Read "Waterloo" by Erckmann-Chatrian online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Our confidence returned a little after I worked at the arsenal, but still we were anxious, for hundreds of men on furloughs for six months, conscripts, and old soldiers enlisted for one campaign, passed through the town in citizens' clothes but with knapsacks on their backs. They all shouted "_Vive l'Empereur! _" and seemed to be furious. In the great hall of the town-house they received one a cloak, another a shako, and others epaulettes and gaiters and shoes, at the expense of the department, and off they went, and I wished them a pleasant journey. All the tailors in town were making uniforms by contract, the gendarmes gave up their horses to mount the cavalry, and the mayor, Baron Parmentier, urged the young men of sixteen and seventeen to join the partisans of Colonel Bruce, who defended the defiles of the Zorne, the Zinselle, and the Saar.
The baron was going to the "Champ de Mai," and his enthusiasm redoubled. "Go! " cried he, "courage! " as he spoke to them of the Romans who fought for their country. I thought to myself as I listened to him, "If you think all that so beautiful why do you not go yourself."