"Yes,--half of all," I replied. "You let me drink from your bottle, I will divide with you." Then he was calm again. I cut the bread in two with my sabre and said: "Choose, Jean; that is your radish, and there are half the onions, and we will share the salt between us." We ate the bread without soaking it in the water, we ate our radishes, our onions and the salt. We should have kept on eating still, if we had had more to eat, but yet we were satisfied. We knelt down with our hands in the water and we drank. "Now let us go," said Buche, "and leave the bag." In spite of our weary legs, which were ready to give out, we went on again toward the left; while on the right behind us, toward Charleroi, the shouts and shots redoubled, and all along the road we could see nothing but the men fighting, but they were already far away. We looked back from time to time, and Buche said: "Joseph, you did well to bring me away, had it not been for you, I might have been stretched out over there by the road-side, killed by a Frenchman. I was too hungry. But where shall we go now?" I answered, "Follow me!" We passed through a large and beautiful village, pillaged and abandoned also. Farther on we met some peasants, who scowled at us from the road-side. We must have had ill-looking faces, especially Buche with his head bound up, and his beard eight days old, thick and hard as the bristles of a boar. About one o'clock in the afternoon we re-crossed the Sambre, by the bridge of Chatelet, but as the Prussians were still in pursuit we did not halt there. I was quite at ease, thinking: "If they are still pursuing us, they will follow the bulk of the army, in order to take more prisoners and pick up the cannon, caissons, and baggage." This was the manner in which we were compelled to reason, we, who three days before had made the world tremble. I recollect that when we reached a small village about three o'clock in the afternoon, we stopped at a blacksmith's shop to ask for water. The country people immediately began to gather round, and the smith, a large, dark man, asked us to go to the little inn, opposite, saying he would join us and take a glass of beer with us. Naturally enough this pleased us, for we were afraid of being arrested, and we saw that these people were on our side. I remembered that I had some money in my knapsack, and that now it would be useful. We went into the inn, which was only a little shop, with two small windows on the street, and a round door opening in the middle, as is common in our country villages. When we were seated the room was so full of men and women, who had come to hear the news, that we could hardly breathe. The smith came. He had taken off his leather apron and put on a little blue blouse, and we saw at once that he had five or six men with him. They were the mayor and his assistant, and the municipal councillors of the place.