“Ah!” answered Valmond, nodding eagerly; “with Davoust at Auerstadt--thirty against sixty thousand men. At eight o’clock, all fog and mist, as you marched up the defile towards the Sonnenberg hills, the brave Gudin and his division feeling their way to Blucher. Comrade, how still you stepped, your bayonet thrust out before you, clearing the mists, your eyes straining, your teeth set, ready to thrust. All at once a quick-moving mass sprang out of the haze, and upon you, with hardly a sound of warning; and an army of hussars launched themselves at your bayonets! You bent that wall back like a piece of steel, and broke it. Comrade, that was the beginning, in the mist of morning. Tell me how you fared in the light of evening, at the end of that bloody day.” The old soldier was trembling. There was no sign, no movement, from the crowd. Across the fields came the sharpening of a scythe, the cry of the grasshoppers, and the sound of a mill-wheel arose near by. In the mill itself, far up in a deep dormer window, sat Parpon with his black cat, looking down upon the scene with a grim smiling. The sergeant saw that mist fronting Sonnenberg rise up, and show ten thousand splendid cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, with a king and a prince to lead them down upon those malleable but unmoving squares of French infantry. He saw himself drumming the Prussians back and his Frenchmen on. “Beautiful God!” he cried proudly, “that was a day! And every man of the Third Corps that time lift up the lid of hell and drop a Prussian in. I stand beside Davoust once, and ping! come a bullet, and take off his chapeau. It fell upon my drum. I stoop and pick it up and hand it to him, but I keep drumming with one hand all the time. ‘Comrade,’ say I, ‘the army thanks you for your courtesy.’ ‘Brother,’ he say, ‘twas to your drum,’ and his eye flash out where Gudin carved his way through those pigs of Prussians. ‘I’d take my head off to keep your saddle filled, comrade,’ say I. Ping! come a bullet and catch me in the calf. ‘You hold your head too high, brother,’ the general say, and he smile. ‘I’ll hold it higher,’ answer I, and I snatch at a soldier. ‘Up with me on your shoulder, big comrade,’ I say, and he lift me up. I make my sticks sing on the leather. ‘You shall take off your hat to the Little Corporal to-morrow, if you’ve still your head, brother’--speak Davoust like that, and then he ride away like the devil to Morand’s guns. Ha, ha, ha!” The sergeant’s face was blazing with a white glare, for he was very pale, and seemed unconscious of all save the scene in his mind’s eye. “Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed again. “Beautiful God, how did Davoust bring us on up to Sonnenberg! And next day I saw the Little Corporal. ‘Drummer,’ say he, ‘no head’s too high for my Guard. Come you, comrade, your general gives you to me. Come, Corporal Lagroin,’ he call; and I come. ‘But, first,’ he say, ‘up on the shoulder of your big soldier again, and play.’ ‘What shall I play, sire?’ I ask.