Chapter 27 Summary

The fun Cosimo has with the soldiers is just what a man of his convictions and ingenuity could have with a group of occupying soldiers wandering aimlessly underfoot. He observes the contrast between one Austrian regiment smartly dressed with a punctilious sergeant at the lead, but with no idea how to manage in woods as thick as Cosimo's, and a French regiment, so thoroughly soaked in the winter months that when spring came, their hats and coats begin to sprout moss and lichens. They seem as much a part of the forest as the trees themselves, and so it brings Cosimo pleasure to help them out.

He lures the Austrians into traps, getting them so bug-bitten and crazy with being out of their element that any decorum they try to maintain dissolves. For the French, he reports the movements of the Austrians and...