We lighted our fires on the hill before Gross Gorschen and a detachment
descended to the village and brought back five or six old cows to make
soup of. But we were so worn out that many would rather sleep than
eat. Other regiments arrived with cannon and munitions. About eleven
o'clock there were from ten to twelve thousand men there and two
thousand and more in the village--all Souham's division. The general
and his ordnance officers were quartered in an old mill to the left,
near a stream called Floss-Graben. The line of sentries were stretched
along the base of the hill a musket-shot off. At length I fell asleep,
but I awoke every hour, and behind us, toward the road leading from the
old bridge of Poserna to Lutzen and Leipzig, I heard the rolling of
wagons, of artillery and caissons, rising and falling through the
silence.
Sergeant Pinto did not sleep; he sat smoking his pipe and drying his
feet at the fire. Every time one of us moved, he would try to talk and
say:
"Well, conscript?"
But they pretended not to hear him, and turned over, gaping, to sleep
again.
The clock of Gross-Gorschen was striking six when I awoke. I was sore
and weary yet. Nevertheless, I sat up and tried to warm myself, for I
was very cold. The fires were smoking, and almost extinguished.
Nothing of them remained but the ashes and a few embers. The sergeant,
erect, was gazing over the vast plain where the sun shot a few long
lines of gold, and, seeing me awake, put a coal in his pipe and said:
"Well, fusilier Bertha, we are now in the rearguard."