One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast:  “Bad news, gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital (a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water.”

“Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself,” we all cried in a breath!

Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers never failed for a single moment.  I had never seen them before under such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and their officers too,—­the very embodiment of devotion.  One day, the rear guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly under a deluge of rain.  The first men who tried to cross were carried off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty.  Without a moment’s hesitation all the officers plunged into the water, though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other’s arms they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way.  Frenchmen of all classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of duty!  At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d’Afrique, sent out to meet us.  From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont, general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was talking to my brother Nemours.  Very soon, galloping up to the Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so brilliantly during the whole campaign.  He was in the act of inspecting his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together.  Then he scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the brother “You can’t go about like that, haven’t you anything else to put on?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by camping out in the mud.  The only soldier-like things about me were my sword and my lieutenant’s epaulettes.  But they manufactured me a cap, a naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me his coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to mount it.  If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some idea of the picture the top of the breach presented.  It was a chaos of ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way out.  The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with caps, epaulettes, and human remains.  A soldier of the 2nd Light Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.