V.


It was nearly ten o'clock up on the Plateau de l'Algerie, and still
the men of Beaudoin's company were resting supine, among the cabbages,
in the field whence they had not budged since early morning. The cross
fire from the batteries on Hattoy and the peninsula of Iges was hotter
than ever; it had just killed two more of their number, and there were
no orders for them to advance. Were they to stay there and be shelled
all day, without a chance to see anything of the fighting?

They were even denied the relief of discharging their chassepots.
Captain Beaudoin had at last put his foot down and stopped the firing,
that senseless fusillade against the little wood in front of them,
which seemed entirely deserted by the Prussians. The heat was
stifling; it seemed to them that they should roast, stretched there on
the ground under the blazing sky.

Jean was alarmed, on turning to look at Maurice, to see that he had
declined his head and was lying, with closed eyes, apparently
inanimate, his cheek against the bare earth. He was very pale, there
was no sign of life in his face.

"Hallo there! what's the matter?"

But Maurice was only sleeping. The mental strain, conjointly with his
fatigue, had been too much for him, in spite of the dangers that
menaced them at every moment. He awoke with a start and stared about
him, and the peace that slumber had left in his wide-dilated eyes was
immediately supplanted by a look of startled affright as it dawned on
him where he was. He had not the remotest idea how long he had slept;
all he knew was that the state from which he had been recalled to the
horrors of the battlefield was one of blessed oblivion and
tranquillity.

"Hallo! that's funny; I must have been asleep!" he murmured. "Ah! it
has done me good."

It was true that he suffered less from that pressure about his temples
and at his heart, that horrible constriction that seems as if it would
crush one's bones. He chaffed Lapoulle, who had manifested much
uneasiness since the disappearance of Chouteau and Loubet and spoke of
going to look for them. A capital idea! so he might get away and hide
behind a tree, and smoke a pipe! Pache thought that the surgeons
had detained them at the ambulance, where there was a scarcity of
sick-bearers. That was a job that he had no great fancy for, to go
around under fire and collect the wounded! And haunted by a lingering
superstition of the country where he was born, he added that it was
unlucky to touch a corpse; it brought death.

"Shut up, confound you!" roared Lieutenant Rochas. "Who is going to
die?"

Colonel de Vineuil, sitting his tall horse, turned his head and gave a
smile, the first that had been seen on his face that morning. Then he
resumed his statue-like attitude, waiting for orders as impassively as
ever under the tumbling shells.

Maurice's attention was attracted to the sick-bearers, whose movements
he watched with interest as they searched for wounded men among the
depressions of the ground. At the end of a sunken road, and protected
by a low ridge not far from their position, a flying ambulance of
first aid had been established, and its emissaries had begun to
explore the plateau. A tent was quickly erected, while from the
hospital van the attendants extracted the necessary supplies;
compresses, bandages, linen, and the few indispensable instruments
required for the hasty dressings they gave before dispatching the
patients to Sedan, which they did as rapidly as they could secure
wagons, the supply of which was limited. There was an assistant
surgeon in charge, with two subordinates of inferior rank under him.
In all the army none showed more gallantry and received less
acknowledgment than the litter-bearers. They could be seen all over
the field in their gray uniform, with the distinctive red badge on
their cap and on their arm, courageously risking their lives and
unhurriedly pushing forward through the thickest of the fire to the
spots where men had been seen to fall. At times they would creep on
hands and knees: would always take advantage of a hedge or ditch, or
any shelter that was afforded by the conformation of the ground, never
exposing themselves unnecessarily out of bravado. When at last they
reached the fallen men their painful task commenced, which was made
more difficult and protracted by the fact that many of the subjects
had fainted, and it was hard to tell whether they were alive or dead.
Some lay face downward with their mouths in a pool of blood, in danger
of suffocating, others had bitten the ground until their throats were
choked with dry earth, others, where a shell had fallen among a group,
were a confused, intertwined heap of mangled limbs and crushed trunks.
With infinite care and patience the bearers would go through the
tangled mass, separating the living from the dead, arranging their
limbs and raising the head to give them air, cleansing the face as
well as they could with the means at their command. Each of them
carried a bucket of cool water, which he had to use very savingly. And
Maurice could see them thus engaged, often for minutes at a time,
kneeling by some man whom they were trying to resuscitate, waiting for
him to show some sign of life.

He watched one of them, some fifty yards away to the left, working
over the wound of a little soldier from the sleeve of whose tunic a
thin stream of blood was trickling, drop by drop. The man of the red
cross discovered the source of the hemorrhage and finally checked it
by compressing the artery. In urgent cases, like that of the little
soldier, they rendered these partial attentions, locating fractures,
bandaging and immobilizing the limbs so as to reduce the danger of
transportation. And the transportation, even, was an affair that
called for a great deal of judgment and ingenuity; they assisted those
who could walk, and carried others, either in their arms, like little
children, or pickaback when the nature of the hurt allowed it; at
other times they united in groups of two, three, or four, according to
the requirements of the case, and made a chair by joining their hands,
or carried the patient off by his legs and shoulders in a recumbent
posture. In addition to the stretchers provided by the medical
department there were all sorts of temporary makeshifts, such as the
stretchers improvised from knapsack straps and a couple of muskets.
And in every direction on the unsheltered, shell-swept plain they
could be seen, singly or in groups, hastening with their dismal loads
to the rear, their heads bowed and picking their steps, an admirable
spectacle of prudent heroism.

Maurice saw a pair on his right, a thin, puny little fellow lugging a
burly sergeant, with both legs broken, suspended from his neck; the
sight reminded the young man of an ant, toiling under a burden many
times larger than itself; and even as he watched them a shell burst
directly in their path and they were lost to view. When the smoke
cleared away the sergeant was seen lying on his back, having received
no further injury, while the bearer lay beside him, disemboweled. And
another came up, another toiling ant, who, when he had turned his dead
comrade on his back and examined him, took the sergeant up and made
off with his load.

It gave Maurice a chance to read Lapoulle a lesson.

"I say, if you like the business, why don't you go and give that man a
lift!"

For some little time the batteries at Saint-Menges had been thundering
as if determined to surpass all previous efforts, and Captain
Beaudoin, who was still tramping nervously up and down before his
company line, at last stepped up to the colonel. It was a pity, he
said, to waste the men's morale in that way and keep their minds on
the stretch for hours and hours.

"I can't help it; I have no orders," the colonel stoically replied.

They had another glimpse of General Douay as he flew by at a gallop,
followed by his staff. He had just had an interview with General de
Wimpffen, who had ridden up to entreat him to hold his ground, which
he thought he could promise to do, but only so long as the Calvary of
Illy, on his right, held out; Illy once taken, he would be responsible
for nothing; their defeat would be inevitable. General de Wimpffen
averred that the 1st corps would look out for the position at Illy,
and indeed a regiment of zouaves was presently seen to occupy the
Calvary, so that General Douay, his anxiety being relieved on that
score, sent Dumont's division to the assistance of the 12th corps,
which was then being hard pushed. Scarcely fifteen minutes later,
however, as he was returning from the left, whither he had ridden to
see how affairs were looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to
the Calvary, to see it was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be
seen there, they had abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable
by reason of the terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a
despairing presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast
as he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont's division,
flying in disorder, broken and tangled in inextricable confusion with
the debris of the 1st corps. The latter, which, after its retrograde
movement, had never been able to regain possession of the posts it had
occupied in the morning, leaving Daigny in the hands of the XIIth
Saxon corps and Givonne to the Prussian Guards, had been compelled to
retreat in a northerly direction across the wood of Garenne, harassed
by the batteries that the enemy had posted on every summit from one
end of the valley to the other. The terrible circle of fire and flame
was contracting; a portion of the Guards had continued their march on
Illy, moving from east to west and turning the eminences, while
from west to east, in the rear of the XIth corps, now masters of
Saint-Menges, the Vth, moving steadily onward, had passed Fleigneux
and with insolent temerity was constantly pushing its batteries more
and more to the front, and so contemptuous were they of the ignorance
and impotence of the French that they did not even wait for the
infantry to come up to support their guns. It was midday; the entire
horizon was aflame, concentrating its destructive fire on the 7th and
1st corps.

Then General Douay, while the German artillery was thus preparing the
way for the decisive movement that should make them masters of the
Calvary, resolved to make one last desperate attempt to regain
possession of the hill. He dispatched his orders, and throwing himself
in person among the fugitives of Dumont's division, succeeded in
forming a column which he sent forward to the plateau. It held its
ground for a few minutes, but the bullets whistled so thick, the
naked, treeless fields were swept by such a tornado of shot and shell,
that it was not long before the panic broke out afresh, sweeping the
men adown the slopes, rolling them up as straws are whirled before the
wind. And the general, unwilling to abandon his project, ordered up
other regiments.

A staff officer galloped by, shouting to Colonel de Vineuil as he
passed an order that was lost in the universal uproar. Hearing, the
colonel was erect in his stirrups in an instant, his face aglow with
the gladness of battle, and pointing to the Calvary with a grand
movement of his sword:

"Our turn has come at last, boys!" he shouted. "Forward!"

A thrill of enthusiasm ran through the ranks at the brief address, and
the regiment put itself in motion. Beaudoin's company was among the
first to get on its feet, which it did to the accompaniment of much
good-natured chaff, the men declaring they were so rusty they could
not move; the gravel must have penetrated their joints. The fire was
so hot, however, that by the time they had advanced a few feet they
were glad to avail themselves of the protection of a shelter trench
that lay in their path, along which they crept in an undignified
posture, bent almost double.

"Now, young fellow, look out for yourself!" Jean said to Maurice;
"we're in for it. Don't let 'em see so much as the end of your nose,
for if you do they will surely snip it off, and keep a sharp lookout
for your legs and arms unless you have more than you care to keep.
Those who come out of this with a whole skin will be lucky."

Maurice did not hear him very distinctly; the words were lost in the
all-pervading clamor that buzzed and hummed in the young man's ears.
He could not have told now whether he was afraid or not; he went
forward because the others did, borne along with them in their
headlong rush, without distinct volition of his own; his sole desire
was to have the affair ended as soon as possible. So true was it that
he was a mere drop in the on-pouring torrent that when the leading
files came to the end of the trench and began to waver at the prospect
of climbing the exposed slope that lay before them, he immediately
felt himself seized by a sensation of panic, and was ready to turn and
fly. It was simply an uncontrollable instinct, a revolt of the
muscles, obedient to every passing breath.

Some of the men had already faced about when the colonel came hurrying
up.

"Steady there, my children. You won't cause me this great sorrow; you
won't behave like cowards. Remember, the 106th has never turned its
back upon the enemy; will you be the first to disgrace our flag?"

And he spurred his charger across the path of the fugitives,
addressing them individually, speaking to them, of their country, in a
voice that trembled with emotion.

Lieutenant Rochas was so moved by his words that he gave way to an
ungovernable fit of anger, raising his sword and belaboring the men
with the flat as if it had been a club.

"You dirty loafers, I'll see whether you will go up there or not! I'll
kick you up! About face! and I'll break the jaw of the first man that
refuses to obey!"

But such an extreme measure as kicking a regiment into action was
repugnant to the colonel.

"No, no, lieutenant; they will follow me. Won't you, my children? You
won't let your old colonel fight it out alone with the Prussians! Up
there lies the way; forward!"

He turned his horse and left the trench, and they did all follow, to a
man, for he would have been considered the lowest of the low who could
have abandoned their leader after that brave, kind speech. He was the
only one, however, who, while crossing the open fields, erect on his
tall horse, was cool and unconcerned; the men scattered, advancing in
open order and availing themselves of every shelter afforded by the
ground. The land sloped upward; there were fully five hundred yards of
stubble and beet fields between them and the Calvary, and in place of
the correctly aligned columns that the spectator sees advancing when a
charge is ordered in field maneuvers, all that was to be seen was a
loose array of men with rounded backs, singly or in small groups,
hugging the ground, now crawling warily a little way on hands and
knees, now dashing forward for the next cover, like huge insects
fighting their way upward to the crest by dint of agility and address.
The enemy's batteries seemed to have become aware of the movement;
their fire was so rapid that the reports of the guns were blended in
one continuous roar. Five men were killed, a lieutenant was cut in
two.

Maurice and Jean had considered themselves fortunate that their way
led along a hedge behind which they could push forward unseen, but the
man immediately in front of them was shot through the temples and fell
back dead in their arms; they had to cast him down at one side. By
this time, however, the casualties had ceased to excite attention;
they were too numerous. A man went by, uttering frightful shrieks and
pressing his hands upon his protruding entrails; they beheld a horse
dragging himself along with both thighs broken, and these anguishing
sights, these horrors of the battlefield, affected them no longer.
They were suffering from the intolerable heat, the noonday sun that
beat upon their backs and burned like hot coals.

"How thirsty I am!" Maurice murmured. "My throat is like an ash
barrel. Don't you notice that smell of something scorching, a smell
like burning woolen?"

Jean nodded. "It was just the same at Solferino; perhaps it is the
smell that always goes with war. But hold, I have a little brandy
left; we'll have a sup."

And they paused behind the hedge a moment and raised the flask to
their lips, but the brandy, instead of relieving their thirst, burned
their stomach. It irritated them, that nasty taste of burnt rags in
their mouths. Moreover they perceived that their strength was
commencing to fail for want of sustenance and would have liked to take
a bite from the half loaf that Maurice had in his knapsack, but it
would not do to stop and breakfast there under fire, and then they had
to keep up with their comrades. There was a steady stream of men
coming up behind them along the hedge who pressed them forward, and
so, doggedly bending their backs to the task before them, they resumed
their course. Presently they made their final rush and reached the
crest. They were on the plateau, at the very foot of the Calvary, the
old weather-beaten cross that stood between two stunted lindens.

"Good for our side!" exclaimed Jean; "here we are! But the next thing
is to remain here!"

He was right; it was not the pleasantest place in the world to be in,
as Lapoulle remarked in a doleful tone that excited the laughter of
the company. They all lay down again, in a field of stubble, and for
all that three men were killed in quick succession. It was pandemonium
let loose up there on the heights; the projectiles from Saint-Menges,
Fleigneux, and Givonne fell in such numbers that the ground fairly
seemed to smoke, as it does at times under a heavy shower of rain. It
was clear that the position could not be maintained unless artillery
was dispatched at once to the support of the troops who had been sent
on such a hopeless undertaking. General Douay, it was said, had given
instructions to bring up two batteries of the reserve artillery, and
the men were every moment turning their heads, watching anxiously for
the guns that did not come.

"It is absurd, ridiculous!" declared Beaudoin, who was again fidgeting
up and down before the company. "Who ever heard of placing a regiment
in the air like this and giving it no support!" Then, observing a
slight depression on their left, he turned to Rochas: "Don't you
think, Lieutenant, that the company would be safer there?"

Rochas stood stock still and shrugged his shoulders. "It is six of one
and half a dozen of the other, Captain. My opinion is that we will do
better to stay where we are."

Then the captain, whose principles were opposed to swearing, forgot
himself.

"But, good God! there won't a man of us escape! We can't allow the men
to be murdered like this!"

And he determined to investigate for himself the advantages of the
position he had mentioned, but had scarcely taken ten steps when he
was lost to sight in the smoke of an exploding shell; a splinter of
the projectile had fractured his right leg. He fell upon his back,
emitting a shrill cry of alarm, like a woman's.

"He might have known as much," Rochas muttered. "There's no use his
making such a fuss over it; when the dose is fixed for one, he has to
take it."

Some members of the company had risen to their feet on seeing their
captain fall, and as he continued to call lustily for assistance, Jean
finally ran to him, immediately followed by Maurice.

"Friends, friends, for Heaven's sake do not leave me here; carry me to
the ambulance!"

"_Dame_, Captain, I don't know that we shall be able to get so far,
but we can try."

As they were discussing how they could best take hold to raise him
they perceived, behind the hedge that had sheltered them on their way
up, two stretcher-bearers who seemed to be waiting for something to
do, and finally, after protracted signaling, induced them to draw
near. All would be well if they could only get the wounded man to the
ambulance without accident, but the way was long and the iron hail
more pitiless than ever.

The bearers had tightly bandaged the injured limb in order to keep the
bones in position and were about to bear the captain off the field on
what children call a "chair," formed by joining their hands and
slipping an arm of the patient over each of their necks, when Colonel
de Vineuil, who had heard of the accident, came up, spurring his
horse. He manifested much emotion, for he had known the young man ever
since his graduation from Saint-Cyr.

"Cheer up, my poor boy; have courage. You are in no danger; the
doctors will save your leg."

The captain's face wore an expression of resignation, as if he had
summoned up all his courage to bear his misfortune manfully.

"No, my dear Colonel; I feel it is all up with me, and I would rather
have it so. The only thing that distresses me is the waiting for the
inevitable end."

The bearers carried him away, and were fortunate enough to reach the
hedge in safety, behind which they trotted swiftly away with their
burden. The colonel's eyes followed them anxiously, and when he saw
them reach the clump of trees where the ambulance was stationed a look
of deep relief rose to his face.

"But you, Colonel," Maurice suddenly exclaimed, "you are wounded too!"

He had perceived blood dripping from the colonel's left boot. A
projectile of some description had carried away the heel of the
foot-covering and forced the steel shank into the flesh.

M. de Vineuil bent over his saddle and glanced unconcernedly at the
member, in which the sensation at that time must have been far from
pleasurable.

"Yes, yes," he replied, "it is a little remembrance that I received a
while ago. A mere scratch, that don't prevent me from sitting my
horse--" And he added, as he turned to resume his position to the rear
of his regiment: "As long as a man can stick on his horse he's all
right."

At last the two batteries of reserve artillery came up. Their arrival
was an immense relief to the anxiously expectant men, as if the guns
were to be a rampart of protection to them and at the same time
demolish the hostile batteries that were thundering against them from
every side. And then, too, it was in itself an exhilarating spectacle
to see the magnificent order they preserved as they came dashing up,
each gun followed by its caisson, the drivers seated on the near horse
and holding the off horse by the bridle, the cannoneers bolt upright
on the chests, the chiefs of detachment riding in their proper
position on the flank. Distances were preserved as accurately as if
they were on parade, and all the time they were tearing across the
fields at headlong speed, with the roar and crash of a hurricane.

Maurice, who had lain down again, arose and said to Jean in great
excitement:

"Look! over there on the left, that is Honore's battery. I can
recognize the men."

Jean gave him a back-handed blow that brought him down to his
recumbent position.

"Lie down, will you! and make believe dead!"

But they were both deeply interested in watching the maneuvers of the
battery, and never once removed their eyes from it; it cheered their
heart to witness the cool and intrepid activity of those men, who,
they hoped, might yet bring victory to them.

The battery had wheeled into position on a bare summit to the left,
where it brought up all standing; then, quick as a flash, the
cannoneers leaped from the chests and unhooked the limbers, and the
drivers, leaving the gun in position, drove fifteen yards to the rear,
where they wheeled again so as to bring team and limber face to the
enemy and there remained, motionless as statues. In less time than it
takes to tell it the guns were in place, with the proper intervals
between them, distributed into three sections of two guns each, each
section commanded by a lieutenant, and over the whole a captain, a
long maypole of a man, who made a terribly conspicuous landmark on the
plateau. And this captain, having first made a brief calculation, was
heard to shout:

"Sight for sixteen hundred yards!"

Their fire was to be directed upon a Prussian battery, screened by
some bushes, to the left of Fleigneux, the shells from which were
rendering the position of the Calvary untenable.

"Honore's piece, you see," Maurice began again, whose excitement was
such that he could not keep still, "Honore's piece is in the center
section. There he is now, bending over to speak to the gunner; you
remember Louis, the gunner, don't you? the little fellow with whom we
had a drink at Vouziers? And that fellow in the rear, who sits so
straight on his handsome chestnut, is Adolphe, the driver--"

First came the gun with its chief and six cannoneers, then the limber
with its four horses ridden by two men, beyond that the caisson with
its six horses and three drivers, still further to the rear were the
_prolonge_, forge, and battery wagon; and this array of men, horses
and _materiel_ extended to the rear in a straight unbroken line of
more than a hundred yards in length; to say nothing of the spare
caisson and the men and beasts who were to fill the places of those
removed by casualties, who were stationed at one side, as much as
possible out of the enemy's line of fire.

And now Honore was attending to the loading of his gun. The two men
whose duty it was to fetch the cartridge and the projectile returned
from the caisson, where the corporal and the artificer were stationed;
two other cannoneers, standing at the muzzle of the piece, slipped
into the bore the cartridge, a charge of powder in an envelope of
serge, and gently drove it home with the rammer, then in like manner
introduced the shell, the studs of which creaked faintly in the
spirals of the rifling. When the primer was inserted in the vent and
all was in readiness, Honore thought he would like to point the gun
himself for the first shot, and throwing himself in a semi-recumbent
posture on the trail, working with one hand the screw that regulated
the elevation, with the other he signaled continually to the gunner,
who, standing behind him, moved the piece by imperceptible degrees to
right or left with the assistance of the lever.

"That ought to be about right," he said as he arose.

The captain came up, and stooping until his long body was bent almost
double, verified the elevation. At each gun stood the assistant
gunner, waiting to pull the lanyard that should ignite the fulminate
by means of a serrated wire. And the orders were given in succession,
deliberately, by number:

"Number one, Fire! Number two, Fire!"

Six reports were heard, the guns recoiled, and while they were being
brought back to position the chiefs of detachment observed the effect
of the shots and found that the range was short. They made the
necessary correction and the evolution was repeated, in exactly the
same manner as before; and it was that cool precision, that mechanical
routine of duty, without agitation and without haste, that did so much
to maintain the _morale_ of the men. They were a little family, united
by the tie of a common occupation, grouped around the gun, which they
loved and reverenced as if it had been a living thing; it was the
object of all their care and attention, to it all else was
subservient, men, horses, caisson, everything. Thence also arose the
spirit of unity and cohesion that animated the battery at large,
making all its members work together for the common glory and the
common good, like a well-regulated household.

The 106th had cheered lustily at the completion of the first round;
they were going to make those bloody Prussian guns shut their mouths
at last! but their elation was succeeded by dismay when it was seen
that the projectiles fell short, many of them bursting in the air and
never reaching the bushes that served to mask the enemy's artillery.

"Honore," Maurice continued, "says that all the other pieces are
popguns and that his old girl is the only one that is good for
anything. Ah, his old girl! He talks as if she were his wife and there
were not another like her in the world! Just notice how jealously he
watches her and makes the men clean her off! I suppose he is afraid
she will overheat herself and take cold!"

He continued rattling on in this pleasant vein to Jean, both of them
cheered and encouraged by the cool bravery with which the artillerymen
served their guns; but the Prussian batteries, after firing three
rounds, had now got the range, which, too long at the beginning, they
had at last ciphered down to such a fine point that their shells were
landed invariably among the French pieces, while the latter,
notwithstanding the efforts that were made to increase their range,
still continued to place their projectiles short of the enemy's
position. One of Honore's cannoneers was killed while loading the
piece; the others pushed the body out of their way, and the service
went on with the same methodical precision, with neither more nor less
haste. In the midst of the projectiles that fell and burst continually
the same unvarying rhythmical movements went on uninterruptedly about
the gun; the cartridge and shell were introduced, the gun was pointed,
the lanyard pulled, the carriage brought back to place; and all with
such undeviating regularity that the men might have been taken for
automatons, devoid of sight and hearing.

What impressed Maurice, however, more than anything else, was the
attitude of the drivers, sitting straight and stiff in their saddles
fifteen yards to the rear, face to the enemy. There was Adolphe, the
broad-chested, with his big blond mustache across his rubicund face;
and who shall tell the amount of courage a man must have to enable him
to sit without winking and watch the shells coming toward him, and he
not allowed even to twirl his thumbs by way of diversion! The men who
served the guns had something to occupy their minds, while the
drivers, condemned to immobility, had death constantly before their
eyes, and plenty of leisure to speculate on probabilities. They were
made to face the battlefield because, had they turned their backs to
it, the coward that so often lurks at the bottom of man's nature might
have got the better of them and swept away man and beast. It is the
unseen danger that makes dastards of us; that which we can see we
brave. The army has no more gallant set of men in its ranks than the
drivers in their obscure position.

Another man had been killed, two horses of a caisson had been
disemboweled, and the enemy kept up such a murderous fire that there
was a prospect of the entire battery being knocked to pieces should
they persist in holding that position longer. It was time to take some
step to baffle that tremendous fire, notwithstanding the danger there
was in moving, and the captain unhesitatingly gave orders to bring up
the limbers.

The risky maneuver was executed with lightning speed; the drivers came
up at a gallop, wheeled their limber into position in rear of the gun,
when the cannoneers raised the trail of the piece and hooked on. The
movement, however, collecting as it did, momentarily, men and horses
on the battery front in something of a huddle, created a certain
degree of confusion, of which the enemy took advantage by increasing
the rapidity of their fire; three more men dropped. The teams darted
away at breakneck speed, describing an arc of a circle among the
fields, and the battery took up its new position some fifty or sixty
yards more to the right, on a gentle eminence that was situated on the
other flank of the 106th. The pieces were unlimbered, the drivers
resumed their station at the rear, face to the enemy, and the firing
was reopened; and so little time was lost between leaving their old
post and taking up the new that the earth had barely ceased to tremble
under the concussion.

Maurice uttered a cry of dismay, when, after three attempts, the
Prussians had again got their range; the first shell landed squarely
on Honore's gun. The artilleryman rushed forward, and with a trembling
hand felt to ascertain what damage had been done his pet; a great
wedge had been chipped from the bronze muzzle. But it was not
disabled, and the work went on as before, after they had removed from
beneath the wheels the body of another cannoneer, with whose blood the
entire carriage was besplashed.

"It was not little Louis; I am glad of that," said Maurice, continuing
to think aloud. "There he is now, pointing his gun; he must be
wounded, though, for he is only using his left arm. Ah, he is a brave
lad, is little Louis; and how well he and Adolphe get on together, in
spite of their little tiffs, only provided the gunner, the man who
serves on foot, shows a proper amount of respect for the driver, the
man who rides a horse, notwithstanding that the latter is by far the
more ignorant of the two. Now that they are under fire, though, Louis
is as good a man as Adolphe--"

Jean, who had been watching events in silence, gave utterance to a
distressful cry:

"They will have to give it up! No troops in the world could stand such
a fire."

Within the space of five minutes the second position had become as
untenable as was the first; the projectiles kept falling with the same
persistency, the same deadly precision. A shell dismounted a gun,
fracturing the chase, killing a lieutenant and two men. Not one of the
enemy's shots failed to reach, and at each discharge they secured a
still greater accuracy of range, so that if the battery should remain
there another five minutes they would not have a gun or a man left.
The crushing fire threatened to wipe them all out of existence.

Again the captain's ringing voice was heard ordering up the limbers.
The drivers dashed up at a gallop and wheeled their teams into place
to allow the cannoneers to hook on the guns, but before Adolphe had
time to get up Louis was struck by a fragment of shell that tore open
his throat and broke his jaw; he fell across the trail of the carriage
just as he was on the point of raising it. Adolphe was there
instantly, and beholding his prostrate comrade weltering in his blood,
jumped from his horse and was about to raise him to his saddle and
bear him away. And at that moment, just as the battery was exposed
flank to the enemy in the act of wheeling, offering a fair target, a
crashing discharge came, and Adolphe reeled and fell to the ground,
his chest crushed in, with arms wide extended. In his supreme
convulsion he seized his comrade about the body, and thus they lay,
locked in each other's arms in a last embrace, "married" even in
death.

Notwithstanding the slaughtered horses and the confusion that that
death-dealing discharge had caused among the men, the battery had
rattled up the slope of a hillock and taken post a few yards from the
spot where Jean and Maurice were lying. For the third time the guns
were unlimbered, the drivers retired to the rear and faced the enemy,
and the cannoneers, with a gallantry that nothing could daunt, at once
reopened fire.

