But now tragedy had given it distinction; had painted
that straggling frontier hamlet over with such colors that the picture
of it is going to live in my memory as long as I do live. At the upper
end of the single street, like an outpost, stood an old chateau, the
seat, no doubt, of the local gentry, with a small park of beeches and
elms round it; and here, right at the park entrance, we had our first
intimation that there had been a fight. The gate stood ajar between its
chipped stone pillars, and just inside the blue coat of a French cavalry
officer, jaunty and new and much braided with gold lace on the collar
and cuffs, hung from the limb of a small tree. Beneath the tree were a
sheaf of straw in the shape of a bed and the ashes of a dead camp fire;
and on the grass, plain to the eye, a plump, well-picked pullet, all
ready for the pot or the pan. Looking on past these things we saw much
scattered dunnage: Frenchmen's knapsacks, flannel shirts, playing cards,
fagots of firewood mixed together like jackstraws, canteens covered with
slate-blue cloth and having queer little hornlike protuberances on their
tops--which proved them to be French canteens--tumbled straw, odd shoes
with their lacings undone, a toptilted service shelter of canvas; all
the riffle of a camp that had been suddenly and violently disturbed.
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