“What an idea!” Jean exclaimed; “who can tell what is going to happen him?  Every bullet has its billet, they say, but you stand no worse chance than the rest of us.”

“Oh, but me—­I am as good as dead now.  I tell you I shall be killed to-day.”

The near files turned and looked at him curiously, asking him if he had had a dream.  No, he had dreamed nothing, but he felt it; it was there.

“And it is a pity, all the same, because I was to be married when I got my discharge.”

A vague expression came into his eyes again; his past life rose before him.  He was the son of a small retail grocer at Lyons, and had been petted and spoiled by his mother up to the time of her death; then rejecting the proffer of his father, with whom he did not hit it off well, to assist in purchasing his discharge, he had remained with the army, weary and disgusted with life and with his surroundings.  Coming home on furlough, however, he fell in love with a cousin and they became engaged; their intention was to open a little shop on the small capital which she would bring him, and then existence once more became desirable.  He had received an elementary education; could read, write, and cipher.  For the past year he had lived only in anticipation of this happy future.

He shivered, and gave himself a shake to dispel his revery, repeating with his tranquil air: 

“Yes, it is too bad; I shall be killed to-day.”

No one spoke; the uncertainty and suspense continued.  They knew not whether the enemy was on their front or in their rear.  Strange sounds came to their ears from time to time from out the depths of the mysterious fog:  the rumble of wheels, the deadened tramp of moving masses, the distant clatter of horses’ hoofs; it was the evolutions of troops, hidden from view behind the misty curtain, the batteries, battalions, and squadrons of the 7th corps taking up their positions in line of battle.  Now, however, it began to look as if the fog was about to lift; it parted here and there and fragments floated lightly off, like strips of gauze torn from a veil, and bits of sky appeared, not transparently blue, as on a bright summer’s day, but opaque and of the hue of burnished steel, like the cheerless bosom of some deep, sullen mountain tarn.  It was in one of those brighter moments when the sun was endeavoring to struggle forth that the regiments of chasseurs d’Afrique, constituting part of Margueritte’s division, came riding by, giving the impression of a band of spectral horsemen.  They sat very stiff and erect in the saddle, with their short cavalry jackets, broad red sashes and smart little kepis, accurate in distance and alignment and managing admirably their lean, wiry mounts, which were almost invisible under the heterogeneous collection of tools and camp equipage that they had to carry.  Squadron after squadron they swept by in long array, to be swallowed in the gloom from which