Ah, how we dreamed, we foolish fellows, young, and drunk with success! Could I have foreseen that night as I rode, the chosen man of sixty thousand, that I should spend my life planting cabbages on a hundred francs a month! Oh, my youth, my hopes, my comrades! But the wheel turns and never stops.

Forgive me, my friends, for an old man has his weakness.
My route, then, lay across the face of the high ground of Torres Vedras, then over a streamlet, past a farmhouse which had been burned down and was now only a landmark, then through a forest of young cork oaks, and so to the monastery of San Antonio, which marked the left of the English position.

Here I turned south and rode quietly over the downs, for it was at this point that Massena thought that it would be most easy for me to find my way unobserved through the position.

I went very slowly, for it was so dark that I could not see my hand in front of me.

In such cases I leave my bridle loose and let my horse pick its own way.
Voltigeur went confidently forward, and I was very content to sit upon his back and to peer about me, avoiding every light.