Through a big gate which stood open they came into a huge courtyard; from this courtyard they passed into a stable, the back door of which let them into a garden.
They lost their way for a moment and wandered blindly about. But finally, going through a hedge, they found themselves in a huge field of buckwheat.
In less than half an hour, guided by the shouts and confused noises, they had regained the high road on the other side of the village.
The ditches on either side of this road were filled with muskets that had been thrown away; Fabrizio selected one: but the road, although very broad, was so blocked with stragglers and transport that in the next half-hour the corporal and Fabrizio had not advanced more than five hundred yards at the most; they were told that this road led to Charleroi.
As the village clock struck eleven: "Let us cut across the fields again," said the corporal.
The little party was reduced now to three men, the corporal and Fabrizio.
When they had gone a quarter of a league from the high road:
"I'm done," said one of the soldiers.
"Me, too!" said another.
"That's good news!
We're all in the same boat," said the corporal; "but do what I tell you and you'll get through all right."
His eye fell on five or six trees marking the line of a little ditch in the middle of an immense cornfield.
"Make for the trees!" he told his men; "lie down," he added when they had reached the trees, "and not a sound, remember.
But before you go to sleep, who's got any bread?"
"I have," said one of the men.
"Give it here," said the corporal in a tone of authority.
He divided the bread into five pieces and took the smallest himself.
"A quarter of an hour before dawn," he said as he ate it, "you'll have the enemy's cavalry on your backs.
You've got to see you're not sabred.
A man by himself is done for with cavalry after him on these big plains, but five can get away; keep in close touch with me, don't fire till they're at close range, and to-morrow evening I'll undertake to get you to Charleroi."
The corporal roused his men an hour before daybreak and made them recharge their muskets.
The noise on the high road still continued; it had gone on all night: it was like the sound of a torrent heard from a long way off.
"They're like a flock of sheep running away," said Fabrizio with a guileless air to the corporal.
"Will you shut your mouth, you young fool!" said the corporal, greatly indignant.
And the three soldiers who with Fabrizio composed his whole force scowled angrily at our hero as though he had uttered blasphemy.
He had insulted the nation.
"That is where their strength lies!" thought our hero. "I noticed it before with the Viceroy at Milan; they are not running away, oh, no!
With these Frenchmen you must never speak the truth if it shocks their vanity.
But as for their savage scowls, they don't trouble me, and I must let them understand as much."
They kept on their way, always at an interval of five hundred yards from the torrent of fugitives that covered the high road.
A league farther on, the corporal and his party crossed a road running into the high road in which a number of soldiers were lying.
Fabrizio purchased a fairly good horse which cost him forty francs, and among all the sabres that had been thrown down everywhere made a careful choice of one that was long and straight.
"Since I'm told I've got to stick them," he thought, "this is the best."
Thus equipped, he put his horse into a gallop and soon overtook the corporal who had gone on ahead.
He sat up in his stirrups, took hold with his left hand of the scabbard of his straight sabre, and said to the four Frenchmen:
"Those people going along the high road look like a flock of sheep … they are running like frightened sheep… ."
In spite of his dwelling upon the word sheep, his companions had completely forgotten that it had annoyed them an hour earlier.
Here we see one of the contrasts between the Italian character and the French; the Frenchman is no doubt the happier of the two; he glides lightly over the events of life and bears no malice afterwards.
We shall not attempt to conceal the fact that Fabrizio was highly pleased with himself after using the word sheep.
They marched on, talking about nothing in particular. After covering two leagues more, the corporal, still greatly astonished to see no sign of the enemy's cavalry, said to Fabrizio:
"You are our cavalry; gallop over to that farm on the little hill; ask the farmer if he will sell us breakfast: mind you tell him there are only five of us.
If he hesitates, put down five francs of your money in advance; but don't be frightened, we'll take the dollar back from him after we've eaten."
Fabrizio looked at the corporal; he saw in his face an imperturbable gravity and really an air of moral superiority; he obeyed.
Everything fell out as the commander in chief had anticipated; only, Fabrizio insisted on their not taking back by force the five francs he had given to the farmer.
"The money is mine," he said to his friends; "I'm not paying for you, I'm paying for the oats he's given my horse."
Fabrizio's French accent was so bad that his companions thought they detected in his words a note of superiority; they were keenly annoyed, and from that moment a duel began to take shape in their minds for the end of the day.
They found him very different from themselves, which shocked them; Fabrizio, on the contrary, was beginning to feel a warm friendship towards them.
They had marched without saying a word for a couple of hours when the corporal, looking across at the high road, exclaimed in a transport of joy:
"There's the Regiment!"
They were soon on the road; but, alas, round the eagle were mustered not more than two hundred men.