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Thick enough in the center of
the town, the gray backs showed themselves hardly at all in the
environs.
At the city line a small guard lounged on benches before a wine shop.
They stood up as we drew near, but changed their minds and squatted down
without challenging us to produce the safe-conduct papers that Herr
General Major Thaddeus von Jarotzky, sitting in due state in the ancient
Hotel de Ville, had bestowed on us an hour before.
Just before we reached Waterloo we saw in a field on the right, near the
road, a small camp of German cavalry. The big, round-topped yellow
tents, sheltering twenty men each and looking like huge tortoises, stood
in a line. From the cook-wagons, modeled on the design of those carried
by an American circus, came the heavy, meaty smells of stews boiling in
enormous caldrons. The men were lying or sitting on straw piles,
singing German marching songs as they waited for their supper. It was
always so--whenever and wherever we found German troops at rest they
were singing, eating or drinking--or doing all three at once.


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