"It is as if the end of all things were at hand!" said Maurice, the
sound of whose voice was lost in the uproar.

It seemed indeed as if heaven and earth were confounded in that
hideous din. Great rocks were cleft asunder, the sun was hid from
sight at times in clouds of sulphurous vapor. When the cataclysm was
at its height the horses stood with drooping heads, trembling, dazed
with terror. The captain's tall form was everywhere upon the eminence;
suddenly he was seen no more; a shell had cut him clean in two, and he
sank, as a ship's mast that is snapped off at the base.

But it was about Honore's gun, even more than the others, that the
conflict raged, with cool efficiency and obstinate determination. The
non-commissioned officer found it necessary to forget his chevrons for
the time being and lend a hand in working the piece, for he had now
but three cannoneers left; he pointed the gun and pulled the lanyard,
while the others brought ammunition from the caisson, loaded, and
handled the rammer and the sponge. He had sent for men and horses from
the battery reserves that were kept to supply the places of those
removed by casualties, but they were slow in coming, and in the
meantime the survivors must do the work of the dead. It was a great
discouragement to all that their projectiles ranged short and burst
almost without exception in the air, inflicting no injury on the
powerful batteries of the foe, the fire of which was so efficient. And
suddenly Honore let slip an oath that was heard above the thunder of
the battle; ill-luck, ill-luck, nothing but ill-luck! the right wheel
of his piece was smashed! _Tonnerre de Dieu!_ what a state she was in,
the poor darling! stretched on her side with a broken paw, her nose
buried in the ground, crippled and good for nothing! The sight brought
big tears to his eyes, he laid his trembling hand upon the breech, as
if the ardor of his love might avail to warm his dear mistress back to
life. And the best gun of them all, the only one that had been able to
drop a few shells among the enemy! Then suddenly he conceived a daring
project, nothing less than to repair the injury there and then, under
that terrible fire. Assisted by one of his men he ran back to the
caisson and secured the spare wheel that was attached to the rear
axle, and then commenced the most dangerous operation that can be
executed on a battlefield. Fortunately the extra men and horses that
he had sent for came up just then, and he had two cannoneers to lend
him a hand.

For the third time, however, the strength of the battery was so
reduced as practically to disable it. To push their heroic daring
further would be madness; the order was given to abandon the position
definitely.

"Make haste, comrades!" Honore exclaimed. "Even if she is fit for no
further service we'll carry her off; those fellows shan't have her!"

To save the gun, even as men risk their life to save the flag; that
was his idea. And he had not ceased to speak when he was stricken down
as by a thunderbolt, his right arm torn from its socket, his left
flank laid open. He had fallen upon his gun he loved so well, and lay
there as if stretched on a bed of honor, with head erect, his
unmutilated face turned toward the enemy, and bearing an expression of
proud defiance that made him beautiful in death. From his torn jacket
a letter had fallen to the ground and lay in the pool of blood that
dribbled slowly from above.

The only lieutenant left alive shouted the order: "Bring up the
limbers!"

A caisson had exploded with a roar that rent the skies. They were
obliged to take the horses from another caisson in order to save a gun
of which the team had been killed. And when, for the last time, the
drivers had brought up their smoking horses and the guns had been
limbered up, the whole battery flew away at a gallop and never stopped
until they reached the edge of the wood of la Garenne, nearly twelve
hundred yards away.

Maurice had seen the whole. He shivered with horror, and murmured
mechanically, in a faint voice:

"Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!"

In addition to this feeling of mental distress he had a horrible
sensation of physical suffering, as if something was gnawing at his
vitals. It was the animal portion of his nature asserting itself; he
was at the end of his endurance, was ready to sink with hunger. His
perceptions were dimmed, he was not even conscious of the dangerous
position the regiment was in now it no longer was protected by the
battery. It was more than likely that the enemy would not long delay
to attack the plateau in force.

"Look here," he said to Jean, "I _must_ eat--if I am to be killed for
it the next minute, I must eat."

He opened his knapsack and, taking out the bread with shaking hands,
set his teeth in it voraciously. The bullets were whistling above
their heads, two shells exploded only a few yards away, but all was as
naught to him in comparison with his craving hunger.

"Will you have some, Jean?"

The corporal was watching him with hungry eyes and a stupid expression
on his face; his stomach was also twinging him.

"Yes, I don't care if I do; this suffering is more than I can stand."

They divided the loaf between them and each devoured his portion
gluttonously, unmindful of what was going on about them so long as a
crumb remained. And it was at that time that they saw their colonel
for the last time, sitting his big horse, with his blood-stained boot.
The regiment was surrounded on every side; already some of the
companies had left the field. Then, unable longer to restrain their
flight, with tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above
his head:

"My children," cried M. de Vineuil, "I commend you to the protection
of God, who thus far has spared us all!"

He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugitives, and
vanished from their sight.

Then, they knew not how, Maurice and Jean found themselves once more
behind the hedge, with the remnant of their company. Some forty men at
the outside were all that remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their
commander, and the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern
who carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to
save it. They made their way along the hedge, as far as it extended,
to a cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas made them
halt and reopen fire. The men, dispersed in skirmishing order and
sufficiently protected, could hold their ground, the more that an
important calvary movement was in preparation on their right and
regiments of infantry were being brought up to support it.

It was at that moment that Maurice comprehended the full scope of that
mighty, irresistible turning movement that was now drawing near
completion. That morning he had watched the Prussians debouching by
the Saint-Albert pass and had seen their advanced guard pushed
forward, first to Saint-Menges, then to Fleigneux, and now, behind the
wood of la Garenne, he could hear the thunder of the artillery of the
Guard, could behold other German uniforms arriving on the scene over
the hills of Givonne. Yet a few moments, it might be, and the circle
would be complete; the Guard would join hands with the Vth corps,
surrounding the French army with a living wall, girdling them about
with a belt of flaming artillery. It was with the resolve to make one
supreme, desperate effort, to try to hew a passage through that
advancing wall, that General Margueritte's division of the reserve
cavalry was massing behind a protecting crest preparatory to charging.
They were about to charge into the jaws of death, with no possibility
of achieving any useful result, solely for the glory of France and the
French army. And Maurice, whose thoughts turned to Prosper, was a
witness of the terrible spectacle.

What between the messages that were given him to carry and their
answers, Prosper had been kept busy since daybreak spurring up and
down the plateau of Illy. The cavalrymen had been awakened at peep of
dawn, man by man, without sound of trumpet, and to make their morning
coffee had devised the ingenious expedient of screening their fires
with a greatcoat so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. Then
there came a period when they were left entirely to themselves, with
nothing to occupy them; they seemed to be forgotten by their
commanders. They could hear the sound of the cannonading, could descry
the puffs of smoke, could see the distant movements of the infantry,
but were utterly ignorant of the battle, its importance, and its
results. Prosper, as far as he was concerned, was suffering from want
of sleep. The cumulative fatigue induced by many nights of broken
rest, the invincible somnolency caused by the easy gait of his mount,
made life a burden. He dreamed dreams and saw visions; now he was
sleeping comfortably in a bed between clean sheets, now snoring on the
bare ground among sharpened flints. For minutes at a time he would
actually be sound asleep in his saddle, a lifeless clod, his steed's
intelligence answering for both. Under such circumstances comrades had
often tumbled from their seats upon the road. They were so fagged that
when they slept the trumpets no longer awakened them; the only way to
rouse them from their lethargy and get them on their feet was to kick
them soundly.

"But what are they going to do, what are they going to do with us?"
Prosper kept saying to himself. It was the only thing he could think
of to keep himself awake.

For six hours the cannon had been thundering. As they climbed a hill
two comrades, riding at his side, had been struck down by a shell, and
as they rode onward seven or eight others had bit the dust, pierced by
rifle-balls that came no one could say whence. It was becoming
tiresome, that slow parade, as useless as it was dangerous, up and
down the battlefield. At last--it was about one o'clock--he learned
that it had been decided they were to be killed off in a somewhat more
decent manner. Margueritte's entire division, comprising three
regiments of chasseurs d'Afrique, one of chasseurs de France, and one
of hussars, had been drawn in and posted in a shallow valley a little
to the south of the Calvary of Illy. The trumpets had sounded:
"Dismount!" and then the officers' command ran down the line to
tighten girths and look to packs.

Prosper alighted, stretched his cramped limbs, and gave Zephyr a
friendly pat upon the neck. Poor Zephyr! he felt the degradation of
the ignominious, heartbreaking service they were subjected to almost
as keenly as his master; and not only that, but he had to carry a
small arsenal of stores and implements of various kinds: the holsters
stuffed with his master's linen and underclothing and the greatcoat
rolled above, the stable suit, blouse, and overalls, and the sack
containing brushes, currycomb, and other articles of equine toilet
behind the saddle, the haversack with rations slung at his side, to
say nothing of such trifles as side-lines and picket-pins, the
watering bucket and the wooden basin. The cavalryman's tender heart
was stirred by a feeling of compassion, as he tightened up the girth
and looked to see that everything was secure in its place.

It was a trying moment. Prosper was no more a coward than the next
man, but his mouth was intolerably dry and hot; he lit a cigarette in
the hope that it would relieve the unpleasant sensation. When about to
charge no man can assert with any degree of certainty that he will
ride back again. The suspense lasted some five or six minutes; it was
said that General Margueritte had ridden forward to reconnoiter the
ground over which they were to charge; they were awaiting his return.
The five regiments had been formed in three columns, each column
having a depth of seven squadrons; enough to afford an ample meal to
the hostile guns.

Presently the trumpets rang out: "To horse!" and this was succeeded
almost immediately by the shrill summons: "Draw sabers!"

The colonel of each regiment had previously ridden out and taken his
proper position, twenty-five yards to the front, the captains were all
at their posts at the head of their squadrons. Then there was another
period of anxious waiting, amid a silence heavy as that of death. Not
a sound, not a breath, there, beneath the blazing sun; nothing, save
the beating of those brave hearts. One order more, the supreme, the
decisive one, and that mass, now so inert and motionless, would become
a resistless tornado, sweeping all before it.

At that juncture, however, an officer appeared coming over the crest
of the hill in front, wounded, and preserving his seat in the saddle
only by the assistance of a man on either side. No one recognized him
at first, but presently a deep, ominous murmur began to run from
squadron to squadron, which quickly swelled into a furious uproar. It
was General Margueritte, who had received a wound from which he died a
few days later; a musket-ball had passed through both cheeks, carrying
away a portion of the tongue and palate. He was incapable of speech,
but waved his arm in the direction of the enemy. The fury of his men
knew no bounds; their cries rose louder still upon the air.

"It is our general! Avenge him, avenge him!"

Then the colonel of the first regiment, raising aloft his saber,
shouted in a voice of thunder:

"Charge!"

The trumpets sounded, the column broke into a trot and was away.
Prosper was in the leading squadron, but almost at the extreme right
of the right wing, a position of less danger than the center, upon
which the enemy always naturally concentrate their hottest fire. When
they had topped the summit of the Calvary and began to descend the
slope beyond that led downward into the broad plain he had a distinct
view, some two-thirds of a mile away, of the Prussian squares that
were to be the object of their attack. Beside that vision all the rest
was dim and confused before his eyes; he moved onward as one in a
dream, with a strange ringing in his ears, a sensation of voidness in
his mind that left him incapable of framing an idea. He was a part of
the great engine that tore along, controlled by a superior will. The
command ran along the line: "Keep touch of knees! Keep touch of
knees!" in order to keep the men closed up and give their ranks the
resistance and rigidity of a wall of granite, and as their trot became
swifter and swifter and finally broke into a mad gallop, the chasseurs
d'Afrique gave their wild Arab cry that excited their wiry steeds to
the verge of frenzy. Onward they tore, faster and faster still, until
their gallop was a race of unchained demons, their shouts the shrieks
of souls in mortal agony; onward they plunged amid a storm of bullets
that rattled on casque and breastplate, on buckle and scabbard, with a
sound like hail; into the bosom of that hailstorm flashed that
thunderbolt beneath which the earth shook and trembled, leaving behind
it, as it passed, an odor of burned woolen and the exhalations of wild
beasts.

At five hundred yards the line wavered an instant, then swirled and
broke in a frightful eddy that brought Prosper to the ground. He
clutched Zephyr by the mane and succeeded in recovering his seat. The
center had given way, riddled, almost annihilated as it was by the
musketry fire, while the two wings had wheeled and ridden back a
little way to renew their formation. It was the foreseen, foredoomed
destruction of the leading squadron. Disabled horses covered the
ground, some quiet in death, but many struggling violently in their
strong agony; and everywhere dismounted riders could be seen, running
as fast as their short legs would let them, to capture themselves
another mount. Many horses that had lost their master came galloping
back to the squadron and took their place in line of their own accord,
to rush with their comrades back into the fire again, as if there was
some strange attraction for them in the smell of gunpowder. The charge
was resumed; the second squadron went forward, like the first, at a
constantly accelerated rate of speed, the men bending upon their
horses' neck, holding the saber along the thigh, ready for use upon
the enemy. Two hundred yards more were gained this time, amid the
thunderous, deafening uproar, but again the center broke under the
storm of bullets; men and horses went down in heaps, and the piled
corpses made an insurmountable barrier for those who followed. Thus
was the second squadron in its turn mown down, annihilated, leaving
its task to be accomplished by those who came after.

When for the third time the men were called upon to charge and
responded with invincible heroism, Prosper found that his companions
were principally hussars and chasseurs de France. Regiments and
squadrons, as organizations, had ceased to exist; their constituent
elements were drops in the mighty wave that alternately broke and
reared its crest again, to swallow up all that lay in its destructive
path. He had long since lost distinct consciousness of what was going
on around him, and suffered his movements to be guided by his mount,
faithful Zephyr, who had received a wound in the ear that seemed to
madden him. He was now in the center, where all about him horses were
rearing, pawing the air, and falling backward; men were dismounted as
if torn from their saddle by the blast of a tornado, while others,
shot through some vital part, retained their seat and rode onward in
the ranks with vacant, sightless eyes. And looking back over the
additional two hundred yards that this effort had won for them, they
could see the field of yellow stubble strewn thick with dead and
dying. Some there were who had fallen headlong from their saddle and
buried their face in the soft earth. Others had alighted on their back
and were staring up into the sun with terror-stricken eyes that seemed
bursting from their sockets. There was a handsome black horse, an
officer's charger, that had been disemboweled, and was making frantic
efforts to rise, his fore feet entangled in his entrails. Beneath the
fire, that became constantly more murderous as they drew nearer, the
survivors in the wings wheeled their horses and fell back to
concentrate their strength for a fresh onset.

Finally it was the fourth squadron, which, on the fourth attempt,
reached the Prussian lines. Prosper made play with his saber, hacking
away at helmets and dark uniforms as well as he could distinguish
them, for all was dim before him, as in a dense mist. Blood flowed in
torrents; Zephyr's mouth was smeared with it, and to account for it he
said to himself that the good horse must have been using his teeth on
the Prussians. The clamor around him became so great that he could not
hear his own voice, although his throat seemed splitting from the
yells that issued from it. But behind the first Prussian line there
was another, and then another, and then another still. Their gallant
efforts went for nothing; those dense masses of men were like a
tangled jungle that closed around the horses and riders who entered it
and buried them in its rank growths. They might hew down those who
were within reach of their sabers; others stood ready to take their
place, the last squadrons were lost and swallowed up in their vast
numbers. The firing, at point-blank range, was so furious that the
men's clothing was ignited. Nothing could stand before it, all went
down; and the work that it left unfinished was completed by bayonet
and musket butt. Of the brave men who rode into action that day
two-thirds remained upon the battlefield, and the sole end achieved by
that mad charge was to add another glorious page to history. And then
Zephyr, struck by a musket-ball full in the chest, dropped in a heap,
crushing beneath him Prosper's right thigh; and the pain was so acute
that the young man fainted.

Maurice and Jean, who had watched the gallant effort with burning
interest, uttered an exclamation of rage.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ what bravery wasted!"

And they resumed their firing from among the trees of the low hill
where they were deployed in skirmishing order. Rochas himself had
picked up an abandoned musket and was blazing away with the rest. But
the plateau of Illy was lost to them by this time beyond hope of
recovery; the Prussians were pouring in upon it from every quarter. It
was somewhere in the neighborhood of two o'clock, and their great
movement was accomplished; the Vth corps and the Guards had effected
their junction, the investment of the French army was complete.

Jean was suddenly brought to the ground.

"I am done for," he murmured.

He had received what seemed to him like a smart blow of a hammer on
the crown of his head, and his _kepi_ lay behind him with a great
furrow plowed through its top. At first he thought that the bullet had
certainly penetrated the skull and laid bare the brain; his dread of
finding a yawning orifice there was so great that for some seconds he
dared not raise his hand to ascertain the truth. When finally he
ventured, his fingers, on withdrawing them, were red with an abundant
flow of blood, and the pain was so intense that he fainted.

Just then Rochas gave the order to fall back. The Prussians had crept
up on them and were only two or three hundred yards away; they were in
danger of being captured.

"Be cool, don't hurry; face about and give 'em another shot. Rally
behind that low wall that you see down there."

Maurice was in despair; he knew not what to do.

"We are not going to leave our corporal behind, are we, lieutenant?"

"What are we to do? he has turned up his toes."

"No, no! he is breathing still. Take him along!"

Rochas shrugged his shoulders as if to say they could not bother
themselves for every man that dropped. A wounded man is esteemed of
little value on the battlefield. Then Maurice addressed his
supplications to Lapoulle and Pache.

"Come, give me a helping hand. I am not strong enough to carry him
unassisted."

They were deaf to his entreaties; all they could hear was the voice
that urged them to seek safety for themselves. The Prussians were now
not more than a hundred yards from them; already they were on their
hands and knees, crawling as fast as they could go toward the wall.

And Maurice, weeping tears of rage, thus left alone with his
unconscious companion, raised him in his arms and endeavored to lug
him away, but he found his puny strength unequal to the task,
exhausted as he was by fatigue and the emotions of the day. At the
first step he took he reeled and fell with his burden. If only he
could catch sight of a stretcher-bearer! He strained his eyes, thought
he had discovered one among the crowd of fugitives, and made frantic
gestures of appeal; no one came, they were left behind, alone.
Summoning up his strength with a determined effort of the will he
seized Jean once more and succeeded in advancing some thirty paces,
when a shell burst near them and he thought that all was ended, that
he, too, was to die on the body of his comrade.

Slowly, cautiously, Maurice picked himself up. He felt his body, arms,
and legs; nothing, not a scratch. Why should he not look out for
himself and fly, alone? There was time left still; a few bounds would
take him to the wall and he would be saved. His horrible sensation of
fear returned and made him frantic. He was collecting his energies to
break away and run, when a feeling stronger than death intervened and
vanquished the base impulse. What, abandon Jean! he could not do it.
It would be like mutilating his own being; the brotherly affection
that had bourgeoned and grown between him and that rustic had struck
its roots down into his life, too deep to be slain like that. The
feeling went back to the earliest days, was perhaps as old as the
world itself; it was as if there were but they two upon earth, of whom
one could not forsake the other without forsaking himself, and being
doomed thenceforth to an eternity of solitude. Molded of the same
clay, quickened by the same spirit, duty imperiously commanded to save
himself in saving hi

VI.


Up on his lofty terrace, whither he had betaken himself to watch how
affairs were shaping, Delaherche at last became impatient and was
seized with an uncontrollable desire for news. He could see that the
enemy's shells were passing over the city and that the few projectiles
which had fallen on the houses in the vicinity were only responses,
made at long intervals, to the irregular and harmless fire from Fort
Palatinat, but he could discern nothing of the battle, and his
agitation was rising to fever heat; he experienced an imperious
longing for intelligence, which was constantly stimulated by the
reflection that his life and fortune would be in danger should the
army be defeated. He found it impossible to remain there longer, and
went downstairs, leaving behind him the telescope on its tripod,
turned on the German batteries.

When he had descended, however, he lingered a moment, detained by the
aspect of the central garden of the factory. It was near one o'clock,
and the ambulance was crowded with wounded men; the wagons kept
driving up to the entrance in an unbroken stream. The regular
ambulance wagons of the medical department, two-wheeled and
four-wheeled, were too few in number to meet the demand, and vehicles
of every description from the artillery and other trains, _prolonges_,
provision vans, everything on wheels that could be picked up on the
battlefield, came rolling up with their ghastly loads; and later in
the day even carrioles and market-gardeners' carts were pressed into
the service and harnessed to horses that were found straying along the
roads. Into these motley conveyances were huddled the men collected
from the flying ambulances, where their hurts had received such hasty
attention as could be afforded. It was a sight to move the most
callous to behold the unloading of those poor wretches, some with a
greenish pallor on their face, others suffused with the purple hue
that denotes congestion; many were in a state of coma, others
uttered piercing cries of anguish; some there were who, in their
semi-conscious condition, yielded themselves to the arms of the
attendants with a look of deepest terror in their eyes, while a few,
the minute a hand was laid on them, died of the consequent shock. They
continued to arrive in such numbers that soon every bed in the vast
apartment would have its occupant, and Major Bouroche had given orders
to make use of the straw that had been spread thickly upon the floor
at one end. He and his assistants had thus far been able to attend to
all the cases with reasonable promptness; he had requested Mme.
Delaherche to furnish him with another table, with mattress and
oilcloth cover, for the shed where he had established his operating
room. The assistant would thrust a napkin saturated with chloroform to
the patient's nostrils, the keen knife flashed in the air, there was
the faint rasping of the saw, barely audible, the blood spurted in
short, sharp jets that were checked immediately. As soon as one
subject had been operated on another was brought in, and they followed
one another in such quick succession that there was barely time to
pass a sponge over the protecting oilcloth. At the extremity of the
grass plot, screened from sight by a clump of lilac bushes, they had
set up a kind of morgue whither they carried the bodies of the dead,
which were removed from the beds without a moment's delay in order to
make room for the living, and this receptacle also served to receive
the amputated legs, and arms, whatever debris of flesh and bone
remained upon the table.

Mme. Delaherche and Gilberte, seated at the foot of one of the great
trees, found it hard work to keep pace with the demand for bandages.
Bouroche, who happened to be passing, his face very red, his apron
white no longer, threw a bundle of linen to Delaherche and shouted:

"Here! be doing something; make yourself useful!"

But the manufacturer objected. "Oh! excuse me; I must go and try to
pick up some news. One can't tell whether his neck is safe or not."
Then, touching his lips to his wife's hair: "My poor Gilberte, to
think that a shell may burn us out of house and home at any moment! It
is horrible."

She was very pale; she raised her head and glanced about her,
shuddering as she did so. Then, involuntarily, her unextinguishable
smile returned to her lips.

"Oh, horrible, indeed! and all those poor men that they are cutting
and carving. I don't see how it is that I stay here without fainting."

Mme. Delaherche had watched her son as he kissed the young woman's
hair. She made a movement as if to part them, thinking of that other
man who must have kissed those tresses so short a time ago; then her
old hands trembled, she murmured beneath her breath:

"What suffering all about us, _mon Dieu!_ It makes one forget his
own."

Delaherche left them, with the assurance that he would be away no
longer than was necessary to ascertain the true condition of affairs.
In the Rue Maqua he was surprised to observe the crowds of soldiers
that were streaming into the city, without arms and in torn,
dust-stained uniforms. It was in vain, however, that he endeavored to
slake his thirst for news by questioning them; some answered with
vacant, stupid looks that they knew nothing, while others told long
rambling stories, with the maniacal gestures and whirling words of one
bereft of reason. He therefore mechanically turned his steps again
toward the Sous Prefecture as the likeliest quarter in which to look
for information. As he was passing along the Place du College two
guns, probably all that remained of some battery, came dashing up to
the curb on a gallop, and were abandoned there. When at last he turned
into the Grande Rue he had further evidence that the advanced guards
of the fugitives were beginning to take possession, of the city; three
dismounted hussars had seated themselves in a doorway and were sharing
a loaf of bread; two others were walking their mounts up and down,
leading them by the bridle, not knowing where to look for stabling for
them; officers were hurrying to and fro distractedly, seemingly
without any distinct purpose. On the Place Turenne a lieutenant
counseled him not to loiter unnecessarily, for the shells had an
unpleasant way of dropping there every now and then; indeed, a
splinter had just demolished the railing about the statue of the great
commander who overran the Palatinate. And as if to emphasize the
officer's advice, while he was making fast time down the Rue de la
Sous Prefecture he saw two projectiles explode, with a terrible crash,
on the Pont de Meuse.

He was standing in front of the janitor's lodge, debating with himself
whether it would be best to send in his card and try to interview one
of the aides-de-camp, when he heard a girlish voice calling him by
name.

"M. Delaherche! Come in here, quick; it is not safe out there."

It was Rose, his little operative, whose existence he had quite
forgotten. She might be a useful ally in assisting him to gain access
to headquarters; he entered the lodge and accepted her invitation to
be seated.

"Just think, mamma is down sick with the worry and confusion; she
can't leave her bed, so, you see, I have to attend to everything, for
papa is with the National Guards up in the citadel. A little while ago
the Emperor left the building--I suppose he wanted to let people see
he is not a coward--and succeeded in getting as far as the bridge down
at the end of the street. A shell alighted right in front of him; one
of his equerries had his horse killed under him. And then he came
back--he couldn't do anything else, could he, now?"

"You must have heard some talk of how the battle is going. What do
they say, those gentlemen upstairs?"

She looked at him in surprise. Her pretty face was bright and smiling,
with its fluffy golden hair and the clear, childish eyes of one who
bestirred herself among her multifarious duties, in the midst of all
those horrors, which she did not well understand.

"No, I know nothing. About midday I sent up a letter for Marshal
MacMahon, but it could not be given him right away, because the
Emperor was in the room. They were together nearly an hour, the
Marshal lying on his bed, the Emperor close beside him seated on a
chair. That much I know for certain, because I saw them when the door
was opened."

"And then, what did they say to each other?"

She looked at him again, and could not help laughing.

"Why, I don't know; how could you expect me to? There's not a living
soul knows what they said to each other."

She was right; he made an apologetic gesture in recognition of the
stupidity of his question. But the thought of that fateful
conversation haunted him; the interest there was in it for him who
could have heard it! What decision had they arrived at?

"And now," Rose added, "the Emperor is back in his cabinet again,
where he is having a conference with two generals who have just come
in from the battlefield." She checked herself, casting a glance at the
main entrance of the building. "See! there is one of them, now--and
there comes the other."

He hurried from the room, and in the two generals recognized Ducrot
and Douay, whose horses were standing before the door. He watched them
climb into their saddles and gallop away. They had hastened into the
city, each independently of the other, after the plateau of Illy had
been captured by the enemy, to notify the Emperor that the battle was
lost. They placed the entire situation distinctly before him; the army
and Sedan were even then surrounded on every side; the result could
not help but be disastrous.

For some minutes the Emperor continued silently to pace the floor of
his cabinet, with the feeble, uncertain step of an invalid. There was
none with him save an aide-de-camp, who stood by the door, erect and
mute. And ever, to and fro, from the window to the fireplace, from the
fireplace to the window, the sovereign tramped wearily, the
inscrutable face now drawn and twitching spasmodically with a nervous
tic. The back was bent, the shoulders bowed, as if the weight of his
falling empire pressed on them more heavily, and the lifeless eyes,
veiled by their heavy lids, told of the anguish of the fatalist who
has played his last card against destiny and lost. Each time, however,
that his walk brought him to the half-open window he gave a start and
lingered there a second. And during one of those brief stoppages he
faltered with trembling lips:

"Oh! those guns, those guns, that have been going since the morning!"

The thunder of the batteries on la Marfee and at Frenois seemed,
indeed, to resound with more terrific violence there than elsewhere.
It was one continuous, uninterrupted crash, that shook the windows,
nay, the very walls themselves; an incessant uproar that exasperated
the nerves by its persistency. And he could not banish the reflection
from his mind that, as the struggle was now hopeless, further
resistance would be criminal. What would avail more bloodshed, more
maiming and mangling; why add more corpses to the dead that were
already piled high upon that bloody field? They were vanquished, it
was all ended; then why not stop the slaughter? The abomination of
desolation raised its voice to heaven: let it cease.

