When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose.

When the singing ceased the bands played marches.

They were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell- like voices of the bugles.
More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse with drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones echoing and re-echoing from the house front.

When at night for an instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you wake when the screw stops.
For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with gray transport wagons, gray ammunition carts, gray ambulances, gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two.
For three weeks the men had been on the march, and there was not a single straggler, not a strap out of place, not a pennant missing.
Along the route, without for a minute halting the machine, the post- office carts fell out of the column, and as the men marched mounted postmen collected post-cards and delivered letters.

Also, as they marched, the cooks prepared soup, coffee, and tea, walking beside their stoves on wheels, tending the fires, distributing the smoking food.