Read "Waterloo" by Erckmann-Chatrian online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
We passed the Meuse on the 12th, and during the 13th and 14th we marched along the wretched roads, bordered with grain fields, barley, oats, and hemp, without end. The heat was extraordinary, the sweat ran down to our hips from under our knapsacks and cartridge-boxes. What a misfortune to be poor, and unable to buy a man to march and take the musket-shots in our place! After having gone through the rain, wind, and snow, and mud, in Germany, the turn of the sun and dust had come. And I saw too, that the destruction was approaching, you could hear the sound of the drum and the bugle in every direction, and whenever the battalion passed over an elevation long lines of helmets and lances and bayonets were seen as far as the eye could reach.
Zebede, with his musket on his shoulder, would exclaim cheerfully, "Well, Joseph! we are going to see the whites of the Prussians' eyes again; " and I would force myself to reply, "Oh! yes, the weddings will soon begin again. " As if I wanted to risk my life and leave Catherine a young widow for the sake of something which did not in the least concern me.