The Emperor, again before the window, trembled and raised his hands to
his ears, as if to shut out those reproachful voices.

"Oh, those guns, those guns! Will they never be silent!"

Perhaps the dreadful thought of his responsibilities arose before him,
with the vision of all those thousands of bleeding forms with which
his errors had cumbered the earth; perhaps, again, it was but
the compassionate impulse of the tender-hearted dreamer, of the
well-meaning man whose mind was stocked with humanitarian theories. At
the moment when he beheld utter ruin staring him in the face, in that
frightful whirlwind of destruction that broke him like a reed and
scattered his fortunes in the dust, he could yet find tears for
others. Almost crazed at the thought of the slaughter that was
mercilessly going on so near him, he felt he had not strength to
endure it longer; each report of that accursed cannonade seemed to
pierce his heart and intensified a thousandfold his own private
suffering.

"Oh, those guns, those guns! they must be silenced at once, at once!"

And that monarch who no longer had a throne, for he had delegated all
his functions to the Empress regent, that chief without an army, since
he had turned over the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, now felt
that he must once more take the reins in his hand and be the master.
Since they left Chalons he had kept himself in the background, had
issued no orders, content to be a nameless nullity without recognized
position, a cumbrous burden carried about from place to place among
the baggage of his troops, and it was only in their hour of defeat
that the Emperor reasserted itself in him; the one order that he was
yet to give, out of the pity of his sorrowing heart, was to raise the
white flag on the citadel to request an armistice.

"Those guns, oh! those guns! Take a sheet, someone, a tablecloth, it
matters not what! only hasten, hasten, and see that it is done!"

The aide-de-camp hurried from the room, and with unsteady steps the
Emperor continued to pace his beat, back and forth, between the window
and the fireplace, while still the batteries kept thundering, shaking
the house from garret to foundation.

Delaherche was still chatting with Rose in the room below when a
non-commissioned officer of the guard came running in and interrupted
them.

"Mademoiselle, the house is in confusion, I cannot find a servant. Can
you let me have something from your linen closet, a white cloth of
some kind?"

"Will a napkin answer?"

"No, no, it would not be large enough. Half of a sheet, say."

Rose, eager to oblige, was already fumbling in her closet.

"I don't think I have any half-sheets. No, I don't see anything that
looks as if it would serve your purpose. Oh, here is something; could
you use a tablecloth?"

"A tablecloth! just the thing. Nothing could be better." And he added
as he left the room: "It is to be used as a flag of truce, and hoisted
on the citadel to let the enemy know we want to stop the fighting.
Much obliged, mademoiselle."

Delaherche gave a little involuntary start of delight; they were to
have a respite at last, then! Then he thought it might be unpatriotic
to be joyful at such a time, and put on a long face again; but none
the less his heart was very glad and he contemplated with much
interest a colonel and captain, followed by the sergeant, as they
hurriedly left the Sous-Prefecture. The colonel had the tablecloth,
rolled in a bundle, beneath his arm. He thought he should like to
follow them, and took leave of Rose, who was very proud that her
napery was to be put to such use. It was then just striking two
o'clock.

In front of the Hotel de Ville Delaherche was jostled by a disorderly
mob of half-crazed soldiers who were pushing their way down from the
Faubourg de la Cassine; he lost sight of the colonel, and abandoned
his design of going to witness the raising of the white flag. He
certainly would not be allowed to enter the citadel, and then again he
had heard it reported that shells were falling on the college, and a
new terror filled his mind; his factory might have been burned since
he left it. All his feverish agitation returned to him and he started
off on a run; the rapid motion was a relief to him. But the streets
were blocked by groups of men, at every crossing he was delayed by
some new obstacle. It was only when he reached the Rue Maqua and
beheld the monumental facade of his house intact, no smoke or sign of
fire about it, that his anxiety was allayed, and he heaved a deep sigh
of satisfaction. He entered, and from the doorway shouted to his
mother and wife:

"It is all right! they are hoisting the white flag; the cannonade
won't last much longer."

He said nothing more, for the appearance presented by the ambulance
was truly horrifying.

In the vast drying-room, the wide door of which was standing open, not
only was every bed occupied, but there was no more room upon the
litter that had been shaken down on the floor at the end of the
apartment. They were commencing to strew straw in the spaces between
the beds, the wounded were crowded together so closely that they were
in contact. Already there were more than two hundred patients there,
and more were arriving constantly; through the lofty windows the
pitiless white daylight streamed in upon that aggregation of suffering
humanity. Now and then an unguarded movement elicited an involuntary
cry of anguish. The death-rattle rose on the warm, damp air. Down the
room a low, mournful wail, almost a lullaby, went on and ceased not.
And all about was silence, intense, profound, the stolid resignation
of despair, the solemn stillness of the death-chamber, broken only
by the tread and whispers of the attendants. Rents in tattered,
shell-torn uniforms disclosed gaping wounds, some of which had
received a hasty dressing on the battlefield, while others were still
raw and bleeding. There were feet, still incased in their coarse
shoes, crushed into a mass like jelly; from knees and elbows, that
were as if they had been smashed by a hammer, depended inert limbs.
There were broken hands, and fingers almost severed, ready to drop,
retained only by a strip of skin. Most numerous among the casualties
were the fractures; the poor arms and legs, red and swollen, throbbed
intolerably and were heavy as lead. But the most dangerous hurts were
those in the abdomen, chest, and head. There were yawning fissures
that laid open the entire flank, the knotted viscera were drawn into
great hard lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin, while as the effect of
certain wounds the patient frothed at the mouth and writhed like an
epileptic. Here and there were cases where the lungs had been
penetrated, the puncture now so minute as to permit no escape of
blood, again a wide, deep orifice through which the red tide of life
escaped in torrents; and the internal hemorrhages, those that were hid
from sight, were the most terrible in their effects, prostrating their
victim like a flash, making him black in the face and delirious. And
finally the head, more than any other portion of the frame, gave
evidence of hard treatment; a broken jaw, the mouth a pulp of teeth
and bleeding tongue, an eye torn from its socket and exposed upon the
cheek, a cloven skull that showed the palpitating brain beneath. Those
in whose case the bullet had touched the brain or spinal marrow were
already as dead men, sunk in the lethargy of coma, while the fractures
and other less serious cases tossed restlessly on their pallets and
beseechingly called for water to quench their thirst.

Leaving the large room and passing out into the courtyard, the shed
where the operations were going on presented another scene of horror.
In the rush and hurry that had continued unabated since morning it was
impossible to operate on every case that was brought in, so their
attention had been confined to those urgent cases that imperatively
demanded it. Whenever Bouroche's rapid judgment told him that
amputation was necessary, he proceeded at once to perform it. In the
same way he lost not a moment's time in probing the wound and
extracting the projectile whenever it had lodged in some locality
where it might do further mischief, as in the muscles of the neck, the
region of the arm pit, the thigh joint, the ligaments of the knee and
elbow. Severed arteries, too, had to be tied without delay. Other
wounds were merely dressed by one of the hospital stewards under his
direction and left to await developments. He had already with his own
hand performed four amputations, the only rest that he allowed himself
being to attend to some minor cases in the intervals between them, and
was beginning to feel fatigue. There were but two tables, his own and
another, presided over by one of his assistants; a sheet had been hung
between them, to isolate the patients from each other. Although the
sponge was kept constantly at work the tables were always red, and the
buckets that were emptied over a bed of daisies a few steps away, the
clear water in which a single tumbler of blood sufficed to redden,
seemed to be buckets of unmixed blood, torrents of blood, inundating
the gentle flowers of the parterre. Although the room was thoroughly
ventilated a nauseating smell arose from the tables and their horrid
burdens, mingled with the sweetly insipid odor of chloroform.

Delaherche, naturally a soft-hearted man, was in a quiver of
compassionate emotion at the spectacle that lay before his eyes, when
his attention was attracted by a landau that drove up to the door. It
was a private carriage, but doubtless the ambulance attendants had
found none other ready to their hand and had crowded their patients
into it. There were eight of them, sitting on one another's knees, and
as the last man alighted the manufacturer recognized Captain Beaudoin,
and gave utterance to a cry of terror and surprise.

"Ah, my poor friend! Wait, I will call my mother and my wife."

They came running up, leaving the bandages to be rolled by servants.
The attendants had already raised the captain and brought him into the
room, and were about to lay him down upon a pile of straw when
Delaherche noticed, lying on a bed, a soldier whose ashy face and
staring eyes exhibited no sign of life.

"Look, is he not dead, that man?"

"That's so!" replied the attendant. "He may as well make room for
someone else!"

He and one of his mates took the body by the arms and legs and carried
it off to the morgue that had been extemporized behind the lilac
bushes. A dozen corpses were already there in a row, stiff and stark,
some drawn out to their full length as if in an attempt to rid
themselves of the agony that racked them, others curled and twisted in
every attitude of suffering. Some seemed to have left the world with a
sneer on their faces, their eyes retroverted till naught was visible
but the whites, the grinning lips parted over the glistening teeth,
while in others, with faces unspeakably sorrowful, big tears still
stood on the cheeks. One, a mere boy, short and slight, half whose
face had been shot away by a cannon-ball, had his two hands clasped
convulsively above his heart, and in them a woman's photograph, one of
those pale, blurred pictures that are made in the quarters of the
poor, bedabbled with his blood. And at the feet of the dead had been
thrown in a promiscuous pile the amputated arms and legs, the refuse
of the knife and saw of the operating table, just as the butcher
sweeps into a corner of his shop the offal, the worthless odds and
ends of flesh and bone.

Gilberte shuddered as she looked on Captain Beaudoin. Good God! how
pale he was, stretched out on his mattress, his face so white beneath
the encrusting grime! And the thought that but a few short hours
before he had held her in his arms, radiant in all his manly strength
and beauty, sent a chill of terror to her heart. She kneeled beside
him.

"What a terrible misfortune, my friend! But it won't amount to
anything, will it?" And she drew her handkerchief from her pocket and
began mechanically to wipe his face, for she could not bear to look at
it thus soiled with powder, sweat, and clay. It seemed to her, too,
that she would be helping him by cleansing him a little. "Will it? it
is only your leg that is hurt; it won't amount to anything."

The captain made an effort to rouse himself from his semi-conscious
state, and opened his eyes. He recognized his friends and greeted them
with a faint smile.

"Yes, it is only the leg. I was not even aware of being hit; I thought
I had made a misstep and fallen--" He spoke with great difficulty.
"Oh! I am so thirsty!"

Mme. Delaherche, who was standing at the other side of the mattress,
looking down compassionately on the young man, hastily left the room.
She returned with a glass and a carafe of water into which a little
cognac had been poured, and when the captain had greedily swallowed
the contents of the glass, she distributed what remained in the carafe
among the occupants of the adjacent beds, who begged with trembling
outstretched hands and tearful voices for a drop. A zouave, for whom
there was none left, sobbed like a child in his disappointment.

Delaherche was meantime trying to gain the major's ear to see if
he could not prevail on him to take up the captain's case out of
its regular turn. Bouroche came into the room just then, with his
blood-stained apron and lion's mane hanging in confusion about his
perspiring face, and the men raised their heads as he passed and
endeavored to stop him, all clamoring at once for recognition and
immediate attention: "This way, major! It's my turn, major!" Faltering
words of entreaty went up to him, trembling hands clutched at his
garments, but he, wrapped up in the work that lay before him and
puffing with his laborious exertions, continued to plan and calculate
and listened to none of them. He communed with himself aloud, counting
them over with his finger and classifying them, assigning them their
numbers; this one first, then that one, then that other fellow; one,
two, three; the jaw, the arm, then the thigh; while the assistant who
accompanied him on his round made himself all ears in his effort to
memorize his directions.

"Major," said Delaherche, plucking him by the sleeve, "there is an
officer over here, Captain Beaudoin--"

Bouroche interrupted him. "What, Beaudoin here! Ah, the poor devil!"
And he crossed over at once to the side of the wounded man. A single
glance, however, must have sufficed to show him that the case was a
bad one, for he added in the same breath, without even stooping to
examine the injured member: "Good! I will have them bring him to me at
once, just as soon as I am through with the operation that is now in
hand."

And he went back to the shed, followed by Delaherche, who would not
lose sight of him for fear lest he might forget his promise.

The business that lay before him now was the rescision of a
shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc's method, which surgeons
never fail to speak of as a "very pretty" operation, something neat
and expeditious, barely occupying forty seconds in the performance.
The patient was subjected to the influence of chloroform, while an
assistant grasped the shoulder with both hands, the fingers under the
armpit, the thumbs on top. Bouroche, brandishing the long, keen knife,
cried: "Raise him!" seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a
swift movement of the right cut through the flesh of the arm and
severed the muscle; then, with a deft rearward cut, he disarticulated
the joint at a single stroke, and presto! the arm fell on the table,
taken off in three motions. The assistant slipped his thumbs over the
brachial artery in such manner as to close it. "Let him down!"
Bouroche could not restrain a little pleased laugh as he proceeded to
secure the artery, for he had done it in thirty-five seconds. All that
was left to do now was to bring a flap of skin down over the wound and
stitch it, in appearance something like a flat epaulette. It was not
only "pretty," but exciting, on account of the danger, for a man will
pump all the blood out of his body in two minutes through the
brachial, to say nothing of the risk there is in bringing a patient to
a sitting posture when under the influence of anaesthetics.

Delaherche was white as a ghost; a thrill of horror ran down his back.
He would have turned and fled, but time was not given him; the arm was
already off. The soldier was a new recruit, a sturdy peasant lad; on
emerging from his state of coma he beheld a hospital attendant
carrying away the amputated limb to conceal it behind the lilacs.
Giving a quick downward glance at his shoulder, he saw the bleeding
stump and knew what had been done, whereon he became furiously angry.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_ what have you been doing to me? It is a shame!"

Bouroche was too done up to make him an immediate answer, but
presently, in his fatherly way:

"I acted for the best; I didn't want to see you kick the bucket, my
boy. Besides, I asked you, and you told me to go ahead."

"I told you to go ahead! I did? How could I know what I was saying!"
His anger subsided and he began to weep scalding tears. "What is going
to become of me now?"

They carried him away and laid him on the straw, and gave the table
and its covering a thorough cleansing; and the buckets of blood-red
water that they threw out across the grass plot gave to the pale
daisies a still deeper hue of crimson.

When Delaherche had in some degree recovered his equanimity he was
astonished to notice that the bombardment was still going on. Why had
it not been silenced? Rose's tablecloth must have been hoisted over
the citadel by that time, and yet it seemed as if the fire of the
Prussian batteries was more rapid and furious than ever. The uproar
was such that one could not hear his own voice; the sustained
vibration tried the stoutest nerves. On both operators and patients
the effect could not but be most unfavorable of those incessant
detonations that seemed to penetrate the inmost recesses of one's
being. The entire hospital was in a state of feverish alarm and
apprehension.

"I supposed it was all over; what can they mean by keeping it up?"
exclaimed Delaherche, who was nervously listening, expecting each shot
would be the last.

Returning to Bouroche to remind him of his promise and conduct him to
the captain, he was astonished to find him seated on a bundle of straw
before two pails of iced water, into which he had plunged both his
arms, bared to the shoulder. The major, weary and disheartened,
overwhelmed by a sensation of deepest melancholy and dejection, had
reached one of those terrible moments when the practitioner becomes
conscious of his own impotency; he had exhausted his strength,
physical and moral, and taken this means to restore it. And yet he was
not a weakling; he was steady of hand and firm of heart; but the
inexorable question had presented itself to him: "What is the use?"
The feeling that he could accomplish so little, that so much must be
left undone, had suddenly paralyzed him. What was the use? since
Death, in spite of his utmost effort, would always be victorious.
Two attendants came in, bearing Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher.

"Major," Delaherche ventured to say, "here is the captain."

Bouroche opened his eyes, withdrew his arms from their cold bath,
shook and dried them on the straw. Then, rising to his feet:

"Ah, yes; the next one-- Well, well, the day's work is not yet done."
And he shook the tawny locks upon his lion's head, rejuvenated and
refreshed, restored to himself once more by the invincible habit of
duty and the stern discipline of his profession.

"Good! just above the right ankle," said Bouroche, with unusual
garrulity, intended to quiet the nerves of the patient. "You displayed
wisdom in selecting the location of your wound; one is not much the
worse for a hurt in that quarter. Now we'll just take a little look at
it."

But Beaudoin's persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him.
He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field
attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed
around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the
assistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed
what infernal ignoramus had done that. Then suddenly he saw how
matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the
field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become
loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive
hemorrhage. He relieved his feelings by storming at the hospital
steward who was assisting him.

"You confounded snail, cut! Are you going to keep me here all day?"

The attendant cut away the trousers and drawers, then the shoe and
sock, disclosing to view the leg and foot in their pale nudity,
stained with blood. Just over the ankle was a frightful laceration,
into which the splinter of the bursting shell had driven a piece of
the red cloth of the trousers. The muscle protruded from the lips of
the gaping orifice, a roll of whitish, mangled tissue.

Gilberte had to support herself against one of the uprights of the
shed. Ah! that flesh, that poor flesh that was so white; now all torn
and maimed and bleeding! Despite the horror and terror of the sight
she could not turn away her eyes.

"Confound it!" Bouroche exclaimed, "they have made a nice mess here!"

He felt the foot and found it cold; the pulse, if any, was so feeble
as to be undistinguishable. His face was very grave, and he pursed his
lips in a way that was habitual with him when he had a more than
usually serious case to deal with.

"Confound it," he repeated, "I don't like the looks of that foot!"

The captain, whom his anxiety had finally aroused from his
semi-somnolent state, asked:

"What were you saying, major?"

Bouroche's tactics, whenever an amputation became necessary, were
never to appeal directly to the patient for the customary
authorization. He preferred to have the patient accede to it
voluntarily.

"I was saying that I don't like the looks of that foot," he murmured,
as if thinking aloud. "I am afraid we shan't be able to save it."

In a tone of alarm Beaudoin rejoined: "Come, major, there is no use
beating about the bush. What is your opinion?"

"My opinion is that you are a brave man, captain, and that you are
going to let me do what the necessity of the case demands."

To Captain Beaudoin it seemed as if a sort of reddish vapor arose
before his eyes through which he saw things obscurely. He understood.
But notwithstanding the intolerable fear that appeared to be clutching
at his throat, he replied, unaffectedly and bravely:

"Do as you think best, major."

The preparations did not consume much time. The assistant had
saturated a cloth with chloroform and was holding it in readiness; it
was at once applied to the patient's nostrils. Then, just at the
moment that the brief struggle set in that precedes anaesthesia, two
attendants raised the captain and placed him on the mattress upon his
back, in such a position that the legs should be free; one of them
retained his grasp on the left limb, holding it flexed, while an
assistant, seizing the right, clasped it tightly with both his hands
in the region of the groin in order to compress the arteries.

Gilberte, when she saw Bouroche approach the victim with the
glittering steel, could endure no more.

"Oh, don't! oh, don't! it is too horrible!"

And she would have fallen had it not been that Mme. Delaherche put
forth her arm to sustain her.

"But why do you stay here?"

Both the women remained, however. They averted their eyes, not wishing
to see the rest; motionless and trembling they stood locked in each
other's arms, notwithstanding the little love there was between them.

At no time during the day had the artillery thundered more loudly than
now. It was three o'clock, and Delaherche declared angrily that he
gave it up--he could not understand it. There could be no doubt about
it now, the Prussian batteries, instead of slackening their fire, were
extending it. Why? What had happened? It was as if all the forces of
the nether regions had been unchained; the earth shook, the heavens
were on fire. The ring of flame-belching mouths of bronze that
encircled Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German armies, that
were served with such activity and raised such an uproar, were
expending their thunders on the adjacent fields; had that concentric
fire been focused upon the city, had the batteries on those commanding
heights once begun to play upon Sedan, it would have been reduced to
ashes and pulverized into dust in less than fifteen minutes. But now
the projectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the
crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more frequently. One
exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another grazed the tall chimney of
the factory, and the bricks and mortar came tumbling to the ground
directly in front of the shed where the surgeons were at work.
Bouroche looked up and grumbled:

"Are they trying to finish our wounded for us? Really, this racket is
intolerable."

In the meantime an attendant had seized the captain's leg, and the
major, with a swift circular motion of his hand, made an incision in
the skin below the knee and some two inches below the spot where he
intended to saw the bone; then, still employing the same thin-bladed
knife, that he did not change in order to get on more rapidly, he
loosened the skin on the superior side of the incision and turned it
back, much as one would peel an orange. But just as he was on the
point of dividing the muscles a hospital steward came up and whispered
in his ear:

"Number two has just slipped his cable."

The major did not hear, owing to the fearful uproar.

"Speak up, can't you! My ear drums are broken with their d-----d
cannon."

"Number two has just slipped his cable."

"Who is that, number two?"

"The arm, you know."

"Ah, very good! Well, then, you can bring me number three, the jaw."

And with wonderful dexterity, never changing his position, he cut
through the muscles clean down to the bone with a single motion of his
wrist. He laid bare the tibia and fibula, introduced between them an
implement to keep them in position, drew the saw across them once, and
they were sundered. And the foot remained in the hands of the
attendant who was holding it.

The flow of blood had been small, thanks to the pressure maintained by
the assistant higher up the leg, at the thigh. The ligature of the
three arteries was quickly accomplished, but the major shook his head,
and when the assistant had removed his fingers he examined the stump,
murmuring, certain that the patient could not hear as yet:

"It looks bad; there's no blood coming from the arterioles."

And he completed his diagnosis of the case by an expressive gesture:
Another poor fellow who was soon to answer the great roll-call! while
on his perspiring face was again seen that expression of weariness and
utter dejection, that hopeless, unanswerable: "What is the use?" since
out of every ten cases that they assumed the terrible responsibility
of operating on they did not succeed in saving four. He wiped his
forehead, and set to work to draw down the flap of skin and put in the
three sutures that were to hold it in place.

Delaherche having told Gilberte that the operation was completed, she
turned her gaze once more upon the table; she caught a glimpse of the
captain's foot, however, as the attendant was carrying it away to the
place behind the lilacs. The charnel house there continued to receive
fresh occupants; two more corpses had recently been brought in and
added to the ghastly array, one with blackened lips still parted wide
as if rending the air with shrieks of anguish, the other, his form so
contorted and contracted in the convulsions of the last agony that he
was like a stunted, malformed boy. Unfortunately, there was beginning
to be a scarcity of room in the little secluded corner, and the human
debris had commenced to overflow and invade the adjacent alley. The
attendant hesitated a moment, in doubt what to do with the captain's
foot, then finally concluded to throw it on the general pile.

"Well, captain, that's over with," the major said to Beaudoin when he
regained consciousness. "You'll be all right now."

But the captain did not show the cheeriness that follows a successful
operation. He opened his eyes and made an attempt to raise himself,
then fell back on his pillow, murmuring wearily, in a faint voice:

"Thanks, major. I'm glad it's over."

He was conscious of the pain, however, when the alcohol of the
dressing touched the raw flesh. He flinched a little, complaining that
they were burning him. And just as they were bringing up the stretcher
preparatory to carrying him back into the other room the factory was
shaken to its foundations by a most terrific explosion; a shell had
burst directly in the rear of the shed, in the small courtyard where
the pump was situated. The glass in the windows was shattered into
fragments, and a dense cloud of smoke came pouring into the ambulance.
The wounded men, stricken with panic terror, arose from their bed of
straw; all were clamoring with affright; all wished to fly at once.

Delaherche rushed from the building in consternation to see what
damage had been done. Did they mean to burn his house down over his
head? What did it all mean? Why did they open fire again when the
Emperor had ordered that it should cease?

"Thunder and lightning! Stir yourselves, will you!" Bouroche shouted
to his staff, who were standing about with pallid faces, transfixed by
terror. "Wash off the table; go and bring me in number three!"

They cleansed the table; and once more the crimson contents of the
buckets were hurled across the grass plot upon the bed of daisies,
which was now a sodden, blood-soaked mat of flowers and verdure. And
Bouroche, to relieve the tedium until the attendants should bring him
"number three," applied himself to probing for a musket-ball, which,
having first broken the patient's lower jaw, had lodged in the root of
the tongue. The blood flowed freely and collected on his fingers in
glutinous masses.

Captain Beaudoin was again resting on his mattress in the large room.
Gilberte and Mme. Delaherche had followed the stretcher when he was
carried from the operating table, and even Delaherche, notwithstanding
his anxiety, came in for a moment's chat.

"Lie here and rest a few minutes, Captain. We will have a room
prepared for you, and you shall be our guest."

But the wounded man shook off his lethargy and for a moment had
command of his faculties.

"No, it is not worth while; I feel that I am going to die."

And he looked at them with wide eyes, filled with the horror of death.

"Oh, Captain! why do you talk like that?" murmured Gilberte, with a
shiver, while she forced a smile to her lips. "You will be quite well
a month hence."

He shook his head mournfully, and in the room was conscious of no
presence save hers; on all his face was expressed his unutterable
yearning for life, his bitter, almost craven regret that he was to be
snatched away so young, leaving so many joys behind untasted.

"I am going to die, I am going to die. Oh! 'tis horrible--"

Then suddenly he became conscious of his torn, soiled uniform and the
grime upon his hands, and it made him feel uncomfortable to be in the
company of women in such a state. It shamed him to show such weakness,
and his desire to look and be the gentleman to the last restored to
him his manhood. When he spoke again it was in a tone almost of
cheerfulness.

"If I have got to die, though, I would rather it should be with clean
hands. I should count it a great kindness, madame, if you would
moisten a napkin and let me have it."

Gilberte sped away and quickly returned with the napkin, with which
she herself cleansed the hands of the dying man. Thenceforth, desirous
of quitting the scene with dignity, he displayed much firmness.
Delaherche did what he could to cheer him, and assisted his wife in
the small attentions she offered for his comfort. Old Mme. Delaherche,
too, in presence of the man whose hours were numbered, felt her enmity
subsiding. She would be silent, she who knew all and had sworn to
impart her knowledge to her son. What would it avail to excite discord
in the household, since death would soon obliterate all trace of the
wrong?

The end came very soon. Captain Beaudoin, whose strength was ebbing
rapidly, relapsed into his comatose condition, and a cold sweat broke
out and stood in beads upon his neck and forehead. He opened his eyes
again, and began to feebly grope about him with his stiffening
fingers, as if feeling for a covering that was not there, pulling at
it with a gentle, continuous movement, as if to draw it up around his
shoulders.

"It is cold-- Oh! it is so cold."

And so he passed from life, peacefully, without a struggle; and on his
wasted, tranquil face rested an expression of unspeakable melancholy.

Delaherche saw to it that the remains, instead of being borne away and
placed among the common dead, were deposited in one of the
outbuildings of the factory. He endeavored to prevail on Gilberte, who
was tearful and disconsolate, to retire to her apartment, but she
declared that to be alone now would be more than her nerves could
stand, and begged to be allowed to remain with her mother-in-law in
the ambulance, where the noise and movement would be a distraction to
her. She was seen presently running to carry a drink of water to a
chasseur d'Afrique whom his fever had made delirious, and she assisted
a hospital steward to dress the hand of a little recruit, a lad of
twenty, who had had his thumb shot away and come in on foot from the
battlefield; and as he was jolly and amusing, treating his wound with
all the levity and nonchalance of the Parisian rollicker, she was soon
laughing and joking as merrily as he.

While the captain lay dying the cannonade seemed, if that were
possible, to have increased in violence; another shell had landed in
the garden, shattering one of the old elms. Terror-stricken men came
running in to say that all Sedan was in danger of destruction; a great
fire had broken out in the Faubourg de la Cassine. If the bombardment
should continue with such fury for any length of time there would be
nothing left of the city.

