide awake. Through attic windows anxious faces were peeping; restless people stood at their garden walls. From house to house they exchanged impressions. A young woman of the neighbourhood had rushed to her coffee-mill at the beginning of the action, and by the time her old father went to the garden to unearth a precious bottle of _marc_, she had ground all her small reserve, so that "our French" might have hot coffee on reaching the village! Alas, our hopes were once more hoped in vain! Little by little the firing grew fainter, the cannon less audible; the flames and the lights died away; and suddenly silence and peace fell upon the village. The extinguisher was dropped on us again. Speechless and gloomy we went to bed at two o'clock in the morning, with limbs and souls chilled, and we did not even try to seek sleep. The civilians were not the only ones who thought the French likely to come back. The hussars had spent the whole night on horseback, ready, if their brothers-in-arms withdrew, to go at full speed to the north: such were the orders in case of an alarm--at least they said so. Officers, under-officers, and soldiers were all the more grieved with the disturbance as they were going to feast and make merry all night in order to keep Christmas, and were looking forward to such a junketing as they had never dreamed of in the Marches of Brandenburg. The lieutenant had visited all the farms of the village, felt a hundred fowls, and chosen the plumpest and the tenderest. The feathered tribe were waiting for their last hour in an adjacent shed. But now to whom would the inheritance come? "My beautiful fowls," the officer muttered between his teeth, "my beautiful fowls! Who will eat them? How many a slip is there 'twixt the duck and the lip!" The alarm over, Von Bernhausen had not yet recovered his serenity. At break of day he summoned his host, the farmer, the cook, and the cook's boy, ordered them to slay, pluck, and roast directly all that bore comb or webbed foot. "At eleven," he declared, "we shall eat them every one." They ate them every one. Crammed to the brim, greatly pleased with themselves, the hussars strummed on their paunches: "'Tis so much gained!" There is no need to say that they began their feast again on Christmas Day. In order to celebrate this godly day according to old customs, soldiers of all arms and all localities had looked everywhere for fir-trees. They were not satisfied with small ones, and in our wood, near Bucy, they lopped eighteen beautiful Norway pines; they did the like in other private estates, and even in a public place of Laon, where the beheaded trees cut a very sorry figure, you may take my word for it.