facing the Meuse, so as to guard against a possible attack from that
quarter. The ground to the east, as far as the wood of la Garenne,
beneath Illy village, was held by the 3d division, while the 1st,
which had lost heavily at Beaumont, formed a second line. All night
long the engineers had been busy with pick and shovel, and even after
the Prussians had opened fire they were still digging away at their
shelter trenches and throwing up epaulments.

Then a sharp rattle of musketry, quickly silenced, however, was heard
proceeding from a point beneath Floing, and Captain Beaudoin received
orders to move his company three hundred yards to the rear. Their new
position was in a great field of cabbages, upon reaching which the
captain made his men lie down. The sun had not yet drunk up the
moisture that had descended on the vegetables in the darkness, and
every fold and crease of the thick, golden-green leaves was filled
with trembling drops, as pellucid and luminous as brilliants of the
fairest water.

"Sight for four hundred yards," the captain ordered.

Maurice rested the barrel of his musket on a cabbage that reared its
head conveniently before him, but it was impossible to see anything
in his recumbent position: only the blurred surface of the fields
traversed by his level glance, diversified by an occasional tree or
shrub. Giving Jean, who was beside him, a nudge with his elbow, he
asked what they were to do there. The corporal, whose experience in
such matters was greater, pointed to an elevation not far away, where
a battery was just taking its position; it was evident that they had
been placed there to support that battery, should there be need of
their services. Maurice, wondering whether Honore and his guns were