"It can't be; I am going to see about it!" Delaherche exclaimed,
violently excited.

"Where are you going, pray?" asked Bouroche.

"Why, to the Sous-Prefecture, to see what the Emperor means by fooling
us in this way, with his talk of hoisting the white flag."

For some few seconds the major stood as if petrified at the idea of
defeat and capitulation, which presented itself to him then for the
first time in the midst of his impotent efforts to save the lives of
the poor maimed creatures they were bringing in to him from the field.
Rage and grief were in his voice as he shouted:

"Go to the devil, if you will! All you can do won't keep us from being
soundly whipped!"

On leaving the factory Delaherche found it no easy task to squeeze his
way through the throng; at every instant the crowd of straggling
soldiers that filled the streets received fresh accessions. He
questioned several of the officers whom he encountered; not one of
them had seen the white flag on the citadel. Finally he met a colonel,
who declared that he had caught a momentary glimpse of it: that it had
been run up and then immediately hauled down. That explained matters;
either the Germans had not seen it, or seeing it appear and disappear
so quickly, had inferred the distressed condition of the French and
redoubled their fire in consequence. There was a story in circulation
how a general officer, enraged beyond control at the sight of the
flag, had wrested it from its bearer, broken the staff, and trampled
it in the mud. And still the Prussian batteries continued to play upon
the city, shells were falling upon the roofs and in the streets,
houses were in flames; a woman had just been killed at the corner of
the Rue Pont de Meuse and the Place Turenne.

At the Sous-Prefecture Delaherche failed to find Rose at her usual
station in the janitor's lodge. Everywhere were evidences of disorder;
all the doors were standing open; the reign of terror had commenced.
As there was no sentry or anyone to prevent, he went upstairs,
encountering on the way only a few scared-looking men, none of whom
made any offer to stop him. He had reached the first story and was
hesitating what to do next when he saw the young girl approaching him.

"Oh, M. Delaherche! isn't this dreadful! Here, quick! this way, if you
would like to see the Emperor."

On the left of the corridor a door stood ajar, and through the narrow
opening a glimpse could be had of the sovereign, who had resumed his
weary, anguished tramp between the fireplace and the window. Back and
forth he shuffled with heavy, dragging steps, and ceased not, despite
his unendurable suffering. An aide-de-camp had just entered the room
--it was he who had failed to close the door behind him--and
Delaherche heard the Emperor ask him in a sorrowfully reproachful
voice:

"What is the reason of this continued firing, sir, after I gave orders
to hoist the white flag?"

The torture to him had become greater than he could bear, that
never-ceasing cannonade, that seemed to grow more furious with every
minute. Every time he approached the window it pierced him to the
heart. More spilling of blood, more useless squandering of human life!
At every moment the piles of corpses were rising higher on the
battlefield, and his was the responsibility. The compassionate
instincts that entered so largely into his nature revolted at it, and
more than ten times already he had asked that question of those who
approached him.

"I gave orders to raise the white flag; tell me, why do they continue
firing?"

The aide-de-camp made answer in a voice so low that Delaherche failed
to catch its purport. The Emperor, moreover, seemed not to pause to
listen, drawn by some irresistible attraction to that window at which,
each time he approached it, he was greeted by that terrible salvo of
artillery that rent and tore his being. His pallor was greater even
than it had been before; his poor, pinched, wan face, on which were
still visible traces of the rouge that had been applied that morning,
bore witness to his anguish.

At that moment a short, quick-motioned man in dust-soiled uniform,
whom Delaherche recognized as General Lebrun, hurriedly crossed the
corridor and pushed open the door, without waiting to be announced.
And scarcely was he in the room when again was heard the Emperor's so
oft repeated question.

"Why do they continue to fire, General, when I have given orders to
hoist the white flag?"

The aide-de-camp left the apartment, shutting the door behind him, and
Delaherche never knew what was the general's answer. The vision had
faded from his sight.

"Ah!" said Rose, "things are going badly; I can see that clearly
enough by all those gentlemen's faces. It is bad for my tablecloth,
too; I am afraid I shall never see it again; somebody told me it had
been torn in pieces. But it is for the Emperor that I feel most sorry
in all this business, for he is in a great deal worse condition than
the marshal; he would be much better off in his bed than in that room,
where he is wearing himself out with his everlasting walking."

She spoke with much feeling, and on her pretty pink and white face
there was an expression of sincere pity, but Delaherche, whose
Bonapartist ardor had somehow cooled considerably during the last two
days, said to himself that she was a little fool. He nevertheless
remained chatting with her a moment in the hall below while waiting
for General Lebrun to take his departure, and when that officer
appeared and left the building he followed him.

General Lebrun had explained to the Emperor that if it was thought
best to apply for an armistice, etiquette demanded that a letter to
that effect, signed by the commander-in-chief of the French forces,
should be dispatched to the German commander-in-chief. He had also
offered to write the letter, go in search of General de Wimpffen, and
obtain his signature to it. He left the Sous-Prefecture with the
letter in his pocket, but apprehensive he might not succeed in finding
de Wimpffen, entirely ignorant as he was of the general's whereabouts
on the field of battle. Within the ramparts of Sedan, moreover, the
crowd was so dense that he was compelled to walk his horse, which
enabled Delaherche to keep him in sight until he reached the Minil
gate.

Once outside upon the road, however, General Lebrun struck into a
gallop, and when near Balan had the good fortune to fall in with the
chief. Only a few minutes previous to this the latter had written to
the Emperor: "Sire, come and put yourself at the head of your troops;
they will force a passage through the enemy's lines for you, or perish
in the attempt;" therefore he flew into a furious passion at the mere
mention of the word armistice. No, no! he would sign nothing, he would
fight it out! This was about half-past three o'clock, and it was
shortly afterward that occurred the gallant, but mad attempt, the last
serious effort of the day, to pierce the Bavarian lines and regain
possession of Bazeilles. In order to put heart into the troops a ruse
was resorted to: in the streets of Sedan and in the fields outside the
walls the shout was raised: "Bazaine is coming up! Bazaine is at
hand!" Ever since morning many had allowed themselves to be deluded by
that hope; each time that the Germans opened fire with a fresh battery
it was confidently asserted to be the guns of the army of Metz. In the
neighborhood of twelve hundred men were collected, soldiers of all
arms, from every corps, and the little column bravely advanced into
the storm of missiles that swept the road, at double time. It was a
splendid spectacle of heroism and endurance while it lasted; the
numerous casualties did not check the ardor of the survivors, nearly
five hundred yards were traversed with a courage and nerve that seemed
almost like madness; but soon there were great gaps in the ranks, the
bravest began to fall back. What could they do against overwhelming
numbers? It was a mad attempt, anyway; the desperate effort of a
commander who could not bring himself to acknowledge that he was
defeated. And it ended by General de Wimpffen finding himself and
General Lebrun alone together on the Bazeilles road, which they had to
make up their mind to abandon to the enemy, for good and all. All that
remained for them to do was to retreat and seek security under the
walls of Sedan.

Upon losing sight of the general at the Minil gate Delaherche had
hurried back to the factory at the best speed he was capable of,
impelled by an irresistible longing to have another look from his
observatory at what was going on in the distance. Just as he reached
his door, however, his progress was arrested a moment by encountering
Colonel de Vineuil, who, with his blood-stained boot, was being
brought in for treatment in a condition of semi-consciousness, upon
a bed of straw that had been prepared for him on the floor of a
market-gardener's wagon. The colonel had persisted in his efforts to
collect the scattered fragments of his regiment until he dropped from
his horse. He was immediately carried upstairs and put to bed in a
room on the first floor, and Bouroche, who was summoned at once,
finding the injury not of a serious character, had only to apply a
dressing to the wound, from which he first extracted some bits of the
leather of the boot. The worthy doctor was wrought up to a high pitch
of excitement; he exclaimed, as he went downstairs, that he would
rather cut off one of his own legs than continue working in that
unsatisfactory, slovenly way, without a tithe of either the assistants
or the appliances that he ought to have. Below in the ambulance,
indeed, they no longer knew where to bestow the cases that were
brought them, and had been obliged to have recourse to the lawn, where
they laid them on the grass. There were already two long rows of them,
exposed beneath the shrieking shells, filling the air with their
dismal plaints while waiting for his ministrations. The number of
cases brought in since noon exceeded four hundred, and in response to
Bouroche's repeated appeals for assistance he had been sent one young
doctor from the city. Good as was his will, he was unequal to the
task; he probed, sliced, sawed, sewed like a man frantic, and was
reduced to despair to see his work continually accumulating before
him. Gilberte, satiated with sights of horror, unable longer to endure
the sad spectacle of blood and tears, remained upstairs with her
uncle, the colonel, leaving to Mme. Delaherche the care of moistening
fevered lips and wiping the cold sweat from the brow of the dying.

Rapidly climbing the stairs to his terrace, Delaherche endeavored to
form some idea for himself of how matters stood. The city had suffered
less injury than was generally supposed; there was one great
conflagration, however, over in the Faubourg de la Cassine, from which
dense volumes of smoke were rising. Fort Palatinat had discontinued
its fire, doubtless because the ammunition was all expended; the guns
mounted on the Porte de Paris alone continued to make themselves heard
at infrequent intervals. But something that he beheld presently had
greater interest for his eyes than all beside; they had run up the
white flag on the citadel again, but it must be that it was invisible
from the battlefield, for there was no perceptible slackening of the
fire. The Balan road was concealed from his vision by the neighboring
roofs; he was unable to make out what the troops were doing in that
direction. Applying his eye to the telescope, however, which remained
as he had left it, directed on la Marfee, he again beheld the cluster
of officers that he had seen in that same place about midday. The
master of them all, that miniature toy-soldier in lead, half finger
high, in whom he had thought to recognize the King of Prussia, was
there still, erect in his plain, dark uniform before the other
officers, who, in their showy trappings, were for the most part
reclining carelessly on the grass. Among them were officers from
foreign lands, aides-de-camp, generals, high officials, princes; all
of them with field glasses in their hands, with which, since early
morning, they had been watching every phase of the death-struggle of
the army of Chalons, as if they were at the play. And the direful
drama was drawing to its end.

From among the trees that clothed the summit of la Marfee King William
had just witnessed the junction of his armies. It was an accomplished
fact; the third army, under the leadership of his son, the Crown
Prince, advancing by the way of Saint-Menges and Fleigneux, had
secured possession of the plateau of Illy, while the fourth, commanded
by the Crown Prince of Saxony, turning the wood of la Garenne and,
coming up through Givonne and Daigny, had also reached its appointed
rendezvous. There, too, the XIth and Vth corps had joined hands with
the XIIth corps and the Guards. The gallant but ineffectual charge of
Margueritte's division in its supreme effort to break through the
hostile lines at the ve

VII.


As when the ice breaks up and the great cakes come crashing, grinding
down upon the bosom of the swollen stream, carrying away all before
them, so now, from every position about Sedan that had been wrested
from the French, from Floing and the plateau of Illy, from the wood of
la Garenne, the valley of la Givonne and the Bazeilles road, the
stampede commenced; a mad torrent of horses, guns, and affrighted men
came pouring toward the city. It was a most unfortunate inspiration
that brought the army under the walls of that fortified place. There
was too much in the way of temptation there; the shelter that it
afforded the skulker and the deserter, the assurance of safety that
even the bravest beheld behind its ramparts, entailed widespread panic
and demoralization. Down there behind those protecting walls, so
everyone imagined, was safety from that terrible artillery that had
been blazing without intermission for near twelve hours; duty,
manhood, reason were all lost sight of; the man disappeared and was
succeeded by the brute, and their fierce instinct sent them racing
wildly for shelter, seeking a place where they might hide their head
and lie down and sleep.

When Maurice, bathing Jean's face with cool water behind the shelter
of their bit of wall, saw his friend open his eyes once more, he
uttered an exclamation of delight.

"Ah, poor old chap, I was beginning to fear you were done for! And
don't think I say it to find fault, but really you are not so light as
you were when you were a boy."

It seemed to Jean, in his still dazed condition, that he was awaking
from some unpleasant dream. Then his recollection returned to him
slowly, and two big tears rolled down his cheeks. To think that little
Maurice, so frail and slender, whom he had loved and petted like a
child, should have found strength to lug him all that distance!

"Let's see what damage your knowledge-box has sustained."

The wound was not serious; the bullet had plowed its way through the
scalp and considerable blood had flowed. The hair, which was now
matted with the coagulated gore, had served to stanch the current,
therefore Maurice refrained from applying water to the hurt, so as not
to cause it to bleed afresh.

"There, you look a little more like a civilized being, now that you
have a clean face on you. Let's see if I can find something for you to
wear on your head." And picking up the _kepi_ of a soldier who lay
dead not far away, he tenderly adjusted it on his comrade. "It fits
you to a T. Now if you can only walk everyone will say we are a very
good-looking couple."

Jean got on his legs and gave his head a shake to assure himself it
was secure. It seemed a little heavier than usual, that was all; he
thought he should get along well enough. A great wave of tenderness
swept through his simple soul; he caught Maurice in his arms and
hugged him to his bosom, while all he could find to say was:

"Ah! dear boy, dear boy!"

But the Prussians were drawing near: it would not answer to loiter
behind the wall. Already Lieutenant Rochas, with what few men were
left him, was retreating, guarding the flag, which the sous-lieutenant
still carried under his arm, rolled around the staff. Lapoulle's great
height enabled him to fire an occasional shot at the advancing enemy
over the coping of the wall, while Pache had slung his chassepot
across his shoulder by the strap, doubtless considering that he had
done a fair day's work and it was time to eat and sleep. Maurice and
Jean, stooping until they were bent almost double, hastened to rejoin
them. There was no scarcity of muskets and ammunition; all they had to
do was stoop and pick them up. They equipped themselves afresh, having
left everything behind, knapsacks included, when one lugged the other
out of danger on his shoulders. The wall extended to the wood of la
Garenne, and the little band, believing that now their safety was
assured, made a rush for the protection afforded by some farm
buildings, whence they readily gained the shelter of the trees.

"Ah!" said Rochas, drawing a long breath, "we will remain here a
moment and get our wind before we resume the offensive." No adversity
could shake his unwavering faith.

They had not advanced many steps before all felt that they were
entering the valley of death, but it was useless to think of retracing
their steps; their only line of retreat lay through the wood, and
cross it they must, at every hazard. At that time, instead of la
Garenne, its more fitting name would have been the wood of despair and
death; the Prussians, knowing that the French troops were retiring in
that direction, were riddling it with artillery and musketry. Its
shattered branches tossed and groaned as if enduring the scourging of
a mighty tempest. The shells hewed down the stalwart trees, the
bullets brought the leaves fluttering to the earth in showers; wailing
voices seemed to issue from the cleft trunks, sobs accompanied the
little twigs as they fell bleeding from the parent stem. It might have
been taken for the agony of some vast multitude, held there in chains
and unable to flee under the pelting of that pitiless iron hail; the
shrieks, the terror of thousands of creatures rooted to the ground.
Never was anguish so poignant as of that bombarded forest.

Maurice and Jean, who by this time had caught up with their
companions, were greatly alarmed. The wood where they then were was a
growth of large trees, and there was no obstacle to their running, but
the bullets came whistling about their ears from every direction,
making it impossible for them to avail themselves of the shelter of
the trunks. Two men were killed, one of them struck in the back, the
other in front. A venerable oak, directly in Maurice's path, had its
trunk shattered by a shell, and sank, with the stately grace of a
mailed paladin, carrying down all before it, and even as the young man
was leaping back the top of a gigantic ash on his left, struck by
another shell, came crashing to the ground like some tall cathedral
spire. Where could they fly? whither bend their steps? Everywhere the
branches were falling; it was as one who should endeavor to fly from
some vast edifice menaced with destruction, only to find himself in
each room he enters in succession confronted with crumbling walls and
ceilings. And when, in order to escape being crushed by the big trees,
they took refuge in a thicket of bushes, Jean came near being killed
by a projectile, only it fortunately failed to explode. They could no
longer make any progress now on account of the dense growth of the
shrubbery; the supple branches caught them around the shoulders, the
rank, tough grass held them by the ankles, impenetrable walls of
brambles rose before them and blocked their way, while all the time
the foliage was fluttering down about them, clipped by the gigantic
scythe that was mowing down the wood. Another man was struck dead
beside them by a bullet in the forehead, and he retained his erect
position, caught in some vines between two small birch trees. Twenty
times, while they were prisoners in that thicket, did they feel death
hovering over them.

"Holy Virgin!" said Maurice, "we shall never get out of this alive."

His face was ashy pale, he was shivering again with terror; and Jean,
always so brave, who had cheered and comforted him that morning, he,
also, was very white and felt a strange, chill sensation creeping down
his spine. It was fear, horrible, contagious, irresistible fear. Again
they were conscious of a consuming thirst, an intolerable dryness of
the mouth, a contraction of the throat, painful as if someone were
choking them. These symptoms were accompanied by nausea and qualms at
the pit of the stomach, while maleficent goblins kept puncturing their
aguish, trembling legs with needles. Another of the physical effects
of their fear was that in the congested condition of the blood vessels
of the retina they beheld thousands upon thousands of small black
specks flitting past them, as if it had been possible to distinguish
the flying bullets.

"Confound the luck!" Jean stammered. "It is not worth speaking of, but
it's vexatious all the same, to be here getting one's head broken for
other folks, when those other folks are at home, smoking their pipe in
comfort."

"Yes, that's so," Maurice replied, with a wild look. "Why should it be
I rather than someone else?"

It was the revolt of the individual Ego, the unaltruistic refusal of
the one to make himself a sacrifice for the benefit of the species.

"And then again," Jean continued, "if a fellow could but know the
rights of the matter; if he could be sure that any good was to come
from it all." Then turning his head and glancing at the western sky:
"Anyway, I wish that blamed sun would hurry up and go to roost.
Perhaps they'll stop fighting when it's dark."

With no distinct idea of what o'clock it was and no means of measuring
the flight of time, he had long been watching the tardy declination of
the fiery disk, which seemed to him to have ceased to move, hanging
there in the heavens over the woods of the left bank. And this was not
owing to any lack of courage on his part; it was simply the
overmastering, ever increasing desire, amounting to an imperious
necessity, to be relieved from the screaming and whistling of those
projectiles, to run away somewhere and find a hole where he might hide
his head and lose himself in oblivion. Were it not for the feeling of
shame that is implanted in men's breasts and keeps them from showing
the white feather before their comrades, every one of them would lose
his head and run, in spite of himself, like the veriest poltroon.

Maurice and Jean, meanwhile, were becoming somewhat more accustomed to
their surroundings, and even when their terror was at its highest
there came to them a sort of exalted self-unconsciousness that had in
it something of bravery. They finally reached a point when they did
not even hasten their steps as they made their way through the
accursed wood. The horror of the bombardment was even greater than it
had been previously among that race of sylvan denizens, killed at
their post, struck down on every hand, like gigantic, faithful
sentries. In the delicious twilight that reigned, golden-green,
beneath their umbrageous branches, among the mysterious recesses of
romantic, moss-carpeted retreats, Death showed his ill-favored,
grinning face. The solitary fountains were contaminated; men fell dead
in distant nooks whose depths had hitherto been trod by none save
wandering lovers. A bullet pierced a man's chest; he had time to utter
the one word: "hit!" and fell forward on his face, stone dead. Upon
the lips of another, who had both legs broken by a shell, the gay
laugh remained; unconscious of his hurt, he supposed he had tripped
over a root. Others, injured mortally, would run on for some yards,
jesting and conversing, until suddenly they went down like a log in
the supreme convulsion. The severest wounds were hardly felt at the
moment they were received; it was only at a later period that the
terrible suffering commenced, venting itself in shrieks and hot tears.

Ah, that accursed wood, that wood of slaughter and despair, where,
amid the sobbing of the expiring trees, arose by degrees and swelled
the agonized clamor of wounded men. Maurice and Jean saw a zouave,
nearly disemboweled, propped against the trunk of an oak, who kept up
a most terrific howling, without a moment's intermission. A little way
beyond another man was actually being slowly roasted; his clothing had
taken fire and the flames had run up and caught his beard, while he,
paralyzed by a shot that had broken his back, was silently weeping
scalding tears. Then there was a captain, who, one arm torn from its
socket and his flank laid open to the thigh, was writhing on the
ground in agony unspeakable, beseeching, in heartrending accents, the
by-passers to end his suffering. There were others, and others, and
others still, whose torments may not be described, strewing the
grass-grown paths in such numbers that the utmost caution was required
to avoid treading them under foot. But the dead and wounded had ceased
to count; the comrade who fell by the way was abandoned to his fate,
forgotten as if he had never been. No one turned to look behind. It
was his destiny, poor devil! Next it would be someone else,
themselves, perhaps.

They were approaching the edge of the wood when a cry of distress was
heard behind them.

"Help! help!"

It was the subaltern standard-bearer, who had been shot through the
left lung. He had fallen, the blood pouring in a stream from his
mouth, and as no one heeded his appeal he collected his fast ebbing
strength for another effort:

"To the colors!"

Rochas turned and in a single bound was at his side. He took the flag,
the staff of which had been broken in the fall, while the young
officer murmured in words that were choked by the bubbling tide of
blood and froth:

"Never mind me; I am a goner. Save the flag!"

And they left him to himself in that charming woodland glade to writhe
in protracted agony upon the ground, tearing up the grass with his
stiffening fingers and praying for death, which would be hours yet ere
it came to end his misery.

At last they had left the wood and its horrors behind them. Beside
Maurice and Jean all that were left of the little band were Lieutenant
Rochas, Lapoulle and Pache. Gaude, who had strayed away from his
companions, presently came running from a thicket to rejoin them, his
bugle hanging from his neck and thumping against his back with every
step he took. It was a great comfort to them all to find themselves
once again in the open country, where they could draw their breath;
and then, too, there were no longer any whistling bullets and crashing
shells to harass them; the firing had ceased on this side of the
valley.

The first object they set eyes on was an officer who had reined in
his smoking, steaming charger before a farm-yard gate and was venting
his towering rage in a volley of Billingsgate. It was General
Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, covered with
dust and looking as if he was about to tumble from his horse with
fatigue. The chagrin on his gross, high-colored, animal face told how
deeply he took to heart the disaster that he regarded in the light of
a personal misfortune. His command had seen nothing of him since
morning. Doubtless he was somewhere on the battlefield, striving to
rally the remnants of his brigade, for he was not the man to look
closely to his own safety in his rage against those Prussian batteries
that had at the same time destroyed the empire and the fortunes of a
rising officer, the favorite of the Tuileries.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" he shouted, "is there no one of whom one can ask
a question in this d-----d country?"

The farmer's people had apparently taken to the woods. At last a very
old woman appeared at the door, some servant who had been forgotten,
or whose feeble legs had compelled her to remain behind.

"Hallo, old lady, come here! Which way from here is Belgium?"

She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his meaning.
Then he lost all control of himself and effervesced, forgetful that
the woman was only a poor peasant, bellowing that he had no idea of
going back to Sedan to be caught like a rat in a trap; not he! he was
going to make tracks for foreign parts, he was, and d-----d quick,
too! Some soldiers had come up and stood listening.

"But you won't get through, General," spoke up a sergeant; "the
Prussians are everywhere. This morning was the time for you to cut
stick."

There were stories even then in circulation of companies that had
become separated from their regiments and crossed the frontier without
any intention of doing so, and of others that, later in the day, had
succeeded in breaking through the enemy's lines before the armies had
effected their final junction.

The general shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "What, with a few
daring fellows of your stripe, do you mean to say we couldn't go where
we please? I think I can find fifty daredevils to risk their skin in
the attempt." Then, turning again to the old peasant: "_Eh!_ you old
mummy, answer, will you, in the devil's name! where is the frontier?"

She understood him this time. She extended her skinny arm in the
direction of the forest.

"That way, that way!"

"Eh? What's that you say? Those houses that we see down there, at the
end of the field?"

"Oh! farther, much farther. Down yonder, away down yonder!"

The general seemed as if his anger must suffocate him. "It is too
disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make neither top
nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our nose; we were all
afraid we should put our foot in it without knowing it; and now that
one wants to go there it is somewhere else. No, no! it is too much;
I've had enough of it; let them take me prisoner if they will, let
them do what they choose with me; I am going to bed!" And clapping
spurs to his horse, bobbing up and down on his saddle like an inflated
wine skin, he galloped off toward Sedan.

A winding path conducted the party down into the Fond de Givonne, an
outskirt of the city lying between two hills, where the single village
street, running north and south and sloping gently upward toward the
forest, was lined with gardens and modest houses. This street was just
then so obstructed by flying soldiers that Lieutenant Rochas, with
Pache, Lapoulle, and Gaude, found himself caught in the throng and
unable for the moment to move in either direction. Maurice and Jean
had some difficulty in rejoining them; and all were surprised to hear
themselves hailed by a husky, drunken voice, proceeding from the
tavern on the corner, near which they were blockaded.

"My stars, if here ain't the gang! Hallo, boys, how are you? My stars,
I'm glad to see you!"

They turned, and recognized Chouteau, leaning from a window of the
ground floor of the inn. He seemed to be very drunk, and went on,
interspersing his speech with hiccoughs:

"Say, fellows, don't stand on ceremony if you're thirsty. There's
enough left for the comrades." He turned unsteadily and called to
someone who was invisible within the room: "Come here, you lazybones.
Give these gentlemen something to drink--"

Loubet appeared in turn, advancing with a flourish and holding aloft
in either hand a full bottle, which he waved above his head
triumphantly. He was not so far gone as his companion; with his
Parisian _blague_, imitating the nasal drawl of the coco-venders of
the boulevards on a public holiday, he cried:

"Here you are, nice and cool, nice and cool! Who'll have a drink?"

Nothing had been seen of the precious pair since they had vanished
under pretense of taking Sergeant Sapin into the ambulance. It was
sufficiently evident that since then they had been strolling and
seeing the sights, taking care to keep out of the way of the shells,
until finally they had brought up at this inn that was given over to
pillage.

Lieutenant Rochas was very angry. "Wait a bit, you scoundrels, just
wait, and I'll attend to your case! deserting and getting drunk while
the rest of your company were under fire!"

But Chouteau would have none of his reprimand. "See here, you old
lunatic, I want you to understand that the grade of lieutenant is
abolished; we are all free and equal now. Aren't you satisfied with
the basting the Prussians gave you to-day, or do you want some more?"

The others had to restrain the lieutenant to keep him from assaulting
the socialist. Loubet himself, dandling his bottles affectionately in
his arms, did what he could to pour oil upon the troubled waters.

"Quit that, now! what's the use quarreling, when all men are
brothers!" And catching sight of Lapoulle and Pache, his companions in
the squad: "Don't stand there like great gawks, you fellows! Come in
here and take something to wash the dust out of your throats."

Lapoulle hesitated a moment, dimly conscious of the impropriety there
was in the indulgence when so many poor devils were in such sore
distress, but he was so knocked up with fatigue, so terribly hungry
and thirsty! He said not a word, but suddenly making up his mind, gave
one bound and landed in the room, pushing before him Pache, who,
equally silent, yielded to the temptation he had not strength to
resist. And they were seen no more.

"The infernal scoundrels!" muttered Rochas. "They deserve to be shot,
every mother's son of them!"

