Read "The Conscript" by Erckmann-Chatrian online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
But, as Sergeant Pinto said, all we had yet seen was but the prelude to the ball; the dance was now about to commence.
Meanwhile we did duty at the citadel with a battalion of the Twenty-seventh, and from the top of the ramparts we saw all the environs covered with troops, some bivouacking, others quartered in the villages.