Nothing more startling occurred just then, however. The men, still preserving their formation and standing at ordered arms, found something to occupy their attention in the fine appearance made by the 2d division, posted in front of Floing, with their left refused and facing the Meuse, so as to guard against a possible attack from that quarter. The ground to the east, as far as the wood of la Garenne, beneath Illy village, was held by the 3d division, while the 1st, which had lost heavily at Beaumont, formed a second line. All night long the engineers had been busy with pick and shovel, and even after the Prussians had opened fire they were still digging away at their shelter trenches and throwing up epaulments. Then a sharp rattle of musketry, quickly silenced, however, was heard proceeding from a point beneath Floing, and Captain Beaudoin received orders to move his company three hundred yards to the rear. Their new position was in a great field of cabbages, upon reaching which the captain made his men lie down. The sun had not yet drunk up the moisture that had descended on the vegetables in the darkness, and every fold and crease of the thick, golden-green leaves was filled with trembling drops, as pellucid and luminous as brilliants of the fairest water. “Sight for four hundred yards,” the captain ordered. Maurice rested the barrel of his musket on a cabbage that reared its head conveniently before him, but it was impossible to see anything in his recumbent position: only the blurred surface of the fields traversed by his level glance, diversified by an occasional tree or shrub. Giving Jean, who was beside him, a nudge with his elbow, he asked what they were to do there. The corporal, whose experience in such matters was greater, pointed to an elevation not far away, where a battery was just taking its position; it was evident that they had been placed there to support that battery, should there be need of their services. Maurice, wondering whether Honoré and his guns were not of the party, raised his head to look, but the reserve artillery was at the rear, in the shelter of a little grove of trees. “_Nom de Dieu!_” yelled Rochas, “will you lie down!” And Maurice had barely more than complied with this intimation when a shell passed screaming over him. From that time forth there seemed to be no end to them. The enemy’s gunners were slow in obtaining the range, their first projectiles passing over and landing well to the rear of the battery, which was now opening in reply. Many of their shells, too, fell upon the soft ground, in which they buried themselves without exploding, and for a time there was a great display of rather heavy wit at the expense of those bloody sauerkraut eaters. “Well, well!” said Loubet, “their fireworks are a fizzle!” “They ought to take them in out of the rain,” sneered Chouteau.