He had now remaining with him of his party only Jean, Maurice, and
Gaude, and all four of them, notwithstanding their resistance, were
gradually involved and swallowed up in the torrent of stragglers and
fugitives that streamed along the road, filling its whole width from
ditch to ditch. Soon they were at a distance from the inn. It was the
routed army rolling down upon the ramparts of Sedan, a roily, roaring
flood, such as the disintegrated mass of earth and boulders that the
storm, scouring the mountainside, sweeps down into the valley. From
all the surrounding plateaus, down every slope, up every narrow gorge,
by the Floing road, by Pierremont, by the cemetery, by the Champ de
Mars, as well as through the Fond de Givonne, the same sorry rabble
was streaming cityward in panic haste, and every instant brought fresh
accessions to its numbers. And who could reproach those wretched men,
who, for twelve long, mortal hours, had stood in motionless array
under the murderous artillery of an invisible enemy, against whom they
could do nothing? The batteries now were playing on them from front,
flank, and rear; as they drew nearer the city they presented a fairer
mark for the convergent fire; the guns dealt death and destruction out
by wholesale on that dense, struggling mass of men in that accursed
hole, where there was no escape from the bursting shells. Some
regiments of the 7th corps, more particularly those that had been
stationed about Floing, had left the field in tolerably good order,
but in the Fond de Givonne there was no longer either organization or
command; the troops were a pushing, struggling mob, composed of debris
from regiments of every description, zouaves, turcos, chasseurs,
infantry of the line, most of them without arms, their uniforms soiled
and torn, with grimy hands, blackened faces, bloodshot eyes starting
from their sockets and lips swollen and distorted from their yells of
fear or rage. At times a riderless horse would dash through the
throng, overturning those who were in his path and leaving behind him
a long wake of consternation. Then some guns went thundering by at
breakneck speed, a retreating battery abandoned by its officers, and
the drivers, as if drunk, rode down everything and everyone, giving no
word of warning. And still the shuffling tramp of many feet along the
dusty road went on and ceased not, the close-compacted column pressed
on, breast to back, side to side; a retreat _en masse_, where
vacancies in the ranks were filled as soon as made, all moved by one
common impulse, to reach the shelter that lay before them and be
behind a wall.

Again Jean raised his head and gave an anxious glance toward the west;
through the dense clouds of dust raised by the tramp of that great
multitude the luminary still poured his scorching rays down upon the
exhausted men. The sunset was magnificent, the heavens transparently,
beautifully blue.

"It's a nuisance, all the same," he muttered, "that plaguey sun that
stays up there and won't go to roost!"

Suddenly Maurice became aware of the presence of a young woman whom
the movement of the resistless throng had jammed against a wall and
who was in danger of being injured, and on looking more attentively
was astounded to recognize in her his sister Henriette. For near a
minute he stood gazing at her in open-mouthed amazement, and finally
it was she who spoke, without any appearance of surprise, as if she
found the meeting entirely natural.

"They shot him at Bazeilles--and I was there. Then, in the hope that
they might at least let me have his body, I had an idea--"

She did not mention either Weiss or the Prussians by name; it seemed
to her that everyone must understand. Maurice did understand. It made
his heart bleed; he gave a great sob.

"My poor darling!"

When, about two o'clock, Henriette recovered consciousness, she found
herself at Balan, in the kitchen of some people who were strangers to
her, her head resting on a table, weeping. Almost immediately,
however, she dried her tears; already the heroic element was
reasserting itself in that silent woman, so frail, so gentle, yet of a
spirit so indomitable that she could suffer martyrdom for the faith,
or the love, that was in her. She knew not fear; her quiet,
undemonstrative courage was lofty and invincible. When her distress
was deepest she had summoned up her resolution, devoting her
reflections to how she might recover her husband's body, so as to give
it decent burial. Her first project was neither more nor less than to
make her way back to Bazeilles, but everyone advised her against this
course, assuring her that it would be absolutely impossible to get
through the German lines. She therefore abandoned the idea, and tried
to think of someone among her acquaintance who would afford her the
protection of his company, or at least assist her in the necessary
preliminaries. The person to whom she determined she would apply was a
M. Dubreuil, a cousin of hers, who had been assistant superintendent
of the refinery at Chene at the time her husband was employed there;
Weiss had been a favorite of his; he would not refuse her his
assistance. Since the time, now two years ago, when his wife had
inherited a handsome fortune, he had been occupying a pretty villa,
called the Hermitage, the terraces of which could be seen skirting the
hillside of a suburb of Sedan, on the further side of the Fond de
Givonne. And thus it was toward the Hermitage that she was now bending
her steps, compelled at every moment to pause before some fresh
obstacle, continually menaced with being knocked down and trampled to
death.

Maurice, to whom she briefly explained her project, gave it his
approval.

"Cousin Dubreuil has always been a good friend to us. He will be of
service to you."

Then an idea of another nature occurred to him. Lieutenant Rochas was
greatly embarrassed as to what disposition he should make of the flag.
They all were firmly resolved to save it--to do anything rather than
allow it to fall into the hands of the Prussians. It had been
suggested to cut it into pieces, of which each should carry one off
under his shirt, or else to bury it at the foot of a tree, so noting
the locality in memory that they might be able to come and disinter it
at some future day; but the idea of mutilating the flag, or burying it
like a corpse, affected them too painfully, and they were considering
if they might not preserve it in some other manner. When Maurice,
therefore, proposed to entrust the standard to a reliable person who
would conceal it and, in case of necessity, defend it, until such day
as he should restore it to them intact, they all gave their assent.

"Come," said the young man, addressing his sister, "we will go with
you to the Hermitage and see if Dubreuil is there. Besides, I do not
wish to leave you without protection."

It was no easy matter to extricate themselves from the press, but they
succeeded finally and entered a path that led upward on their left.
They soon found themselves in a region intersected by a perfect
labyrinth of lanes and narrow passages, a district where truck farms
and gardens predominated, interspersed with an occasional villa and
small holdings of extremely irregular outline, and these lanes and
passages wound circuitously between blank walls, turning sharp corners
at every few steps and bringing up abruptly in the cul-de-sac of some
courtyard, affording admirable facilities for carrying on a guerilla
warfare; there were spots where ten men might defend themselves for
hours against a regiment. Desultory firing was already beginning to be
heard, for the suburb commanded Balan, and the Bavarians were already
coming up on the other side of the valley.

When Maurice and Henriette, who were in the rear of the others, had
turned once to the left, then to the right and then to the left again,
following the course of two interminable walls, they suddenly came out
before the Hermitage, the door of which stood wide open. The grounds,
at the top of which was a small park, were terraced off in three broad
terraces, on one of which stood the residence, a roomy, rectangular
structure, approached by an avenue of venerable elms. Facing it, and
separated from it by the deep, narrow valley, with its steeply sloping
banks, were other similar country seats, backed by a wood.

Henriette's anxiety was aroused at sight of the open door, "They are
not at home," she said; "they must have gone away."

The truth was that Dubreuil had decided the day before to take his
wife and children to Bouillon, where they would be in safety from the
disaster he felt was impending. And yet the house was not unoccupied;
even at a distance and through the intervening trees the approaching
party were conscious of movements going on within its walls. As the
young woman advanced into the avenue she recoiled before the dead body
of a Prussian soldier.

"The devil!" exclaimed Rochas; "so they have already been exchanging
civilities in this quarter!"

Then all hands, desiring to ascertain what was going on, hurried
forward to the house, and there their curiosity was quickly gratified;
the doors and windows of the _rez-de-chaussee_ had been smashed in
with musket-butts and the yawning apertures disclosed the destruction
that the marauders had wrought in the rooms within, while on the
graveled terrace lay various articles of furniture that had been
hurled from the stoop. Particularly noticeable was a drawing-room
suite in sky-blue satin, its sofa and twelve fauteuils piled in dire
confusion, helter-skelter, on and around a great center table, the
marble top of which was broken in twain. And there were zouaves,
chasseurs, liners, and men of the infanterie de marine running to and
fro excitedly behind the buildings and in the alleys, discharging
their pieces into the little wood that faced them across the valley.

"Lieutenant," a zouave said to Rochas, by way of explanation, "we
found a pack of those dirty Prussian hounds here, smashing things and
raising Cain generally. We settled their hash for them, as you can see
for yourself; only they will be coming back here presently, ten to our
one, and that won't be so pleasant."

Three other corpses of Prussian soldiers were stretched upon the
terrace. As Henriette was looking at them absently, her thoughts
doubtless far away with her husband, who, amid the blood and ashes of
Bazeilles, was also sleeping his last sleep, a bullet whistled close
to her head and struck a tree that stood behind her. Jean sprang
forward.

"Madame, don't stay there. Go inside the house, quick, quick!"

His heart overflowed with pity as he beheld the change her terrible
affliction had wrought in her, and he recalled her image as she had
appeared to him only the day before, her face bright with the kindly
smile of the happy, loving wife. At first he had found no word to say
to her, hardly knowing even if she would recognize him. He felt that
he could gladly give his life, if that would serve to restore her
peace of mind.

"Go inside, and don't come out. At the first sign of danger we will
come for you, and we will all escape together by way of the wood up
yonder."

But she apathetically replied:

"Ah, M. Jean, what is the use?"

Her brother, however, was also urging her, and finally she ascended
the stoop and took her position within the vestibule, whence her
vision commanded a view of the avenue in its entire length. She was a
spectator of the ensuing combat.

Maurice and Jean had posted themselves behind one of the elms near the
house. The gigantic trunks of the centenarian monarchs were amply
sufficient to afford shelter to two men. A little way from them Gaude,
the bugler, had joined forces with Lieutenant Rochas, who, unwilling
to confide the flag to other hands, had rested it against the tree at
his side while he handled his musket. And every trunk had its
defenders; from end to end the avenue was lined with men covered,
Indian fashion, by the trees, who only exposed their head when ready
to fire.

In the wood across the valley the Prussians appeared to be receiving
re-enforcements, for their fire gradually grew warmer. There was no
one to be seen; at most, the swiftly vanishing form now and then of a
man changing his position. A villa, with green shutters, was occupied
by their sharpshooters, who fired from the half-open windows of the
_rez-de-chaussee_. It was about four o'clock, and the noise of the
cannonade in the distance was diminishing, the guns were being
silenced one by one; and there they were, French and Prussians, in
that out-of-the-way-corner whence they could not see the white flag
floating over the citadel, still engaged in the work of mutual
slaughter, as if their quarrel had been a personal one.
Notwithstanding the armistice there were many such points where the
battle continued to rage until it was too dark to see; the rattle of
musketry was heard in the faubourg of the Fond de Givonne and in the
gardens of Petit-Pont long after it had ceased elsewhere.

For a quarter of an hour the bullets flew thick and fast from one side
of the valley to the other. Now and again someone who was so
incautious as to expose himself went down with a ball in his head or
chest. There were three men lying dead in the avenue. The rattling in
the throat of another man who had fallen prone upon his face was
something horrible to listen to, and no one thought to go and turn him
on his back to ease his dying agony. Jean, who happened to look around
just at that moment, beheld Henriette glide tranquilly down the steps,
approach the wounded man and turn him over, then slip a knapsack
beneath his head by way of pillow. He ran and seized her and forcibly
brought her back behind the tree where he and Maurice were posted.

"Do you wish to be killed?"

She appeared to be entirely unconscious of the danger to which she had
exposed herself.

"Why, no--but I am afraid to remain in that house, all alone. I would
rather be outside."

And so she stayed with them. They seated her on the ground at their
feet, against the trunk of the tree, and went on expending the few
cartridges that were left them, blazing away to right and left, with
such fury that they quite forgot their sensations of fear and fatigue.
They were utterly unconscious of what was going on around them,
acting mechanically, with but one end in view; even the instinct of
self-preservation had deserted them.

"Look, Maurice," suddenly said Henriette; "that dead soldier there
before us, does he not belong to the Prussian Guard?"

She had been eying attentively for the past minute or two one of the
dead bodies that the enemy had left behind them when they retreated, a
short, thick-set young man, with big mustaches, lying upon his side on
the gravel of the terrace.

The chin-strap had broken, releasing the spiked helmet, which had
rolled away a few steps. And it was indisputable that the body was
attired in the uniform of the Guard; the dark gray trousers, the blue
tunic with white facings, the greatcoat rolled and worn, belt-wise,
across the shoulder.

"It is the Guard uniform," she said; "I am quite certain of it. It is
exactly like the colored plate I have at home, and then the photograph
that Cousin Gunther sent us--" She stopped suddenly, and with her
unconcerned, fearless air, before anyone could make a motion to detain
her, walked up to the corpse, bent down and read the number of the
regiment. "Ah, the Forty-third!" she exclaimed. "I knew it."

And she returned to her position, while a storm of bullets whistled
around her ears. "Yes, the Forty-third; Cousin Gunther's regiment
--something told me it must be so. Ah! if my poor husband were only
here!"

After that all Jean's and Maurice's entreaties were ineffectual to
make her keep quiet. She was feverishly restless, constantly
protruding her head to peer into the opposite wood, evidently harassed
by some anxiety that preyed upon her mind. Her companions continued to
load and fire with the same blind fury, pushing her back with their
knee whenever she exposed herself too rashly. It looked as if the
Prussians were beginning to consider that their numbers would warrant
them in attacking, for they showed themselves more frequently and
there were evidences of preparations going on behind the trees. They
were suffering severely, however, from the fire of the French, whose
bullets at that short range rarely failed to bring down their man.

"That may be your cousin," said Jean. "Look, that officer over there,
who has just come out of the house with the green shutters."

He was a captain, as could be seen by the gold braid on the collar of
his tunic and the golden eagle on his helmet that flashed back the
level ray of the setting sun. He had discarded his epaulettes, and
carrying his saber in his right hand, was shouting an order in a
sharp, imperative voice; and the distance between them was so small, a
scant two hundred yards, that every detail of his trim, slender figure
was plainly discernible, as well as the pinkish, stern face and slight
blond mustache.

Henriette scrutinized him with attentive eyes. "It is he," she
replied, apparently unsurprised. "I recognize him perfectly."

With a look of concentrated rage Maurice drew his piece to his
shoulder and covered him. "The cousin-- Ah! sure as there is a God in
heaven he shall pay for Weiss."

But, quivering with excitement, she jumped to her feet and knocked up
the weapon, whose charge was wasted on the air.

"Stop, stop! we must not kill acquaintances, relatives! It is too
barbarous."

And, all her womanly instincts coming back to her, she sank down
behind the tree and gave way to a fit of violent weeping. The horror
of it all was too much for her; in her great dread and sorrow she was
forgetful of all beside.

Rochas, meantime, was in his element. He had excited the few zouaves
and other troops around him to such a pitch of frenzy, their fire had
become so murderously effective at sight of the Prussians, that the
latter first wavered and then retreated to the shelter of their wood.

"Stand your ground, my boys! don't give way an inch! Aha, see 'em run,
the cowards! we'll fix their flint for 'em!"

He was in high spirits and seemed to have recovered all his unbounded
confidence, certain that victory was yet to crown their efforts. There
had been no defeat. The handful of men before him stood in his eyes
for the united armies of Germany, and he was going to destroy them at
his leisure. All his long, lean form, all his thin, bony face, where
the huge nose curved down upon the self-willed, sensual mouth, exhaled
a laughing, vain-glorious satisfaction, the joy of the conquering
trooper who goes through the world with his sweetheart on his arm and
a bottle of good wine in his hand.

"_Parbleu_, my children, what are we here for, I'd like to know, if
not to lick 'em out of their boots? and that's the way this affair is
going to end, just mark my words. We shouldn't know ourselves any
longer if we should let ourselves be beaten. Beaten! come, come, that
is too good! When the neighbors tread on our toes, or when we feel we
are beginning to grow rusty for want of something to do, we just turn
to and give 'em a thrashing; that's all there is to it. Come, boys,
let 'em have it once more, and you'll see 'em run like so many
jackrabbits!"

He bellowed and gesticulated like a lunatic, and was such a good
fellow withal in the comforting illusion of his ignorance that the men
were inoculated with his confidence. He suddenly broke out again:

"And we'll kick 'em, we'll kick 'em, we'll kick 'em to the frontier!
Victory, victory!"

But at that juncture, just as the enemy across the valley seemed
really to be falling back, a hot fire of musketry came pouring in on
them from the left. It was a repetition of the everlasting flanking
movement that had done the Prussians such good service; a strong
detachment of the Guards had crept around toward the French rear
through the Fond de Givonne. It was useless to think of holding the
position longer; the little band of men who were defending the
terraces were caught between two fires and menaced with being cut off
from Sedan. Men fell on every side, and for a moment the confusion was
extreme; the Prussians were already scaling the wall of the park, and
advancing along the pathways. Some zouaves rushed forward to repel
them, and there was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle with the bayonet.
There was one zouave, a big, handsome, brown-bearded man, bare-headed
and with his jacket hanging in tatters from his shoulders, who did his
work with appalling thoroughness, driving his reeking bayonet home
through splintering bones and yielding tissues, cleansing it of the
gore that it had contracted from one man by plunging it into the flesh
of another; and when it broke he laid about him, smashing many a
skull, with the butt of his musket; and when finally he made a misstep
and lost his weapon he sprung, bare-handed, for the throat of a burly
Prussian, with such tigerish fierceness that both men rolled over and
over on the gravel to the shattered kitchen door, clasped in a mortal
embrace. The trees of the park looked down on many such scenes of
slaughter, and the green lawn was piled with corpses. But it was
before the stoop, around the sky-blue sofa and fauteuils, that the
conflict raged with greatest fury; a maddened mob of savages, firing
at one another at point-blank range, so that hair and beards were set
on fire, tearing one another with teeth and nails when a knife was
wanting to slash the adversary's throat.

Then Gaude, with his sorrowful face, the face of a man who has had his
troubles of which he does not care to speak, was seized with a sort of
sudden heroic madness. At that moment of irretrievable defeat, when he
must have known that the company was annihilated and that there was
not a man left to answer his summons, he grasped his bugle, carried it
to his lips and sounded the general, in so tempestuous, ear-splitting
strains that one would have said he wished to wake the dead. Nearer
and nearer came the Prussians, but he never stirred, only sounding the
call the louder, with all the strength of his lungs. He fell, pierced
with many bullets, and his spirit passed in one long-drawn, parting
wail that died away and was lost upon the shuddering air.

Rochas made no attempt to fly; he seemed unable to comprehend. Even
more erect than usual, he waited the end, stammering:

"Well, what's the matter? what's the matter?"

Such a possibility had never entered his head as that they could be
defeated. They were changing everything in these degenerate days, even
to the manner of fighting; had not those fellows a right to remain on
their own side of the valley and wait for the French to go and attack
them? There was no use killing them; as fast as they were killed more
kept popping up. What kind of a d-----d war was it, anyway, where they
were able to collect ten men against their opponent's one, where they
never showed their face until evening, after blazing away at you all
day with their artillery until you didn't know on which end you were
standing? Aghast and confounded, having failed so far to acquire the
first idea of the rationale of the campaign, he was dimly conscious of
the existence of some mysterious, superior method which he could not
comprehend, against which he ceased to struggle, although in his
dogged stubbornness he kept repeating mechanically:

"Courage, my children! victory is before us!"

Meanwhile he had stooped and clutched the flag. That was his last, his
only thought, to save the flag, retreating again, if necessary, so
that it might not be defiled by contact with Prussian hands. But the
staff, although it was broken, became entangled in his legs; he
narrowly escaped falling. The bullets whistled past him, he felt that
death was near; he stripped the silk from the staff and tore it into
shreds, striving to destroy it utterly. And then it was that, stricken
at once in the neck, chest, and legs, he sank to earth amid the bright
tri-colored rags, as if they had been his pall. He survived a moment
yet, gazing before him with fixed, dilated eyes, reading, perhaps, in
the vision he beheld on the horizon the stern lesson that War conveys,
the cruel, vital struggle that is to be accepted not otherwise than
gravely, reverently, as immutable law. Then a slight tremor ran
through his frame, and darkness succeeded to his infantine
bewilderment; he passed away, like some poor dumb, lowly creature of a
day, a joyous insect that mighty, impassive Nature, in her relentless
fatality, has caught and crushed. In him died all a legend.

When the Prussians began to draw near Jean and Maurice had retreated,
retiring from tree to tree, face to the enemy, and always, as far as
possible, keeping Henriette behind them. They did not give over
firing, discharging their pieces and then falling back to seek a fresh
cover. Maurice knew where there was a little wicket in the wall at the
upper part of the park, and they were so fortunate as to find it
unfastened. With lighter hearts when they had left it behind them,
they found themselves in a narrow by-road that wound between two high
walls, but after following it for some distance the sound of firing in
front caused them to turn into a path on their left. As luck would
have it, it ended in an _impasse_; they had to retrace their steps,
running the gauntlet of the bullets, and take the turning to the
right. When they came to exchange reminiscences in later days they
could never agree on which road they had taken. In that tangled
network of suburban lanes and passages there was firing still going on
from every corner that afforded a shelter, protracted battles raged at
the gates of farmyards, everything that could be converted into a
barricade had its defenders, from whom the assailants tried to wrest
it; all with the utmost fury and vindictiveness. And all at once they
came out upon the Fond de Givonne road, not far from Sedan.

For the third time Jean raised his eyes toward the western sky, that
was all aflame with a bright, rosy light; and he heaved a sigh of
unspeakable relief.

"Ah, that pig of a sun! at last he is going to bed!"

And they ran with might and main, all three of them, never once
stopping to draw breath. About them, filling the road in all its
breadth, was the rear-guard of fugitives from the battlefield, still
flowing onward with the irresistible momentum of an unchained mountain
torrent. When they came to the Balan gate they had a long period of
waiting in the midst of the impatient, ungovernable throng. The chains
of the drawbridge had given way, and the only path across the fosse
was by the foot-bridge, so that the guns and horses had to turn back
and seek admission by the bridge of the chateau, where the jam was
said to be even still more fearful. At the gate of la Cassine, too,
people were trampled to death in their eagerness to gain admittance.
From all the adjacent heights the terror-stricken fragments of the
army came tumbling into the city, as into a cesspool, with the hollow
roar of pent-up water that has burst its dam. The fatal attraction of
those walls had ended by making cowards of the bravest; men trod one
another down in their blind haste to be under cover.

Maurice had caught Henriette in his arms, and in a voice that trembled
with suspense:

"It cannot be," he said, "that they will have the cruelty to close the
gate and shut us out."

That was what the crowd feared would be done. To right and left,
however, upon the glacis soldiers were already arranging their
bivouacs, while entire batteries, guns, caissons, and horses, in
confusion worse confounded, had thrown themselves pell-mell into the
fosse for safety.

But now shrill, impatient bugle calls rose on the evening air,
followed soon by the long-drawn strains of retreat. They were
summoning the belated soldiers back to their comrades, who came
running in, singly and in groups. A dropping fire of musketry still
continued in the faubourgs, but it was gradually dying out. Heavy
guards were stationed on the banquette behind the parapet to protect
the approaches, and at last the gate was closed. The Prussians were
within a hundred yards of the sally-port; they could be seen moving on
the Balan road, tranquilly establishing themselves in the houses and
gardens.

Maurice and Jean, pushing Henriette before them to protect her from
the jostling of the throng, were among the last to enter Sedan. Six
o'clock was striking. The artillery fire had ceased nearly an hour
ago. Soon the distant musketry fire, too, was silenced. Then, to the
deafening uproar, to the vengeful thunder that had been roaring since
morning, there succeeded a stillness as of death. Night came, and with
it came a boding silence, fraught with terror.

VIII.


At half-past five o'clock, after the closing of the gates, Delaherche,
in his eager thirst for news, now that he knew the battle lost, had
again returned to the Sous-Prefecture. He hung persistently about the
approaches of the janitor's lodge, tramping up and down the paved
courtyard with feverish impatience, for more than three hours,
watching for every officer who came up and interviewing him, and thus
it was that he had become acquainted, piecemeal, with the rapid series
of events; how General de Wimpffen had tendered his resignation and
then withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal of Generals Ducrot and
Douay to append their names to the articles of capitulation, how the
Emperor had thereupon invested the General with full authority to
proceed to the Prussian headquarters and treat for the surrender of
the vanquished army on the most advantageous terms obtainable; how,
finally, a council of war had been convened with the object of
deciding what possibilities there were of further protracting the
struggle successfully by the defense of the fortress. During the
deliberations of this council, which consisted of some twenty officers
of the highest rank and seemed to him as if it would never end, the
cloth manufacturer climbed the steps of the huge public building at
least twenty times, and at last his curiosity was gratified by
beholding General de Wimpffen emerge, very red in the face and his
eyelids puffed and swollen with tears, behind whom came two other
generals and a colonel. They leaped into the saddle and rode away over
the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck eight some time before; the
inevitable capitulation was now to be accomplished, from which there
was no escape.

Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had heard and seen,
remembered that it was a long time since he had tasted food and
resolved to turn his steps homeward, but the terrific crowd that had
collected since he first came made him pause in dismay. It is no
exaggeration to say that the streets and squares were so congested, so
thronged, so densely packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would
have declared the closely compacted mass could only have been squeezed
and wedged in there thus by the effort of some gigantic mechanism.
While the ramparts were occupied by the bivouacs of such regiments as
had fallen back in good order, the city had been invaded and submerged
by an angry, surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the
various corps, stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the service,
and the dammed-up tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or
hand. The wheels of the guns, of the caissons, and the innumerable
vehicles of every description, had interlocked and were tangled in
confusion worse confounded, while the poor horses, flogged
unmercifully by their drivers and pulled, now in this direction, now
in that, could only dance in their bewilderment, unable to move a step
either forward or back. And the men, deaf to reproaches and threats
alike, forced their way into the houses, devoured whatever they could
lay hands on, flung themselves down to sleep wherever they could find
a vacant space, it might be in the best bedroom or in the cellar. Many
of them had fallen in doorways, where they blocked the vestibule;
others, without strength to go farther, lay extended on the sidewalks
and slept the sleep of death, not even rising when some by-passer trod
on them and bruised an arm or leg, preferring the risk of death to the
fatigue of changing their location.

These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly conscious
of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There were some quarters
in which numerous caissons were packed so close together that they
were in contact, and a single Prussian shell alighting on one of them
must inevitably have exploded them all, entailing the immediate
destruction of the city by conflagration. Then, too, what could be
accomplished with such an assemblage of miserable wretches, deprived
of all their powers, mental and physical, by reason of their
long-endured privations, and destitute of either ammunition or
subsistence? Merely to clear the streets and reduce them to a
condition of something like order would require a whole day. The place
was entirely incapable of defense, having neither guns nor provisions.

These were the considerations that had prevailed at the council among
those more reasonable officers who, in the midst of their grief and
sorrow for their country and the army, had retained a clear and
undistorted view of the situation as it was; and the more hot-headed
among them, those who cried with emotion that it was impossible for an
army to surrender thus, had been compelled to bow their head upon
their breast in silence and admit that they had no practicable scheme
to offer whereby the conflict might be recommenced on the morrow.

In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche succeeded with
the greatest difficulty in working his way through the press. As he
passed the Hotel of the Golden Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his
eyes, that of the generals seated in the dining room, gloomily silent,
around the empty board; there was nothing left to eat in the house,
not even bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been
storming and vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have found
something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the
stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect.
Such was the crowd assembled there, to stare through the lighted
windows upon the guests assembled around that famine-stricken _table
d'hote_, that the manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with
his elbows, and was frequently driven back by some wild rush of the
mob and lost all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In
the Grande Rue, however, the obstacles became actually impassable, and
there was a moment when he was inclined to give up in despair; a
complete battery seemed to have been driven in there and the guns and
_materiel_ piled, pell-mell, on top of one another. Deciding finally
to take the bull by the horns, he leaped to the axle of a piece and so
pursued his way, jumping from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at
the imminent risk of breaking his legs, if not his neck. Afterward it
was some horses that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly and
stooped, creeping among the feet and underneath the bellies of the
sorry jades, who were ready to die of inanition, like their masters.
Then, when after a quarter of an hour's laborious effort he reached
the junction of the Rue Saint-Michel, he was terrified at the prospect
of the dangers and obstacles that he had still to face, and which,
instead of diminishing, seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind
to turn down the street above mentioned, which would take him into the
Rue des Laboureurs; he hoped that by taking these usually quiet and
deserted passages he should escape the crowd and reach his home in
safety. As luck would have it he almost directly came upon a house of
ill-fame to which a band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying
siege, and considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the
fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he
made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he
pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by
balancing himself, rope-walker fashion, along the pole of some
vehicle, now climbing over an army wagon that barred his way. At the
Place du College he was carried along--bodily on the shoulders of the
throng for a space of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly
escaped a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the
proximity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled
himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue Maqua,
inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn from his back,
he found that he had been more than an hour in coming from the
Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary times he was accustomed
to accomplish in less than five minutes.

Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden
from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be
mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to
Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his
house being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the
garden, dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid,
feverish emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart;
then, stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in
slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one
of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from
outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been
deposited there and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how
matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed there since early morning,
had been overlooked by his superiors and had succumbed to his fatigue.
Besides, the house seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black
as Egypt, and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless
all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was
faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He
lit a candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not
to awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early
after a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so
intense.

On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes
to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin
had snatched a few hours' repose the day before a soldier lay
outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he
had looked and recognized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette's
brother. He was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he
perceived, stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another
soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the
battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and
fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow
themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated,
like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed on to his wife's
chamber, which was the next room on the corridor. A lamp was burning
on a table in a corner; the profound silence seemed to shudder.
Gilberte had thrown herself crosswise on the bed, fully dressed,
doubtless in order to be prepared for any catastrophe, and was
sleeping peacefully, while, seated on a chair at her side with her
head declined and resting lightly on the very edge of the mattress,
Henriette was also slumbering, with a fitful, agitated sleep, while
big tears welled up beneath her swollen eyelids. He contemplated them
silently for a moment, strongly tempted to awake and question the
young woman in order to ascertain what she knew. Had she succeeded in
reaching Bazeilles? and why was it that she was back there? Perhaps
she would be able to give him some tidings of his dyehouse were he to
ask her? A feeling of compassion stayed him, however, and he was about
to leave the room when his mother, ghost-like, appeared at the
threshold of the open door and beckoned him to follow her.

As they were passing through the dining room he expressed his
surprise.

"What, have you not been abed to-night?"

She shook her head, then said below her breath:

"I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside the
colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, almost, and
then plies me with questions. I don't know how to answer them. Come in
and see him, you."

M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now brightly
red, barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across it like a snowy
avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the pillow. Mme. Delaherche
had placed a newspaper before the lamp and that corner of the room was
lost in semi-darkness, while all the intensity of the bright lamplight
was concentrated on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her
fauteuil, her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent
on space, in sorrowful reverie.

"I think he must have heard you," she murmured; "he is awaking again."

It was so; the colonel, without moving his head, had reopened his eyes
and bent them on Delaherche. He recognized him, and immediately asked
in a voice that his exhausted condition made tremulous:

"It is all over, is it not? We have capitulated."

The manufacturer, who encountered the look his mother cast on him at
that moment, was on the point of equivocating. But what good would it
do? A look of discouragement passed across his face.

"What else remained to do? A single glance at the streets of the city
would convince you. General de Wimpffen has just set out for Prussian
general headquarters to discuss conditions."

M. de Vineuil's eyes closed again, his long frame was shaken with a
protracted shiver of supremely bitter grief, and this deep, long-drawn
moan escaped his lips:

"Ah! merciful God, merciful God!" And without opening his eyes he went
on in faltering, broken accents: "Ah! the plan I spoke of yesterday
--they should have adopted it. Yes, I knew the country; I spoke of my
apprehensions to the general, but even him they would not listen to.
Occupy all the heights up there to the north, from Saint-Menges to
Fleigneux, with your army looking down on and commanding Sedan, able
at any time to move on Vrigne-aux-Bois, mistress of Saint-Albert's
pass--and there we are; our positions are impregnable, the Mezieres
road is under our control--"

His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he stammered a few
more unintelligible words, while the vision of the battle that had
been born of his fever little by little grew blurred and dim and at
last was effaced by slumber. He slept, and in his sleep perhaps the
honest officer's dreams were dreams of victory.

"Does the major speak favorably of his case?" Delaherche inquired in a
whisper.

Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively.

"Those wounds in the foot are dreadful things, though," he went on. "I
suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long time, isn't he?"

She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all her
faculties were concentrated on contemplating the great calamity of
their defeat. She was of another age; she was a survivor of that
strong old race of frontier burghers who defended their towns so
valiantly in the good days gone by. The clean-cut lines of her stern,
set face, with its fleshless, uncompromising nose and thin lips, which
the brilliant light of the lamp brought out in high relief against the
darkness of the room, told the full extent of her stifled rage and
grief and the wound sustained by her antique patriotism, the revolt of
which refused even to let her sleep.

About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation of
isolation, accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of physical
distress. His hunger was asserting itself again, a griping,
intolerable hunger, and he persuaded himself that it was debility
alone that was thus robbing him of courage and resolution. He tiptoed
softly from the room and, with his candle, again made his way down to
the kitchen, but the spectacle he witnessed there was even still more
cheerless; the range cold and fireless, the closets empty, the floor
strewn with a disorderly litter of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and
women's aprons; as if the hurricane of disaster had swept through that
place as well, bearing away on its wings all the charm and cheer that
appertain naturally to the things we eat and drink. At first he
thought he was not going to discover so much as a crust, what was left
over of the bread having all found its way to the ambulance in the
form of soup. At last, however, in the dark corner of a cupboard he
came across the remainder of the beans from yesterday's dinner, where
they had been forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished his luxurious
repast without the formality of sitting down, without the
accompaniment of salt and butter, for which he did not care to trouble
himself to ascend to the floor above, desirous only to get away as
speedily as possible from that dismal kitchen, where the blinking,
smoking little lamp perfumed the air with fumes of petroleum.

It was not much more than ten o'clock, and Delaherche had no other
occupation than to speculate on the various probabilities connected
with the signing of the capitulation. A persistent apprehension
haunted him; a dread lest the conflict might be renewed, and the
horrible thought of what the consequences must be in such an event, of
which he could not speak, but which rested on his bosom like an
incubus. When he had reascended to his study, where he found Maurice
and Jean in exactly the same position he had left them in, it was
all in vain that he settled himself comfortably in his favorite
easy-chair; sleep would not come to him; just as he was on the point
of losing himself the crash of a shell would arouse him with a great
start. It was the frightful cannonade of the day, the echoes of which
were still ringing in his ears; and he would listen breathlessly for a
moment, then sit and shudder at the equally appalling silence by which
he was now surrounded. As he could not sleep he preferred to move
about; he wandered aimlessly among the rooms, taking care to avoid
that in which his mother was sitting by the colonel's bedside, for the
steady gaze with which she watched him as he tramped nervously up and
down had finally had the effect of disconcerting him. Twice he
returned to see if Henriette had not awakened, and he paused an
instant to glance at his wife's pretty face, so calmly peaceful, on
which seemed to be flitting something like the faint shadow of a
smile. Then, knowing not what to do, he went downstairs again, came
back, moved about from room to room, until it was nearly two in the
morning, wearying his ears with trying to decipher some meaning in the
sounds that came to him from without.

This condition of affairs could not last. Delaherche resolved to
return once more to the Sous-Prefecture, feeling assured that all rest
would be quite out of the question for him so long as his ignorance
continued. A feeling of despair seized him, however, when he went
downstairs and looked out upon the densely crowded street, where the
confusion seemed to be worse than ever; never would he have the
strength to fight his way to the Place Turenne and back again through
obstacles the mere memory of which caused every bone in his body to
ache again. And he was mentally discussing matters, when who should
come up but Major Bouroche, panting, perspiring, and swearing.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ I wonder if my head's on my shoulders or not!"

He had been obliged to visit the Hotel de Ville to see the mayor about
his supply of chloroform, and urge him to issue a requisition for a
quantity, for he had many operations to perform, his stock of the drug
was exhausted, and he was afraid, he said, that he should be compelled
to carve up the poor devils without putting them to sleep.

"Well?" inquired Delaherche.

"Well, they can't even tell whether the apothecaries have any or not!"

But the manufacturer was thinking of other things than chloroform.
"No, no," he continued. "Have they brought matters to a conclusion
yet? Have they signed the agreement with the Prussians?"

The major made a gesture of impatience. "There is nothing concluded,"
he cried. "It appears that those scoundrels are making demands out of
all reason. Ah, well; let 'em commence afresh, then, and we'll all
leave our bones here. That will be best!"

Delaherche's face grew very pale as he listened. "But are you quite
sure these things are so?"

"I was told them by those fellows of the municipal council, who are in
permanent session at the city hall. An officer had been dispatched
from the Sous-Prefecture to lay the whole affair before them."

And he went on to furnish additional details. The interview had taken
place at the Chateau de Bellevue, near Donchery, and the participants
were General de Wimpffen, General von Moltke, and Bismarck. A stern
and inflexible man was that von Moltke, a terrible man to deal with!
He began by demonstrating that he was perfectly acquainted with the
hopeless situation of the French army; it was destitute of ammunition
and subsistence, demoralization and disorder pervaded its ranks, it
was utterly powerless to break the iron circle by which it was girt
about; while on the other hand the German armies occupied commanding
positions from which they could lay the city in ashes in two hours.
Coldly, unimpassionedly, he stated his terms: the entire French army
to surrender arms and baggage and be treated as prisoners of war.
Bismarck took no part in the discussion beyond giving the general his
support, occasionally showing his teeth, like a big mastiff, inclined
to be pacific on the whole, but quite ready to rend and tear should
there be occasion for it. General de Wimpffen in reply protested with
all the force he had at his command against these conditions, the most
severe that ever were imposed on a vanquished army. He spoke of his
personal grief and ill-fortune, the bravery of the troops, the danger
there was in driving a proud nation to extremity; for three hours he
spoke with all the energy and eloquence of despair, alternately
threatening and entreating, demanding that they should content
themselves with interning their prisoners in France, or even in
Algeria; and in the end the only concession granted was, that the
officers might retain their swords, and those among them who should
enter into a solemn arrangement, attested by a written parole, to
serve no more during the war, might return to their homes. Finally,
the armistice to be prolonged until the next morning at ten o'clock;
if at that time the terms had not been accepted, the Prussian
batteries would reopen fire and the city would be burned.

"That's stupid!" exclaimed Delaherche; "they have no right to burn a
city that has done nothing to deserve it!"

The major gave him still further food for anxiety by adding that some
officers whom he had met at the Hotel de l'Europe were talking of
making a sortie _en masse_ just before daylight. An extremely excited
state of feeling had prevailed since the tenor of the German demands
had become known, and measures the most extravagant were proposed and
discussed. No one seemed to be deterred by the consideration that it
would be dishonorable to break the truce, taking advantage of the
darkness and giving the enemy no notification, and the wildest, most
visionary schemes were offered; they would resume the march on
Carignan, hewing their way through the Bavarians, which they could do
in the black night; they would recapture the plateau of Illy by a
surprise; they would raise the blockade of the Mezieres road, or, by a
determined, simultaneous rush, would force the German lines and throw
themselves into Belgium. Others there were, indeed, who, feeling the
hopelessness of their position, said nothing; they would have accepted
any terms, signed any paper, with a glad cry of relief, simply to have
the affair ended and done with.

"Good-night!" Bouroche said in conclusion. "I am going to try to sleep
a couple of hours; I need it badly."

When left by himself Delaherche could hardly breathe. What, could it
be true that they were going to fight again, were going to burn and
raze Sedan! It was certainly to be, soon as the morrow's sun should be
high enough upon the hills to light the horror of the sacrifice. And
once again he almost unconsciously climbed the steep ladder that led
to the roofs and found himself standing among the chimneys, at the
edge of the narrow terrace that overlooked the city; but at that hour
of the night the darkness was intense and he could distinguish
absolutely nothing amid the swirling waves of the Cimmerian sea that
lay beneath him. Then the buildings of the factory below were the
first objects which, one by one, disentangled themselves from the
shadows and stood out before his vision in indistinct masses, which he
had no difficulty in recognizing: the engine-house, the shops, the
drying rooms, the storehouses, and when he reflected that within
twenty-four hours there would remain of that imposing block of
buildings, his fortune and his pride, naught save charred timbers and
crumbling walls, he overflowed with pity for himself. He raised his
glance thence once more to the horizon, and sent it traveling in a
circuit around that profound, mysterious veil of blackness behind
which lay slumbering the menace of the morrow. To the south, in the
direction of Bazeilles, a few quivering little flames that rose
fitfully on the air told where had been the site of the unhappy
village, while toward the north the farmhouse in the wood of la
Garenne, that had been fired late in the afternoon, was burning still,
and the trees about were dyed of a deep red with the ruddy blaze.
Beyond the intermittent flashing of those two baleful fires no light
to be seen; the brooding silence unbroken by any sound save those
half-heard mutterings that pass through the air like harbingers of
evil; about them, everywhere, the unfathomable abyss, dead and
lifeless. Off there in the distance, very far away, perhaps, perhaps
upon the ramparts, was a sound of someone weeping. It was all in vain
that he strained his eyes to pierce the veil, to see something of
Liry, la Marfee, the batteries of Frenois, and Wadelincourt, that
encircling belt of bronze monsters of which he could instinctively
feel the presence there, with their outstretched necks and yawning,
ravenous muzzles. And as he recalled his glance and let it fall upon
the city that lay around and beneath him, he heard its frightened
breathing. It was not alone the unquiet slumbers of the soldiers who
had fallen in the streets, the blending of inarticulate sounds
produced by that gathering of guns, men, and horses; what he fancied
he could distinguish was the insomnia, the alarmed watchfulness of his
bourgeois neighbors, who, no more than he, could sleep, quivering with
feverish terrors, awaiting anxiously the coming of the day. They all
must be aware that the capitulation had not been signed, and were all
counting the hours, quaking at the thought that should it not be
signed the sole resource left them would be to go down into their
cellars and wait for their own walls to tumble in on them and crush
the life from their bodies. The voice of one in sore straits came up,
it seemed to him, from the Rue des Voyards, shouting: "Help! murder!"
amid the clash of arms. He bent over the terrace to look, then
remained aloft there in the murky thickness of the night where there
was not a star to cheer him, wrapped in such an ecstasy of terror that
the hairs of his body stood erect.

Below-stairs, at early daybreak, Maurice awoke upon his sofa. He was
sore and stiff as if he had been racked; he did not stir, but lay
looking listlessly at the windows, which gradually grew white under
the light of a cloudy dawn. The hateful memories of the day before all
came back to him with that distinctness that characterizes the
impressions of our first waking, how they had fought, fled,
surrendered. It all rose before his vision, down to the very least
detail, and he brooded with horrible anguish on the defeat, whose
reproachful echoes seemed to penetrate to the inmost fibers of his
being, as if he felt that all the responsibility of it was his. And he
went on to reason on the cause of the evil, analyzing himself,
reverting to his old habit of bitter and unavailing self-reproach. He
would have felt so brave, so glorious had victory remained with them!
And now, in defeat, weak and nervous as a woman, he once again gave
way to one of those overwhelming fits of despair in which the entire
world, seemed to him to be foundering. Nothing was left them; the end
of France was come. His frame was shaken by a storm of sobs, he wept
hot tears, and joining his hands, the prayers of his childhood rose to
his lips in stammering accents.

"O God! take me unto Thee! O God! take unto Thyself all those who are
weary and heavy-laden!"

Jean, lying on the floor wrapped in his bed-quilt, began to show some
signs of life. Finally, astonished at what he heard, he arose to a
sitting posture.

"What is the matter, youngster? Are you ill?" Then, with a glimmering
perception of how matters stood, he adopted a more paternal tone.
"Come, tell me what the matter is. You must not let yourself be
worried by such a little thing as this, you know."

"Ah!" exclaimed Maurice, "it is all up with us, _va_! we are Prussians
now, and we may as well make up our mind to it."

As the peasant, with the hard-headedness of the uneducated, expressed
surprise to hear him talk thus, he endeavored to make it clear to him
that, the race being degenerate and exhausted, it must disappear and
make room for a newer and more vigorous strain. But the other, with an
obstinate shake of the head, would not listen to the explanation.

"What! would you try to make me believe that my bit of land is no
longer mine? that I would permit the Prussians to take it from me
while I am alive and my two arms are left to me? Come, come!"

Then painfully, in such terms as he could command, he went on to tell
how affairs looked to him. They had received an all-fired good
basting, that was sure as sure could be! but they were not all dead
yet, he didn't believe; there were some left, and those would suffice
to rebuild the house if they only behaved themselves, working hard and
not drinking up what they earned. When a family has trouble, if its
members work and put by a little something, they will pull through, in
spite of all the bad luck in the world. And further, it is not such a
bad thing to get a good cuffing once in a way; it sets one thinking.
And, great heavens! if a man has something rotten about him, if he has
gangrene in his arms or legs that is spreading all the time, isn't it
better to take a hatchet and lop them off rather than die as he would
from cholera?

"All up, all up! Ah, no, no! no, no!" he repeated several times. "It
is not all up with me, I know very well it is not."

And notwithstanding his seedy condition and demoralized appearance,
his hair all matted and pasted to his head by the blood that had
flowed from his wound, he drew himself up defiantly, animated by a
keen desire to live, to take up the tools of his trade or put his hand
to the plow, in order, to use his own expression, to "rebuild the
house." He was of the old soil where reason and obstinacy grow side by
side, of the land of toil and thrift.

"All the same, though," he continued, "I am sorry for the Emperor.
Affairs seemed to be going on well; the farmers were getting a good
price for their grain. But surely it was bad judgment on his part to
allow himself to become involved in this business!"

Maurice, who was still in "the blues," spoke regretfully: "Ah, the
Emperor! I always liked him in my heart, in spite of my republican
ideas. Yes, I had it in the blood, on account of my grandfather, I
suppose. And now that that limb is rotten and we shall have to lop it
off, what is going to become of us?"

His eyes began to wander, and his voice and manner evinced such
distress that Jean became alarmed and was about to rise and go to him,
when Henriette came into the room. She had just awakened on hearing
the sound of voices in the room adjoining hers. The pale light of a
cloudy morning now illuminated the apartment.

"You come just in time to give him a scolding," he said, with an
affectation of liveliness. "He is not a good boy this morning."

But the sight of his sister's pale, sad face and the recollection of
her affliction had had a salutary effect on Maurice by determining a
sudden crisis of tenderness. He opened his arms and took her to his
bosom, and when she rested her head upon his shoulder, when he held
her locked in a close embrace, a feeling of great gentleness pervaded
him and they mingled their tears.

"Ah, my poor, poor darling, why have I not more strength and courage
to console you! for my sorrows are as nothing compared with yours.
That good, faithful Weiss, the husband who loved you so fondly! What
will become of you? You have always been the victim; always, and never
a murmur from your lips. Think of the sorrow I have already caused
you, and who can say that I shall not cause you still more in the
future!"

She was silencing him, placing her hand upon his mouth, when
Delaherche came into the room, beside himself with indignation. While
still on the terrace he had been seized by one of those uncontrollable
nervous fits of hunger that are aggravated by fatigue, and had
descended to the kitchen in quest of something warm to drink, where he
had found, keeping company with his cook, a relative of hers, a
carpenter of Bazeilles, whom she was in the act of treating to a bowl
of hot wine. This person, who had been one of the last to leave the
place while the conflagrations were at their height, had told him that
his dyehouse was utterly destroyed, nothing left of it but a heap of
ruins.

"The robbers, the thieves! Would you have believed it, _hein_?" he
stammered, addressing Jean and Maurice. "There is no hope left; they
mean to burn Sedan this morning as they burned Bazeilles yesterday.
I'm ruined, I'm ruined!" The scar that Henriette bore on her forehead
attracted his attention, and he remembered that he had not spoken to
her yet. "It is true, you went there, after all; you got that
wound-- Ah! poor Weiss!"

And seeing by the young woman's tears that she was acquainted with her
husband's fate, he abruptly blurted out the horrible bit of news that
the carpenter had communicated to him among the rest.

"Poor Weiss! it seems they burned him. Yes, after shooting all the
civilians who were caught with arms in their hands, they threw their
bodies into the flames of a burning house and poured petroleum over
them."

Henriette was horror-stricken as she listened. Her tears burst forth,
her frame was shaken by her sobs. My God, my God, not even the poor
comfort of going to claim her dear dead and give him decent sepulture;
his ashes were to be scattered by the winds of heaven! Maurice had
again clasped her in his arms and spoke to her endearingly, calling
her his poor Cinderella, beseeching her not to take the matter so to
heart, a brave woman as she was.

After a time, during which no word was spoken, Delaherche, who had
been standing at the window watching the growing day, suddenly turned
and addressed the two soldiers:

"By the way, I was near forgetting. What I came up here to tell you is
this: down in the courtyard, in the shed where the treasure chests
were deposited, there is an officer who is about to distribute the
money among the men, so as to keep the Prussians from getting it. You
had better go down, for a little money may be useful to you, that is,
provided we are all alive a few hours hence."

The advice was good, and Maurice and Jean acted on it, having first
prevailed on Henriette to take her brother's place on the sofa. If she
could not go to sleep again, she would at least be securing some
repose. As for Delaherche, he passed through the adjoining chamber,
where Gilberte with her tranquil, pretty face was slumbering still as
soundly as a child, neither the sound of conversation nor even
Henriette's sobs having availed to make her change her position. From
there he went to the apartment where his mother was watching at
Colonel de Vineuil's bedside, and thrust his head through the door;
the old lady was asleep in her fauteuil, while the colonel, his eyes
closed, was like a corpse. He opened them to their full extent and
asked:

"Well, it's all over, isn't it?"

Irritated by the question, which detained him at the very moment when
he thought he should be able to slip away unobserved, Delaherche gave
a wrathful look and murmured, sinking his voice:

"Oh, yes, all over! until it begins again! There is nothing signed."

The colonel went on in a voice scarcely higher than a whisper;
delirium was setting in.

"Merciful God, let me die before the end! I do not hear the guns. Why
have they ceased firing? Up there at Saint-Menges, at Fleigneux, we
have command of all the roads; should the Prussians dare turn Sedan
and attack us, we will drive them into the Meuse. The city is there,
an insurmountable obstacle between us and them; our positions, too,
are the stronger. Forward! the 7th corps will lead, the 12th will
protect the retreat--"

And his fingers kept drumming on the counterpane with a measured
movement, as if keeping time with the trot of the charger he was
riding in his vision. Gradually the motion became slower and slower as
his words became more indistinct and he sank off into slumber. It
ceased, and he lay motionless and still, as if the breath had left his
body.

"Lie still and rest," Delaherche whispered; "when I have news I will
return."

Then, having first assured himself that he had not disturbed his
mother's slumber, he slipped away and disappeared.

Jean and Maurice, on descending to the shed in the courtyard, had
found there an officer of the pay department, seated on a common
kitchen chair behind a little unpainted pine table, who, without pen,
ink, or paper, without taking receipts or indulging in formalities of
any kind, was dispensing fortunes. He simply stuck his hand into the
open mouth of the bags filled with bright gold pieces, and as the
sergeants of the 7th corps passed in line before him he filled their
_kepis_, never counting what he bestowed with such rapid liberality.
The understanding was that the sergeants were subsequently to divide
what they received with the surviving men of their half-sections. Each
of them received his portion awkwardly, as if it had been a ration of
meat or coffee, then stalked off in an embarrassed, self-conscious
sort of way, transferring the contents of the _kepi_ to his trousers'
pockets so as not to display his wealth to the world at large. And not
a word was spoken; there was not a sound to be heard but the
crystalline chink and rattle of the coin as it was received by those
poor devils, dumfounded to see the responsibility of such riches
thrust on them when there was not a place in the city where they could
purchase a loaf of bread or a quart of wine.

When Jean and Maurice appeared before him the officer, who was holding
outstretched his hand filled, as usual, with louis, drew it back.

"Neither of you fellows is a sergeant. No one except sergeants is
entitled to receive the money." Then, in haste to be done with his
task, he changed his mind: "Never mind, though; here, you corporal,
take this. Step lively, now. Next man!"

And he dropped the gold coins into the _kepi_ that Jean held out to
him. The latter, oppressed by the magnitude of the amount, nearly six
hundred francs, insisted that Maurice should take one-half. No one
could say what might happen; they might be parted from each other.

They made the division in the garden, before the ambulance, and when
they had concluded their financial business they entered, having
recognized on the straw near the entrance the drummer-boy of their
company, Bastian, a fat, good-natured little fellow, who had had the
ill-luck to receive a spent ball in the groin about five o'clock the
day before, when the battle was ended. He had been dying by inches for
the last twelve hours.

In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awakening, the
sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through them. Three more
patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it,
and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to
make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before
opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and
looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering,
where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their
straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night
before to clean up the room after the bloody work of the operations;
there were great splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a
bucket of water a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all
the world like a human brain; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken,
had been overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was the
parings and trimmings of the human butcher shop, the horrible waste
and refuse that ensues upon a day of slaughter, viewed in the cold,
raw light of dawn.

Bouroche, who, after a few hours of repose, had already resumed his
duties, stopped in front of the wounded drummer-boy, Bastian, then
passed on with an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. A hopeless
case; nothing to be done. The lad had opened his eyes, however, and
emerging from the comatose state in which he had been lying, was
eagerly watching a sergeant who, his _kepi_ filled with gold in his
hand, had come into the room to see if there were any of his men among
those poor wretches. He found two, and to each of them gave twenty
francs. Other sergeants came in, and the gold began to fall in showers
upon the straw, among the dying men. Bastian, who had managed to raise
himself, stretched out his two hands, even then shaking in the final
agony.

"Don't forget me! don't forget me!"

The sergeant would have passed on and gone his way, as Bouroche had
done. What good could money do there? Then yielding to a kindly
impulse, he threw some coins, never stopping to count them, into the
poor hands that were already cold.

"Don't forget me! don't forget me!"

Bastian fell backward on his straw. For a long time he groped with
stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which seemed to avoid him.
And thus he died.

"The gentleman has blown his candle out; good-night!" said a little,
black, wizened zouave, who occupied the next bed. "It's vexatious,
when one has the wherewithal to pay for wetting his whistle!"

He had his left foot done up in splints. Nevertheless he managed to
raise himself on his knees and elbows and in this posture crawl over
to the dead man, whom he relieved of all his money, forcing open his
hands, rummaging among his clothing and the folds of his capote. When
he got back to his place, noticing that he was observed, he simply
said:

"There's no use letting the stuff be wasted, is there?"

Maurice, sick at heart in that atmosphere of human distress and
suffering, had long since dragged Jean away. As they passed out
through the shed where the operations were performed they saw Bouroche
preparing to amputate the leg of a poor little man of twenty, without
chloroform, he having been unable to obtain a further supply of the
anaesthetic. And they fled, running, so as not to hear the poor boy's
shrieks.

Delaherche, who came in from the street just then, beckoned to them
and shouted:

"Come upstairs, come, quick! we are going to have breakfast. The cook
has succeeded in procuring some milk, and it is well she did, for we
are all in great need of something to warm our stomachs." And
notwithstanding his efforts to do so, he could not entirely repress
his delight and exultation. With a radiant countenance he added,
lowering his voice: "It is all right this time. General de Wimpffen
has set out again for the German headquarters to sign the
capitulation."

Ah, how much those words meant to him, what comfort there was in them,
what relief! his horrid nightmare dispelled, his property saved from
destruction, his daily life to be resumed, under changed conditions,
it is true, but still it was to go on, it was not to cease! It was
little Rose who had told him of the occurrences of the morning at the
Sous-Prefecture; the girl had come hastening through the streets, now
somewhat less choked than they had been, to obtain a supply of bread
from an aunt of hers who kept a baker's shop in the quarter; it was
striking nine o'clock. As early as eight General de Wimpffen had
convened another council of war, consisting of more than thirty
generals, to whom he related the results that had been reached so far,
the hard conditions imposed by the victorious foe, and his own
fruitless efforts to secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such
that his hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears.
He was still addressing the assemblage when a colonel of the German
staff presented himself, on behalf of General von Moltke, to remind
them that, unless a decision were arrived at by ten o'clock, their
guns would open fire on the city of Sedan. With this horrible
alternative before them the council could do nothing save authorize
the general to proceed once more to the Chateau of Bellevue and accept
the terms of the victors. He must have accomplished his mission by
that time, and the entire French army were prisoners of war.

