Six o'clock
And from Auberive to Hentregiville , along the pleasant banks of the Suippe as it meandered sluggishly between its willows , the fires of those hundred thousand sleeping men illuminated the starlit night for fifteen miles , like a long array of twinkling stars . At sunrise they made coffee , pulverizing the berries in a wooden bowl with a musket-butt , throwing the powder into boiling water , and settling it with a drop of cold water . The luminary rose that morning in a bank of purple and gold , affording a spectacle of royal magnificence , but Maurice had no eye for such displays , and Jean , with the weather-wisdom of a peasant , cast an anxious glance at the red disk , which presaged rain ; and it was for that reason that , the surplus of bread baked the day before having been distributed and the squad having received three loaves , he reproved severely Loubet and Pache for making them fast on the outside of their knapsacks ; but the tents were folded and the knapsacks packed , and so no one paid any attention to him . Six o'clock was sounding from all the bells of the village when the army put itself in motion and stoutly resumed its advance in the bright hopefulness of the dawn of the new day . The 106th , in order to reach the road that leads from Rheims to Vouziers , struck into a cross-road , and for more than an hour their way was an ascending one . Below them , toward the north , Betheniville was visible among the trees , where the Emperor was reported to have slept , and when they reached the Vouziers road the level country of the preceding day again presented itself to their gaze and the lean fields of `` lousy Champagne '' stretched before them in wearisome monotony . They now had the Arne , an insignificant stream , flowing on their left , while to the right the treeless , naked country stretched far as the eye could see in an apparently interminable horizon .