WAR PICTURES IN TIME OF PEACE. 





w^-m=m-2 



T 



HE last bars of the cavalry re- 

 veille aroused me, and I sat up, 

 rubbing my eyes and gathering 

 my straggling wits. Again, right under 

 my window, I heard the music, and now 

 thoroughly awakened, I sprang out of 

 bed. I was in a room over the stables 

 of a tax'ern in a small town in Nor- 

 mandy, where I had joined the troops 

 the night before, wath the intention of 

 accompanying them during the autumn 

 manoeuvres, when the French army takes the field, each corps 

 in territory assigned to it, there to prepare the troops by prac- 

 tice in the details of a campaign for the more serious business 

 of real warfare. 



The day was just dawning in a wet gray sky as I dressed 

 myself and looked from my window on the court of the tav- 

 ern, a long, square, paved enclosure, bounded on three sides by 

 irregular two-storied buildings of brick and stone, while, on 

 the fourth side, a huge archway under an ancient tower per- 



