We nearly froze to death at Bourget, but I have not time to tell you of it.  I must pass on to the last sortie—­toward Montretout and Malmaison.  That was a dark, foggy, leaden morning, with a drizzling rain.  We passed through the whole French army on our way out—­line, National Guards, Mobiles, artillery, cavalry:  we passed through them all, everywhere meeting with a grateful reception.  Sometimes they cheered us and our wagons (now increased to eight) and our immense coffee-pot.  This last was an institution:  it consisted of three great boilers mounted on wheels.  Before the meat gave out we used sometimes to put soup in our coffee-pot and take it to the field.  Coffee by some means we still had.  Even on the desolate morning I am now telling you of many a poor foot-soldier who had been upon the almost impassable roads all night had been cheered by a sly tin cupful of the precious liquid as we trudged on toward the field.  Well, we were finally ordered to halt at the little village of Rueil, within a stone’s throw of the church where Josephine and Hortense lie buried.  I climbed a hill on the left, and saw the French pushing toward Buzenval.  They could see nothing before them but a line of fire—­not a Prussian above the low wall in front of the thick mass of wood.  Though I could see these Frenchmen dropping down by hundreds, they went steadily on and on.  Some of them were National Guards who had never before been under fire.  It was here that young Henri Regnault fell, with many other Parisians known in literature and art.  After a while the Germans began shelling the hill on which I was, and I scampered down to the open square where the wagons were.  It was not long, however, till another German battery got to throwing shells into this square, each discharge bringing them nearer and nearer to us.  Suddenly a shell struck the corner house in front of us.  The door opened in a very deliberate way, and out came a man in a blouse, smoking a pipe, and followed by a woman with a baby in her arms.  He leisurely locked the door behind him, and put the key into his pocket.  Then he started slowly across the square, with his wife and baby still behind him.  As he passed us I exclaimed, “For Heaven’s sake, what are you doing here with that baby?  Don’t you see they are shelling all around us?”

“Yes, I see, I see:  one of them struck our house just now.  I’ve got another one up here, and we’re moving to it.”  And without taking his hands out of his pockets or his pipe out of his mouth, he strolled on across the open square, followed by his wife, who seemed absorbed only in hushing the baby as it wailed in fright at the sound of the bursting shells.