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.
The sergeant had formed a particular friendship for me, and on the
eighteenth, on relieving guard at Warthau gate, he said:
"Fusilier Bertha, the Emperor has arrived."