صفحة 825 من 3800

Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;

on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen

of what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were,

as we supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in

that sea of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.

It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a

sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz

where Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite

light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb

quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that

milky sea of mist. The whole French army, and even Napoleon

himself with his staff, were not on the far side of the streams

and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we

intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were

on this side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the

naked eye could distinguish a mounted man from one on foot.

Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his Italian

campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front of

his marshals.