When she had concluded her narrative Rose launched out into a detailed
account of the tremendous excitement the tidings had produced in the
city. At the Sous-Prefecture she had seen officers tear the epaulettes
from their shoulders, weeping meanwhile like children. Cavalrymen had
thrown their sabers from the Pont de Meuse into the river; an entire
regiment of cuirassiers had passed, each man tossing his blade over
the parapet and sorrowfully watching the water close over it. In the
streets many soldiers grasped their muskets by the barrel and smashed
them against a wall, while there were artillerymen who removed the
mechanism from the mitrailleuses and flung it into the sewer. Some
there were who buried or burned the regimental standards. In the Place
Turenne an old sergeant climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the
throng as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the
leaders, stigmatizing them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed as
if dazed, shedding big tears in silence, and others also, it must be
confessed (and it is probable that they were in the majority),
betrayed by their laughing eyes and pleased expression the
satisfaction they felt at the change in affairs. There was an end to
their suffering at last; they were prisoners of war, they could not be
obliged to fight any more! For so many days they had been distressed
by those long, weary marches, with never food enough to satisfy their
appetite! And then, too, they were the weaker; what use was there in
fighting? If their chiefs had betrayed them, had sold them to the
enemy, so much the better; it would be the sooner ended! It was such a
delicious thing to think of, that they were to have white bread to
eat, were to sleep between sheets!

As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in company with
Maurice and Jean, his mother called to him from above.

"Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel."

M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly
of the subject that filled his bewildered brain.

"The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what matters it!
See, they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of
Donchery; soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank
us there, while more of them are coming up along the valley of the
Givonne. The frontier is behind us; let us kill as many of them as we
can and cross it at a bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have
advised--"

At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. He recognized
him; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel the hallucination under
which he was laboring, and coming back to the terrible reality, he
asked for the third time:

"It is all over, is it not?"

The manufacturer explosively blurted out the expression of his
satisfaction; he could not restrain it.

"Ah, yes, God be praised! it is all over, completely over. The
capitulation must be signed by this time."

The colonel raised himself at a bound to a sitting posture,
notwithstanding his bandaged foot; he took his sword from the chair by
the bedside where it lay and made an attempt to break it, but his
hands trembled too violently, and the blade slipped from his fingers.

"Look out! he will cut himself!" Delaherche cried in alarm. "Take that
thing away from him; it is dangerous!"

Mme. Delaherche took possession of the sword. With a feeling of
compassionate respect for the poor colonel's grief and despair she did
not conceal it, as her son bade her do, but with a single vigorous
effort snapped it across her knee, with a strength of which she
herself would never have supposed her poor old hands capable. The
colonel laid himself down again, casting a look of extreme gentleness
upon his old friend, who went back to her chair and seated herself in
her usual rigid attitude.

In the dining room the cook had meantime served bowls of hot coffee
and milk for the entire party. Henriette and Gilberte had awakened,
the latter, completely restored by her long and refreshing slumber,
with bright eyes and smiling face; she embraced most tenderly her
friend, whom she pitied, she said, from the bottom of her heart.
Maurice seated himself beside his sister, while Jean, who was unused
to polite society, but could not decline the invitation that was
extended to him, was Delaherche's right-hand neighbor. It was Mme.
Delaherche's custom not to come to the table with the family; a
servant carried her a bowl, which she drank while sitting by the
colonel. The party of five, however, who sat down together, although
they commenced their meal in silence, soon became cheerful and
talkative. Why should they not rejoice and be glad to find themselves
there, safe and sound, with food before them to satisfy their hunger,
when the country round about was covered with thousands upon thousands
of poor starving wretches? In the cool, spacious dining room the
snow-white tablecloth was a delight to the eye and the steaming _cafe
au lait_ seemed delicious.

They conversed, Delaherche, who had recovered his assurance and was
again the wealthy manufacturer, the condescending patron courting
popularity, severe only toward those who failed to succeed, spoke of
Napoleon III., whose face as he saw it last continued to haunt his
memory. He addressed himself to Jean, having that simple-minded young
man as his neighbor. "Yes, sir, the Emperor has deceived me, and I
don't hesitate to say so. His henchmen may put in the plea of
mitigating circumstances, but it won't go down, sir; he is evidently
the first, the only cause of our misfortunes."

He had quite forgotten that only a few months before he had been an
ardent Bonapartist and had labored to ensure the success of the
plebiscite, and now he who was henceforth to be known as the Man of
Sedan was not even worthy to be pitied; he ascribed to him every known
iniquity.

"A man of no capacity, as everyone is now compelled to admit; but let
that pass, I say nothing of that. A visionary, a theorist, an
unbalanced mind, with whom affairs seemed to succeed as long as he had
luck on his side. And there's no use, don't you see, sir, in
attempting to work on our sympathies and excite our commiseration by
telling us that he was deceived, that the opposition refused him the
necessary grants of men and money. It is he who has deceived us, he
whose crimes and blunders have landed us in the horrible muddle where
we are."

Maurice, who preferred to say nothing on the subject, could not help
smiling, while Jean, embarrassed by the political turn the
conversation had taken and fearful lest he might make some ill-timed
remark, simply replied:

"They say he is a brave man, though."

But those few words, modestly expressed, fairly made Delaherche jump.
All his past fear and alarm, all the mental anguish he had suffered,
burst from his lips in a cry of concentrated passion, closely allied
to hatred.

"A brave man, forsooth; and what does that amount to! Are you aware,
sir, that my factory was struck three times by Prussian shells, and
that it is no fault of the Emperor's that it was not burned! Are you
aware that I, I shall lose a hundred thousand francs by this idiotic
business! No, no; France invaded, pillaged, and laid waste, our
industries compelled to shut down, our commerce ruined; it is a little
too much, I tell you! One brave man like that is quite sufficient; may
the Lord preserve us from any more of them! He is down in the blood
and mire, and there let him remain!"

And he made a forcible gesture with his closed fist as if thrusting
down and holding under the water some poor wretch who was struggling
to save himself, then finished his coffee, smacking his lips like a
true gourmand. Gilberte waited on Henriette as if she had been a
child, laughing a little involuntary laugh when the latter made some
exhibition of absent-mindedness. And when at last the coffee had all
been drunk they still lingered on in the peaceful quiet of the great
cool dining room.

And at that same hour Napoleon III. was in the weaver's lowly cottage
on the Donchery road. As early as five o'clock in the morning he had
insisted on leaving the Sous-Prefecture; he felt ill at ease in Sedan,
which was at once a menace and a reproach to him, and moreover he
thought he might, in some measure, alleviate the sufferings of his
tender heart by obtaining more favorable terms for his unfortunate
army. His object was to have a personal interview with the King of
Prussia. He had taken his place in a hired caleche and been driven
along the broad highway, with its row of lofty poplars on either side,
and this first stage of his journey into exile, accomplished in the
chill air of early dawn, must have reminded him forcibly of the
grandeur that had been his and that he was putting behind him forever.
It was on this road that he had his encounter with Bismarck, who came
hurrying to meet him in an old cap and coarse, greased boots, with the
sole object of keeping him occupied and preventing him from seeing the
King until the capitulation should have been signed. The King was
still at Vendresse, some nine miles away. Where was he to go? What
roof would afford him shelter while he waited? In his own country, so
far away, the Palace of the Tuileries had disappeared from his sight,
swallowed up in the bosom of a storm-cloud, and he was never to see it
more. Sedan seemed already to have receded into the distance, leagues
and leagues, and to be parted from him by a river of blood. In France
there were no longer imperial chateaus, nor official residences, nor
even a chimney-nook in the house of the humblest functionary, where he
would have dared to enter and claim hospitality. And it was in the
house of the weaver that he determined to seek shelter, the
squalid cottage that stood close to the roadside, with its scanty
kitchen-garden inclosed by a hedge and its front of a single story
with little forbidding windows. The room above-stairs was simply
whitewashed and had a tiled floor; the only furniture was a common
pine table and two straw-bottomed chairs. He spent two hours there, at
first in company with Bismarck, who smiled to hear him speak of
generosity, after that alone in silent misery, flattening his ashy
face against the panes, taking his last look at French soil and at the
Meuse, winding in and out, so beautiful, among the broad fertile
fields.


Then the next day and the days that came after were other wretched
stages of that journey; the Chateau of Bellevue, a pretty bourgeois
retreat overlooking the river, where he rested that night, where he
shed tears after his interview with King William; the sorrowful
departure, that most miserable flight in a hired caleche over remote
roads to the north of the city, which he avoided, not caring to face
the wrath of the vanquished troops and the starving citizens, making a
wide circuit over cross-roads by Floing, Fleigneux, and Illy and
crossing the stream on a bridge of boats, laid down by the Prussians
at Iges; the tragic encounter, the story of which has been so often
told, that occurred on the corpse-cumbered plateau of Illy: the
miserable Emperor, whose state was such that his horse could not be
allowed to trot, had sunk under some more than usually violent attack
of his complaint, mechanically smoking, perhaps, his everlasting
cigarette, when a band of haggard, dusty, blood-stained prisoners, who
were being conducted from Fleigneux to Sedan, were forced to leave the
road to let the carriage pass and stood watching it from the ditch;
those who were at the head of the line merely eyed him in silence;
presently a hoarse, sullen murmur began to make itself heard, and
finally, as the caleche proceeded down the line, the men burst out
with a storm of yells and cat-calls, shaking their fists and calling
down maledictions on the head of him who had been their ruler. After
that came the interminable journey across the battlefield, as far as
Givonne, amid scenes of havoc and devastation, amid the dead, who lay
with staring eyes upturned that seemed to be full of menace; came,
too, the bare, dreary fields, the great silent forest, then the
frontier, running along the summit of a ridge, marked only by a stone,
facing a wooden post that seemed ready to fall, and beyond the soil of
Belgium, the end of all, with its road bordered with gloomy hemlocks
descending sharply into the narrow valley.

And that first night of exile, that he spent at a common inn, the
Hotel de la Poste at Bouillon, what a night it was! When the Emperor
showed himself at his window in deference to the throng of French
refugees and sight-seers that filled the place, he was greeted with a
storm of hisses and hostile murmurs. The apartment assigned him, the
three windows of which opened on the public square and on the Semoy,
was the typical tawdry bedroom of the provincial inn with its
conventional furnishings: the chairs covered with crimson damask, the
mahogany _armoire a glace_, and on the mantel the imitation bronze
clock, flanked by a pair of conch shells and vases of artificial
flowers under glass covers. On either side of the door was a little
single bed, to one of which the wearied aide-de-camp betook himself at
nine o'clock and was immediately wrapped in soundest slumber. On the
other the Emperor, to whom the god of sleep was less benignant, tossed
almost the whole night through, and if he arose to try to quiet his
excited nerves by walking, the sole distraction that his eyes
encountered was a pair of engravings that were hung to right and left
of the chimney, one depicting Rouget de Lisle singing the
Marseillaise, the other a crude representation of the Last Judgment,
the dead rising from their graves at the sound of the Archangel's
trump, the resurrection of the victims of the battlefield, about to
appear before their God to bear witness against their rulers.

The imperial baggage train, cause in its day of so much scandal, had
been left behind at Sedan, where it rested in ignominious hiding
behind the Sous-Prefet's lilac bushes. It puzzled the authorities
somewhat to devise means for ridding themselves of what was to them a
_bete noire_, for getting it away from the city unseen by the
famishing multitude, upon whom the sight of its flaunt

Part Third



                                 I.

All the long, long day of the battle Silvine, up on Remilly hill,
where Father Fouchard's little farm was situated, but her heart and
soul absent with Honore amid the dangers of the conflict, never once
took her eyes from off Sedan, where the guns were roaring. The
following day, moreover, her anxiety was even greater still, being
increased by her inability to obtain any definite tidings, for the
Prussians who were guarding the roads in the vicinity refused to
answer questions, as much from reasons of policy as because they knew
but very little themselves. The bright sun of the day before was no
longer visible, and showers had fallen, making the valley look less
cheerful than usual in the wan light.

Toward evening Father Fouchard, who was also haunted by a sensation of
uneasiness in the midst of his studied taciturnity, was standing on
his doorstep reflecting on the probable outcome of events. His son had
no place in his thoughts, but he was speculating how he best might
convert the misfortunes of others into fortune for himself, and as he
revolved these considerations in his mind he noticed a tall, strapping
young fellow, dressed in the peasant's blouse, who had been strolling
up and down the road for the last minute or so, looking as if he did
not know what to do with himself. His astonishment on recognizing him
was so great that he called him aloud by name, notwithstanding that
three Prussians happened to be passing at the time.

"Why, Prosper! Is that you?"

The chasseur d'Afrique imposed silence on him with an emphatic
gesture; then, coming closer, he said in an undertone:

"Yes, it is I. I have had enough of fighting for nothing, and I cut my
lucky. Say, Father Fouchard, you don't happen to be in need of a
laborer on your farm, do you?"

All the old man's prudence came back to him in a twinkling. He _was_
looking for someone to help him, but it would be better not to say so
at once.

"A lad on the farm? faith, no--not just now. Come in, though, all the
same, and have a glass. I shan't leave you out on the road when you're
in trouble, that's sure."

Silvine, in the kitchen, was setting the pot of soup on the fire,
while little Charlot was hanging by her skirts, frolicking and
laughing. She did not recognize Prosper at first, although they had
formerly served together in the same household, and it was not until
she came in, bringing a bottle of wine and two glasses, that she
looked him squarely in the face. She uttered a cry of joy and
surprise; her sole thought was of Honore.

"Ah, you were there, weren't you? Is Honore all right?"

Prosper's answer was ready to slip from his tongue; he hesitated. For
the last two days he had been living in a dream, among a rapid
succession of strange, ill-defined events which left behind them no
precise memory, as a man starts, half-awakened, from a slumber peopled
with fantastic visions. It was true, doubtless, he believed he had
seen Honore lying upon a cannon, dead, but he would not have cared to
swear to it; what use is there in afflicting people when one is not
certain?

"Honore," he murmured, "I don't know, I couldn't say."

She continued to press him with her questions, looking at him
steadily.

"You did not see him, then?"

He waved his hands before him with a slow, uncertain motion and an
expressive shake of the head.

"How can you expect one to remember! There were such lots of things,
such lots of things. Look you, of all that d-----d battle, if I was to
die for it this minute, I could not tell you that much--no, not even
the place where I was. I believe men get to be no better than idiots,
'pon my word I do!" And tossing off a glass of wine, he sat gloomily
silent, his vacant eyes turned inward on the dark recesses of his
memory. "All that I remember is that it was beginning to be dark when
I recovered consciousness. I went down while we were charging, and
then the sun was very high. I must have been lying there for hours, my
right leg caught under poor old Zephyr, who had received a piece of
shell in the middle of his chest. There was nothing to laugh at in my
position, I can tell you; the dead comrades lying around me in piles,
not a living soul in sight, and the certainty that I should have to
kick the bucket too unless someone came to put me on my legs again.
Gently, gently, I tried to free my leg, but it was no use; Zephyr's
weight must have been fully up to that of the five hundred thousand
devils. He was warm still. I patted him, I spoke to him, saying all
the pretty things I could think of, and here's a thing, do you see,
that I shall never forget as long as I live: he opened his eyes and
made an effort to raise his poor old head, which was resting on the
ground beside my own. Then we had a talk together: 'Poor old fellow,'
says I, 'I don't want to say a word to hurt your feelings, but you
must want to see me croak with you, you hold me down so hard.' Of
course he didn't say he did; he couldn't, but for all that I could
read in his great sorrowful eyes how bad he felt to have to part with
me. And I can't say how the thing happened, whether he intended it or
whether it was part of the death struggle, but all at once he gave
himself a great shake that sent him rolling away to one side. I was
enabled to get on my feet once more, but ah! in what a pickle; my leg
was swollen and heavy as a leg of lead. Never mind, I took Zephyr's
head in my arms and kept on talking to him, telling him all the kind
thoughts I had in my heart, that he was a good horse, that I loved him
dearly, that I should never forget him. He listened to me, he seemed
to be so pleased! Then he had another long convulsion, and so he died,
with his big vacant eyes fixed on me till the last. It is very
strange, though, and I don't suppose anyone will believe me; still, it
is the simple truth that great, big tears were standing in his eyes.
Poor old Zephyr, he cried just like a man--"

At this point Prosper's emotion got the better of him; tears choked
his utterance and he was obliged to break off. He gulped down another
glass of wine and went on with his narrative in disjointed, incomplete
sentences. It kept growing darker and darker, until there was only a
narrow streak of red light on the horizon at the verge of the
battlefield; the shadows of the dead horses seemed to be projected
across the plain to an infinite distance. The pain and stiffness in
his leg kept him from moving; he must have remained for a long time
beside Zephyr. Then, with his fears as an incentive, he had managed to
get on his feet and hobble away; it was an imperative necessity to him
not to be alone, to find comrades who would share his fears with him
and make them less. Thus from every nook and corner of the
battlefield, from hedges and ditches and clumps of bushes, the wounded
who had been left behind dragged themselves painfully in search of
companionship, forming when possible little bands of four or five,
finding it less hard to agonize and die in the company of their
fellow-beings. In the wood of la Garenne Prosper fell in with two men
of the 43d regiment; they were not wounded, but had burrowed in the
underbrush like rabbits, waiting for the coming of the night. When
they learned that he was familiar with the roads they communicated to
him their plan, which was to traverse the woods under cover of the
darkness and make their escape into Belgium. At first he declined to
share their undertaking, for he would have preferred to proceed direct
to Remilly, where he was certain to find a refuge, but where was he to
obtain the blouse and trousers that he required as a disguise? to say
nothing of the impracticability of getting past the numerous Prussian
pickets and outposts that filled the valley all the way from la
Garenne to Remilly. He therefore ended by consenting to act as guide
to the two comrades. His leg was less stiff than it had been, and they
were so fortunate as to secure a loaf of bread at a farmhouse. Nine
o'clock was striking from the church of a village in the distance as
they resumed their way. The only point where they encountered any
danger worth mentioning was at la Chapelle, where they fell directly
into the midst of a Prussian advanced post before they were aware of
it; the enemy flew to arms and blazed away into the darkness, while
they, throwing themselves on the ground and alternately crawling and
running until the fire slackened, ultimately regained the shelter of
the trees. After that they kept to the woods, observing the utmost
vigilance. At a bend in the road, they crept up behind an out-lying
picket and, leaping on his back, buried a knife in his throat. Then
the road was free before them and they no longer had to observe
precaution; they went ahead, laughing and whistling. It was about
three in the morning when they reached a little Belgian village, where
they knocked up a worthy farmer, who at once opened his barn to them;
they snuggled among the hay and slept soundly until morning.

The sun was high in the heavens when Prosper awoke. As he opened his
eyes and looked about him, while the two comrades were still snoring,
he beheld their entertainer engaged in hitching a horse to a great
carriole loaded with bread, rice, coffee, sugar, and all sorts of
eatables, the whole concealed under sacks of charcoal, and a little
questioning elicited from the good man the fact that he had two
married daughters living at Raucourt, in France, whom the passage of
the Bavarian troops had left entirely destitute, and that the
provisions in the carriole were intended for them. He had procured
that very morning the safe-conduct that was required for the journey.
Prosper was immediately seized by an uncontrollable desire to take a
seat in that carriole and return to the country that he loved so and
for which his heart was yearning with such a violent nostalgia. It was
perfectly simple; the farmer would have to pass through Remilly to
reach Raucourt; he would alight there. The matter was arranged in
three minutes; he obtained a loan of the longed-for blouse and
trousers, and the farmer gave out, wherever they stopped, that he was
his servant; so that about six o'clock he got down in front of the
church, not having been stopped more than two or three times by the
German outposts.

They were all silent for a while, then: "No, I had enough of it!" said
Prosper. "If they had but set us at work that amounted to something,
as out there in Africa! but this going up the hill only to come down
again, the feeling that one is of no earthly use to anyone, that is no
kind of a life at all. And then I should be lonely, now that poor
Zephyr is dead; all that is left me to do is to go to work on a farm.
That will be better than living among the Prussians as a prisoner,
don't you think so? You have horses, Father Fouchard; try me, and see
whether or not I will love them and take good care of them."

The old fellow's eyes gleamed, but he touched glasses once more with
the other and concluded the arrangement without any evidence of
eagerness.

"Very well; I wish to be of service to you as far as lies in my power;
I will take you. As regards the question of wages, though, you must
not speak of it until the war is over, for really I am not in need of
anyone and the times are too hard."

Silvine, who had remained seated with Charlot on her lap, had never
once taken her eyes from Prosper's face. When she saw him rise with
the intention of going to the stable and making immediate acquaintance
with its four-footed inhabitants, she again asked:

"Then you say you did not see Honore?"

The question repeated thus abruptly made him start, as if it had
suddenly cast a flood of light in upon an obscure corner of his
memory. He hesitated for a little, but finally came to a decision and
spoke.

"See here, I did not wish to grieve you just now, but I don't believe
Honore will ever come back."

"Never come back--what do you mean?"

"Yes, I believe that the Prussians did his business for him. I saw him
lying across his gun, his head erect, with a great wound just beneath
the heart."

There was silence in the room. Silvine's pallor was frightful to
behold, while Father Fouchard displayed his interest in the narrative
by replacing upon the table his glass, into which he had just poured
what wine remained in the bottle.

"Are you quite certain?" she asked in a choking voice.

"_Dame_! as certain as one can be of a thing he has seen with his own
two eyes. It was on a little hillock, with three trees in a group
right beside it; it seems to me I could go to the spot blindfolded."

If it was true she had nothing left to live for. That lad who had been
so good to her, who had forgiven her her fault, had plighted his troth
and was to marry her when he came home at the end of the campaign! and
they had robbed her of him, they had murdered him, and he was lying
out there on the battlefield with a wound under the heart! She had
never known how strong her love for him had been, and now the thought
that she was to see him no more, that he who was hers was hers no
longer, aroused her almost to a pitch of madness and made her forget
her usual tranquil resignation. She set Charlot roughly down upon the
floor, exclaiming:

"Good! I shall not believe that story until I see the evidence of it,
until I see it with my own eyes. Since you know the spot you shall
conduct me to it. And if it is true, if we find him, we will bring him
home with us."

Her tears allowed her to say no more; she bowed her head upon the
table, her frame convulsed by long-drawn, tumultuous sobs that shook
her from head to foot, while the child, not knowing what to make of
such unusual treatment at his mother's hands, also commenced to weep
violently. She caught him up and pressed him to her heart, with
distracted, stammering words:

"My poor child! my poor child!"

Consternation was depicted on old Fouchard's face. Appearances
notwithstanding, he did love his son, after a fashion of his own.
Memories of the past came back to him, of days long vanished, when his
wife was still living and Honore was a boy at school, and two big
tears appeared in his small red eyes and trickled down his old
leathery cheeks. He had not wept before in more than ten years. In the
end he grew angry at the thought of that son who was his and upon whom
he was never to set eyes again; he rapped out an oath or two.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ it is provoking all the same, to have only one boy,
and that he should be taken from you!"

When their agitation had in a measure subsided, however, Fouchard was
annoyed that Silvine still continued to talk of going to search for
Honore's body out there on the battlefield. She made no further noisy
demonstration, but harbored her purpose with the dogged silence of
despair, and he failed to recognize in her the docile, obedient
servant who was wont to perform her daily tasks without a murmur; her
great, submissive eyes, in which lay the chief beauty of her face, had
assumed an expression of stern determination, while beneath her thick
brown hair her cheeks and brow wore a pallor that was like death. She
had torn off the red kerchief that was knotted about her neck, and was
entirely in black, like a widow in her weeds. It was all in vain that
he tried to impress on her the difficulties of the undertaking, the
dangers she would be subjected to, the little hope there was of
recovering the corpse; she did not even take the trouble to answer
him, and he saw clearly that unless he seconded her in her plan she
would start out alone and do some unwise thing, and this aspect of the
case worried him on account of the complications that might arise
between him and the Prussian authorities. He therefore finally decided
to go and lay the matter before the mayor of Remilly, who was a kind
of distant cousin of his, and they two between them concocted a story:
Silvine was to pass as the actual widow of Honore, Prosper became her
brother, so that the Bavarian colonel, who had his quarters in the
Hotel of the Maltese Cross down in the lower part of the village, made
no difficulty about granting a pass which authorized the brother and
sister to bring home the body of the husband, provided they could find
it. By this time it was night; the only concession that could be
obtained from the young woman was that she would delay starting on her
expedition until morning.

When morning came old Fouchard could not be prevailed on to allow one
of his horses to be taken, fearing he might never set eyes on it
again. What assurance had he that the Prussians would not confiscate
the entire equipage? At last he consented, though with very bad grace,
to loan her the donkey, a little gray animal, and his cart, which,
though small, would be large enough to hold a dead man. He gave minute
instructions to Prosper, who had had a good night's sleep, but was
anxious and thoughtful at the prospect of the expedition now that,
being rested and refreshed, he attempted to remember something of the
battle. At the last moment Silvine went and took the counterpane from
her own bed, folding and spreading it on the floor of the cart. Just
as she was about to start she came running back to embrace Charlot.

"I entrust him to your care, Father Fouchard; keep an eye on him and
see that he doesn't get hold of the matches."

"Yes, yes; never fear!"

They were late in getting off; it was near seven o'clock when the
little procession, the donkey, hanging his head and drawing the narrow
cart, leading, descended the steep hill of Remilly. It had rained
heavily during the night, and the roads were become rivers of mud;
great lowering clouds hung in the heavens, imparting an air of
cheerless desolation to the scene.

Prosper, wishing to save all the distance he could, had determined on
taking the route that lay through the city of Sedan, but before they
reached Pont-Maugis a Prussian outpost halted the cart and held it for
over an hour, and finally, after their pass had been referred, one
after another, to four or five officials, they were told they might
resume their journey, but only on condition of taking the longer,
roundabout route by way of Bazeilles, to do which they would have to
turn into a cross-road on their left. No reason was assigned; their
object was probably to avoid adding to the crowd that encumbered the
streets of the city. When Silvine crossed the Meuse by the railroad
bridge, that ill-starred bridge that the French had failed to destroy
and which, moreover, had been the cause of such slaughter among the
Bavarians, she beheld the corpse of an artilleryman floating lazily
down with the sluggish current. It caught among some rushes near the
bank, hung there a moment, then swung clear and started afresh on its
downward way.

Bazeilles, through which they passed from end to end at a slow walk,
afforded a spectacle of ruin and desolation, the worst that war can
perpetrate when it sweeps with devastating force, like a cyclone,
through a land. The dead had been removed; there was not a single
corpse to be seen in the village streets, and the rain had washed away
the blood; pools of reddish water were to be seen here and there in
the roadway, with repulsive, frowzy-looking debris, matted masses that
one could not help associating in his mind with human hair. But what
shocked and saddened one more than all the rest was the ruin that was
visible everywhere; that charming village, only three days before so
bright and smiling, with its pretty houses standing in their well-kept
gardens, now razed, demolished, annihilated, nothing left of all its
beauties save a few smoke-stained walls. The church was burning still,
a huge pyre of smoldering beams and girders, whence streamed
continually upward a column of dense black smoke that, spreading in
the heavens, overshadowed the city like a gigantic funeral pall.
Entire streets had been swept away, not a house left on either side,
nor any trace that houses had ever been there, save the calcined
stone-work lying in the gutter in a pasty mess of soot and ashes, the
whole lost in the viscid, ink-black mud of the thoroughfare. Where
streets intersected the corner houses were razed down to their
foundations, as if they had been carried away bodily by the fiery
blast that blew there. Others had suffered less; one in particular,
owing to some chance, had escaped almost without injury, while its
neighbors on either hand, literally torn to pieces by the iron hail,
were like gaunt skeletons. An unbearable stench was everywhere,
noticeable, the nauseating odor that follows a great fire, aggravated
by the penetrating smell of petroleum, that had been used without
stint upon floors and walls. Then, too, there was the pitiful, mute
spectacle of the household goods that the people had endeavored to
save, the poor furniture that had been thrown from windows and smashed
upon the sidewalk, crazy tables with broken legs, presses with cloven
sides and split doors, linen, also, torn and soiled, that was trodden
under foot; all the sorry crumbs, the unconsidered trifles of the
pillage, of which the destruction was being completed by the
dissolving rain. Through the breach in a shattered house-front a
clock was visible, securely fastened high up on the wall above the
mantel-shelf, that had miraculously escaped intact.

"The beasts! the pigs!" growled Prosper, whose blood, though he was no
longer a soldier, ran hot at the sight of such atrocities.

He doubled his fists, and Silvine, who was white as a ghost, had to
exert the influence of her glance to calm him every time they
encountered a sentry on their way. The Bavarians had posted sentinels
near all the houses that were still burning, and it seemed as if those
men, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, were guarding the fires
in order that the flames might finish their work. They drove away the
mere sightseers who strolled about in the vicinity, and the persons
who had an interest there as well, employing first a menacing gesture,
and in case that was not sufficient, uttering a single brief, guttural
word of command. A young woman, her hair streaming about her
shoulders, her gown plastered with mud, persisted in hanging about the
smoking ruins of a little house, of which she desired to search the
hot ashes, notwithstanding the prohibition of the sentry. The report
ran that the woman's little baby had been burned with the house. And
all at once, as the Bavarian was roughly thrusting her aside with his
heavy hand, she turned on him, vomiting in his face all her despair
and rage, lashing him with taunts and insults that were redolent of
the gutter, with obscene words which likely afforded her some
consolation in her grief and distress. He could not have understood
her, for he drew back a pace or two, eying her with apprehension.
Three comrades came running up and relieved him of the fury, whom they
led away screaming at the top of her voice. Before the ruins of
another house a man and two little girls, all three so weary and
miserable that they could not stand, lay on the bare ground, sobbing
as if their hearts would break; they had seen their little all go up
in smoke and flame, and had no place to go, no place to lay their
head. But just then a patrol went by, dispersing the knots of idlers,
and the street again assumed its deserted aspect, peopled only by the
stern, sullen sentries, vigilant to see that their iniquitous
instructions were enforced.

"The beasts! the pigs!" Prosper repeated in a stifled voice. "How I
should like, oh! how I should like to kill a few of them!"

Silvine again made him be silent. She shuddered. A dog, shut up in a
carriage-house that the flames had spared and forgotten there for the
last two days, kept up an incessant, continuous howling, in a key so
inexpressibly mournful that a brooding horror seemed to pervade the
low, leaden sky, from which a drizzling rain had now begun to fall.
They were then just abreast of the park of Montivilliers, and there
they witnessed a most horrible sight. Three great covered carts, those
carts that pass along the streets in the early morning before it is
light and collect the city's filth and garbage, stood there in a row,
loaded with corpses; and now, instead of refuse, they were being
filled with dead, stopping wherever there was a body to be loaded,
then going on again with the heavy rumbling of their wheels to make
another stop further on, threading Bazeilles in its every nook and
corner until their hideous cargo overflowed. They were waiting now
upon the public road to be driven to the place of their discharge, the
neighboring potter's field. Feet were seen projecting from the mass
into the air. A head, half-severed from its trunk, hung over the side
of the vehicle. When the three lumbering vans started again, swaying
and jolting over the inequalities of the road, a long, white hand was
hanging outward from one of them; the hand caught upon the wheel, and
little by little the iron tire destroyed it, eating through skin and
flesh clean down to the bones.

By the time they reached Balan the rain had ceased, and Prosper
prevailed on Silvine to eat a bit of the bread he had had the
foresight to bring with them. When they were near Sedan, however, they
were brought to a halt by another Prussian post, and this time the
consequences threatened to be serious; the officer stormed at them,
and even refused to restore their pass, which he declared, in
excellent French, to be a forgery. Acting on his orders some soldiers
had run the donkey and the little cart under a shed. What were they to
do? were they to be forced to abandon their undertaking? Silvine was
in despair, when all at once she thought of M. Dubreuil, Father
Fouchard's relative, with whom she had some slight acquaintance and
whose place, the Hermitage, was only a few hundred yards distant, on
the summit of the eminence that overlooked the faubourg. Perhaps he
might have some influence with the military, seeing that he was a
citizen of the place. As they were allowed their freedom,
conditionally upon abandoning their equipage, she left the donkey and
cart under the shed and bade Prosper accompany her. They ascended the
hill on a run, found the gate of the Hermitage standing wide open, and
on turning into the avenue of secular elms beheld a spectacle that
filled them with amazement.

"The devil!" said Prosper; "there are a lot of fellows who seem to be
taking things easy!"

On the fine-crushed gravel of the terrace, at the bottom of the steps
that led to the house, was a merry company. Arranged in order around a
marble-topped table were a sofa and some easy-chairs in sky-blue
satin, forming a sort of fantastic open-air drawing-room, which must
have been thoroughly soaked by the rain of the preceding day. Two
zouaves, seated in a lounging attitude at either end of the sofa,
seemed to be laughing boisterously. A little infantryman, who occupied
one of the fauteuils, his head bent forward, was apparently holding
his sides to keep them from splitting. Three others were seated in a
negligent pose, their elbows resting on the arms of their chairs,
while a chasseur had his hand extended as if in the act of taking a
glass from the table. They had evidently discovered the location of
the cellar, and were enjoying themselves.

"But how in the world do they happen to be here?" murmured Prosper,
whose stupefaction increased as he drew nearer to them. "Have the
rascals forgotten there are Prussians about?"

But Silvine, whose eyes had dilated far beyond their natural size,
suddenly uttered an exclamation of horror. The soldiers never moved
hand or foot; they were stone dead. The two zouaves were stiff and
cold; they both had had the face shot away, the nose was gone, the
eyes were torn from their sockets. If there appeared to be a laugh on
the face of him who was holding his sides, it was because a bullet had
cut a great furrow through the lower portion of his countenance,
smashing all his teeth. The spectacle was an unimaginably horrible
one, those poor wretches laughing and conversing in their attitude of
manikins, with glassy eyes and open mouths, when Death had laid his
icy hand on them and they were never more to know the warmth and
motion of life. Had they dragged themselves, still living, to that
place, so as to die in one another's company? or was it not rather a
ghastly prank of the Prussians, who had collected the bodies and
placed them in a circle about the table, out of derision for the
traditional gayety of the French nation?

"It's a queer start, though, all the same," muttered Prosper, whose
face was very pale. And casting a look at the other dead who lay
scattered about the avenue, under the trees and on the turf, some
thirty brave fellows, among them Lieutenant Rochas, riddled with
wounds and surrounded still by the shreds of the flag, he added
seriously and with great respect: "There must have been some very
pretty fighting about here! I don't much believe we shall find the
bourgeois for whom you are looking."

Silvine entered the house, the doors and windows of which had been
battered in and afforded admission to the damp, cold air from without.
It was clear enough that there was no one there; the masters must have
taken their departure before the battle. She continued to prosecute
her search, however, and had entered the kitchen, when she gave
utterance to another cry of terror. Beneath the sink were two bodies,
fast locked in each other's arms in mortal embrace, one of them a
zouave, a handsome, brown-bearded man, the other a huge Prussian with
red hair. The teeth of the former were set in the latter's cheek,
their arms, stiff in death, had not relaxed their terrible hug,
binding the pair with such a bond of everlasting hate and fury that
ultimately it was found necessary to bury them in a common grave.

Then Prosper made haste to lead Silvine away, since they could
accomplish nothing in that house where Death had taken up his abode,
and upon their return, despairing, to the post where the donkey and
cart had been detained, it so chanced that they found, in company with
the officer who had treated them so harshly, a general on his way to
visit the battlefield. This gentleman requested to be allowed to see
the pass, which he examined attentively and restored to Silvine; then,
with an expression of compassion on his face, he gave directions that
the poor woman should have her donkey returned to her and be allowed
to go in quest of her husband's body. Stopping only long enough to
thank her benefactor, she and her companion, with the cart trundling
after them, set out for the Fond de Givonne, obedient to the
instructions that were again given them not to pass through Sedan.

After that they bent their course to the left in order to reach the
plateau of Illy by the road that crosses the wood of la Garenne, but
here again they were delayed; twenty times they nearly abandoned all
hope of getting through the wood, so numerous were the obstacles they
encountered. At every step their way was barred by huge trees that had
been laid low by the artillery fire, stretched on the ground like
mighty giants fallen. It was the part of the forest that had suffered
so severely from the cannonade, where the projectiles had plowed their
way through the secular growths as they might have done through a
square of the Old Guard, meeting in either case with the sturdy
resistance of veterans. Everywhere the earth was cumbered with
gigantic trunks, stripped of their leaves and branches, pierced and
mangled, even as mortals might have been, and this wholesale
destruction, the sight of the poor limbs, maimed, slaughtered and
weeping tears of sap, inspired the beholder with the sickening horror
of a human battlefield. There were corpses of men there, too;
soldiers, who had stood fraternally by the trees and fallen with them.
A lieutenant, from whose mouth exuded a bloody froth, had been tearing
up the grass by handfuls in his agony, and his stiffened fingers were
still buried in the ground. A little farther on a captain, prone on
his stomach, had raised his head to vent his anguish in yells and
screams, and death had caught and fixed him in that strange attitude.
Others seemed to be slumbering among the herbage, while a zouave;
whose blue sash had taken fire, had had his hair and beard burned
completely from his head. And several times it happened, as they
traversed those woodland glades, that they had to remove a body from
the path before the donkey could proceed on his way. Presently they
came to a little valley, where the sights of horror abruptly ended.
The battle had evidently turned at this point and expended its force
in another direction, leaving this peaceful nook of nature untouched.
The trees were all uninjured; the carpet of velvety moss was undefiled
by blood. A little brook coursed merrily among the duckweed, the path
that ran along its bank was shaded by tall beeches. A penetrating
charm, a tender peacefulness pervaded the solitude of the lovely spot,
where the living waters gave up their coolness to the air and the
leaves whispered softly in the silence.

Prosper had stopped to let the donkey drink from the stream.

"Ah, how pleasant it is here!" he involuntarily exclaimed in his
delight.

Silvine cast an astonished look about her, as if wondering how it was
that she, too, could feel the influence of the peaceful scene. Why
should there be repose and happiness in that hidden nook, when
surrounding it on every side were sorrow and affliction? She made a
gesture of impatience.

"Quick, quick, let us be gone. Where is the spot? Where did you tell
me you saw Honore?"

And when, at some fifty paces from there, they at last came out on the
plateau of Illy, the level plain unrolled itself in its full extent
before their vision. It was the real, the true battlefield that they
beheld now, the bare fields stretching away to the horizon under the
wan, cheerless sky, whence showers were streaming down continually.
There were no piles of dead visible; all the Prussians must have been
buried by this time, for there was not a single one to be seen among
the corpses of the French that were scattered here and there, along
the roads and in the fields, as the conflict had swayed in one
direction or another. The first that they encountered was a sergeant,
propped against a hedge, a superb man, in the bloom of his youthful
vigor; his face was tranquil and a smile seemed to rest on his parted
lips. A hundred paces further on, however, they beheld another, lying
across the road, who had been mutilated most frightfully, his head
almost entirely shot away, his shoulders covered with great splotches
of brain matter. Then, as they advanced further into the field, after
the single bodies, distributed here and there, they came across little
groups; they saw seven men aligned in single rank, kneeling and with
their muskets at the shoulder in the position of aim, who had been hit
as they were about to fire, while close beside them a subaltern had
also fallen as he was in the act of giving the word of command. After
that the road led along the brink of a little ravine, and there they
beheld a spectacle that aroused their horror to the highest pitch as
they looked down into the chasm, into which an entire company seemed
to have been blown by the fiery blast; it was choked with corpses, a
landslide, an avalanche of maimed and mutilated men, bent and twisted
in an inextricable tangle, who with convulsed fingers had caught at
the yellow clay of the bank to save themselves in their descent,
fruitlessly. And a dusky flock of ravens flew away, croaking noisily,
and swarms of flies, thousands upon thousands of them, attracted by
the odor of fresh blood, were buzzing over the bodies and returning
incessantly.

"Where is the spot?" Silvine asked again.

They were then passing a plowed field that was completely covered with
knapsacks. It was manifest that some regiment had been roughly handled
there, and the men, in a moment of panic, had relieved themselves of
their burdens. The debris of every sort with which the ground was
thickly strewn served to explain the episodes of the conflict. There
was a stubble field where the scattered _kepis_, resembling huge
poppies, shreds of uniforms, epaulettes, and sword-belts told the
story of one of those infrequent hand-to-hand contests in the fierce
artillery duel that had lasted twelve hours. But the objects that were
encountered most frequently, at every step, in fact, were abandoned
weapons, sabers, bayonets, and, more particularly, chassepots; and so
numerous were they that they seemed to have sprouted from the earth, a
harvest that had matured in a single ill-omened day. Porringers and
buckets, also, were scattered along the roads, together with the
heterogeneous contents of knapsacks, rice, brushes, clothing,
cartridges. The fields everywhere presented an uniform scene of
devastation: fences destroyed, trees blighted as if they had been
struck by lightning, the very soil itself torn by shells, compacted
and hardened by the tramp of countless feet, and so maltreated that it
seemed as if seasons must elapse before it could again become
productive. Everything had been drenched and soaked by the rain of the
preceding day; an odor arose and hung in the air persistently, that
odor of the battlefield that smells like fermenting straw and burning
cloth, a mixture of rottenness and gunpowder.

Silvine, who was beginning to weary of those fields of death over
which she had tramped so many long miles, looked about her with
increasing distrust and uneasiness.

"Where is the spot? where is it?"

But Prosper made no answer; he also was becoming uneasy. What
distressed him even more than the sights of suffering among his
fellow-soldiers was the dead horses, the poor brutes that lay
outstretched upon their side, that were met with in great numbers.
Many of them presented a most pitiful spectacle, in all sorts of
harrowing attitudes, with heads torn from the body, with lacerated
flanks from which the entrails protruded. Many were resting on their
back, with their four feet elevated in the air like signals of
distress. The entire extent of the broad plain was dotted with them.
There were some that death had not released after their two days'
agony; at the faintest sound they would raise their head, turning it
eagerly from right to left, then let it fall again upon the ground,
while others lay motionless and momentarily gave utterance to that
shrill scream which one who has heard it can never forget, the lament
of the dying horse, so piercingly mournful that earth and heaven
seemed to shudder in unison with it. And Prosper, with a bleeding
heart, thought of poor Zephyr, and told himself that perhaps he might
see him once again.

Suddenly he became aware that the ground was trembling under the
thundering hoof-beats of a headlong charge. He turned to look, and had
barely time to shout to his companion:

"The horses, the horses! Get behind that wall!"

From the summit of a neighboring eminence a hundred riderless horses,
some of them still bearing the saddle and master's kit, were plunging
down upon them at break-neck speed. They were cavalry mounts that had
lost their masters and remained on the battlefield, and instinct had
counseled them to associate together in a band. They had had neither
hay nor oats for two days, and had cropped the scanty grass from off
the plain, shorn the hedge-rows of leaves and twigs, gnawed the bark
from the trees, and when they felt the pangs of hunger pricking at
their vitals like a keen spur, they started all together at a mad
gallop and charged across the deserted, silent fields, crushing the
dead out of all human shape, extinguishing the last spark of life in
the wounded.

The band came on like a whirlwind; Silvine had only time to pull the
donkey and cart to one side where they would be protected by the wall.

"_Mon Dieu!_ we shall be killed!"

But the horses had taken the obstacle in their stride and were already
scouring away in the distance on the other side with a rumble like
that of a receding thunder-storm; striking into a sunken road they
pursued it as far as the corner of a little wood, behind which they
were lost to sight.

Silvine, when she had brought the cart back into the road, insisted
that Prosper should answer her question before they proceeded further.

"Come, where is it? You told me you could find the spot with your eyes
bandaged; where is it? We have reached the ground."

He, drawing himself up and anxiously scanning the horizon in every
direction, seemed to become more and more perplexed.

"There were three trees, I must find those three trees in the first
place. Ah, _dame_! see here, one's sight is not of the clearest when
he is fighting, and it is no such easy matter to remember afterward
the roads one has passed over!"

Then perceiving people to his left, two men and a woman, it occurred
to him to question them, but the woman ran away at his approach and
the men repulsed him with threatening gestures; and he saw others of
the same stripe, clad in sordid rags, unspeakably filthy, with the
ill-favored faces of thieves and murderers, and they all shunned him,
slinking away among the corpses like jackals or other unclean,
creeping beasts. Then he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry
passed the dead behind them were shoeless, their bare, white feet
exposed, devoid of covering, and he saw how it was: they were the
tramps and thugs who followed the German armies for the sake of
plundering the dead, the detestable crew who followed in the wake of
the invasion in order that they might reap their harvest from the
field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose in front of him and scurried
away on a run, a sack slung across his shoulder, the watches and small
coins, proceeds of his robberies, jingling in his pockets.

A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old, however, allowed Prosper to
approach him, and when the latter, seeing him to be French, rated him
soundly, the boy spoke up in his defense. What, was it wrong for a
poor fellow to earn his living? He was collecting chassepots, and
received five sous for every chassepot he brought in. He had run away
from his village that morning, having eaten nothing since the day
before, and engaged himself to a contractor from Luxembourg, who had
an arrangement with the Prussians by virtue of which he was to gather
the muskets from the field of battle, the Germans fearing that should
the scattered arms be collected by the peasants of the frontier, they
might be conveyed into Belgium and thence find their way back to
France. And so it was that there was quite a flock of poor devils
hunting for muskets and earning their five sous, rummaging among the
herbage, like the women who may be seen in the meadows, bent nearly
double, gathering dandelions.

"It's a dirty business," Prosper growled.

"What would you have! A chap must eat," the boy replied. "I am not
robbing anyone."

Then, as he did not belong to that neighborhood and could not give the
information that Prosper wanted, he pointed out a little farmhouse not
far away where he had seen some people stirring.

Prosper thanked him and was moving away to rejoin Silvine when he
caught sight of a chassepot, partially buried in a furrow. His first
thought was to say nothing of his discovery; then he turned about
suddenly and shouted, as if he could not help it:

"Hallo! here's one; that will make five sous more for you."

As they approached the farmhouse Silvine noticed other peasants
engaged with spades and picks in digging long trenches; but these men
were under the direct command of Prussian officers, who, with nothing
more formidable than a light walking-stick in their hands, stood by,
stiff and silent, and superintended the work. They had requisitioned
the inhabitants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner,
fearing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy
weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, and a gang
of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side by side in close
contiguity to one another, not searching them, not even looking at
their faces, while two men followed after, equipped with great
shovels, and covered the row with a layer of earth, so thin that the
ground had already begun to crack beneath the showers. The work was so
badly and hastily done that before two weeks should have elapsed each
of those fissures would be breathing forth pestilence. Silvine could
not resist the impulse to pause at the brink of the trench and look at
those pitiful corpses as they were brought forward, one after another.
She was possessed by a horrible fear that in each fresh body the men
brought from the cart she might recognize Honore. Was not that he,
that poor wretch whose left eye had been destroyed? No! Perhaps that
one with the fractured jaw was he? The one thing certain to her mind
was that if she did not make haste to find him, wherever he might be
on that boundless, indeterminate plateau, they would pick him up and
bury him in a common grave with the others. She therefore hurried to
rejoin Prosper, who had gone on to the farmhouse with the cart.

"_Mon Dieu!_ how is it that you are not better informed? Where is the
place? Ask the people, question them."

There were none but Prussians at the farm, however, together with a
woman servant and her child, just come in from the woods, where they
had been near perishing of thirst and hunger. The scene was one of
patriarchal simplicity and well-earned repose after the fatigues of
the last few days. Some of the soldiers had hung their uniforms from a
clothes-line and were giving them a thorough brushing, another was
putting a patch on his trousers, with great neatness and dexterity,
while the cook of the detachment had built a great fire in the middle
of the courtyard on which the soup was boiling in a huge pot from
which ascended a most appetizing odor of cabbage and bacon. There is
no denying that the Prussians generally displayed great moderation
toward the inhabitants of the country after the conquest, which was
made the easier to them by the spirit of discipline that prevailed
among the troops. These men might have been taken for peaceable
citizens just come in from their daily avocations, smoking their long
pipes. On a bench beside the door sat a stout, red-bearded man, who
had taken up the servant's child, a little urchin five or six years
old, and was dandling it and talking baby-talk to it in German,
delighted to see the little one laugh at the harsh syllables which it
could not understand.

Prosper, fearing there might be more trouble in store for them, had
turned his back on the soldiers immediately on entering, but those
Prussians were really good fellows; they smiled at the little donkey,
and did not even trouble themselves to ask for a sight of the pass.

Then ensued a wild, aimless scamper across the bosom of the great,
sinister plain. The sun, now sinking rapidly toward the horizon,
showed its face for a moment from between two clouds. Was night to
descend and surprise them in the midst of that vast charnel-house?
Another shower came down; the sun was obscured, the rain and mist
formed an impenetrable barrier about them, so that the country around,
roads, fields, trees, was shut out from their vision. Prosper knew not
where they were; he was lost, and admitted it: his memory was all
astray, he could recall nothing precise of the occurrences of that
terrible day but one before. Behind them, his head lowered almost to
the ground, the little donkey trotted along resignedly, dragging the
cart, with his customary docility. First they took a northerly course,
then they returned toward Sedan. They had lost their bearings and
could not tell in which direction they were going; twice they noticed
that they were passing localities that they had passed before and
retraced their steps. They had doubtless been traveling in a circle,
and there came a moment when in their exhaustion and despair they
stopped at a place where three roads met, without courage to pursue
their search further, the rain pelting down on them, lost and utterly
miserable in the midst of a sea of mud.

But they heard the sound of groans, and hastening to a lonely little
house on their left, found there, in one of the bedrooms, two wounded
men. All the doors were standing open; the two unfortunates had
succeeded in dragging themselves thus far and had thrown themselves on
the beds, and for the two days that they had been alternately
shivering and burning, their wounds having received no attention, they
had seen no one, not a living soul. They were tortured by a consuming
thirst, and the beating of the rain against the window-panes added to
their torment, but they could not move hand or foot. Hence, when they
heard Silvine approaching, the first word that escaped their lips was:
"Drink! Give us to drink!" that longing, pathetic cry, with which the
wounded always pursue the by-passer whenever the sound of footsteps
arouses them from their lethargy. There were many cases similar to
this, where men were overlooked in remote corners, whither they had
fled for refuge. Some were picked up even five and six days later,
when their sores were filled with maggots and their sufferings had
rendered them delirious.

When Silvine had given the wretched men a drink Prosper, who, in the
more sorely injured of the twain, had recognized a comrade of his
regiment, a chasseur d'Afrique, saw that they could not be far from
the ground over which Margueritte's division had charged, inasmuch as
the poor devil had been able to drag himself to that house. All the
information he could get from him, however, was of the vaguest; yes,
it was over that way; you turned to the left, after passing a big
field of potatoes.

Immediately she was in possession of this slender clue Silvine
insisted on starting out again. An inferior officer of the medical
department chanced to pass with a cart just then, collecting the dead;
she hailed him and notified him of the presence of the wounded men,
then, throwing the donkey's bridle across her arm, urged him along
over the muddy road, eager to reach the designated spot, beyond the
big potato field. When they had gone some distance she stopped,
yielding to her despair.

"My God, where is the place! Where can it be?"

Prosper looked about him, taxing his recollection fruitlessly.

"I told you, it is close beside the place where we made our charge. If
only I could find my poor Zephyr--"

And he cast a wistful look on the dead horses that lay around them. It
had been his secret hope, his dearest wish, during the entire time
they had been wandering over the plateau, to see his mount once more,
to bid him a last farewell.

"It ought to be somewhere in this vicinity," he suddenly said. "See!
over there to the left, there are the three trees. You see the
wheel-tracks? And, look, over yonder is a broken-down caisson. We have
found the spot; we are here at last!"

Quivering with emotion, Silvine darted forward and eagerly scanned the
faces of two corpses, two artillerymen who had fallen by the roadside.

"He is not here! He is not here! You cannot have seen aright. Yes,
that is it; some delusion must have cheated your eyes." And little by
little an air-drawn hope, a wild delight crept into her mind. "If you
were mistaken, if he should be alive! And be sure he is alive, since
he is not here!"

Suddenly she gave utterance to a low, smothered cry. She had turned,
and was standing on the very position that the battery had occupied.
The scene was most frightful, the ground torn and fissured as by an
earthquake and covered with wreckage of every description, the dead
lying as they had fallen in every imaginable attitude of horror, arms
bent and twisted, legs doubled under them, heads thrown back, the lips
parted over the white teeth as if their last breath had been expended
in shouting defiance to the foe. A corporal had died with his hands
pressed convulsively to his eyes, unable longer to endure the dread
spectacle. Some gold coins that a lieutenant carried in a belt about
his body had been spilled at the same time as his life-blood, and lay
scattered among his entrails. There were Adolphe, the driver, and the
gunner, Louis, clasped in each other's arms in a fierce embrace, their
sightless orbs starting from their sockets, mated even in death. And
there, at last, was Honore, recumbent on his disabled gun as on a bed
of honor, with the great rent in his side that had let out his young
life, his face, unmutilated and beautiful in its stern anger, still
turned defiantly toward the Prussian batteries.

"Oh! my friend," sobbed Silvine, "my friend, my friend--"

She had fallen to her knees on the damp, cold ground, her hands joined
as if in prayer, in an outburst of frantic grief. The word friend, the
only name by which it occurred to her to address him, told the story
of the tender affection she had lost in that man, so good, so loving,
who had forgiven her, had meant to make her his wife, despite the ugly
past. And now all hope was dead within her bosom, there was nothing
left to make life desirable. She had never loved another; she would
put away her love for him at the bottom of her heart and hold it
sacred there. The rain had ceased; a flock of crows that circled above
the three trees, croaking dismally, affected her like a menace of
evil. Was he to be taken from her again, her cherished dead, whom she
had recovered with such difficulty? She dragged herself along upon her
knees, and with a trembling hand brushed away the hungry flies that
were buzzing about her friend's wide-open eyes.

She caught sight of a bit of blood-stained paper between Honore's
stiffened fingers. It troubled her; she tried to gain possession of
the paper, pulling at it gently, but the dead man would not surrender
it, seemingly tightening his hold on it, guarding it so jealously that
it could not have been taken from him without tearing it in bits. It
was the letter she had written him, that he had always carried next
his heart, and that he had taken from its hiding place in the moment
of his supreme agony, as if to bid her a last farewell. It seemed so
strange, was such a revelation, that he should have died thinking of
her; when she saw what it was a profound delight filled her soul in
the midst of her affliction. Yes, surely, she would leave it with him,
the letter that was so dear to him! she would not take it from him,
since he was so bent on carrying it with him to the grave. Her tears
flowed afresh, but they were beneficent tears this time, and brought
healing and comfort with them. She arose and kissed his hands, kissed
him on the forehead, uttering meanwhile but that one word, which was
in itself a prolonged caress:

"My friend! my friend--"

Meantime the sun was declining; Prosper had gone and taken the
counterpane from the cart, and between them they raised Honore's body,
slowly, reverently, and laid it on the bed-covering, which they had
stretched upon the ground; then, first wrapping him in its folds, they
bore him to the cart. It was threatening to rain again, and they had
started on their return, forming, with the donkey, a sorrowful little
cortege on the broad bosom of the accursed plain, when a deep rumbling
as of thunder was heard in the distance. Prosper turned his head and
had only time to shout:

"The horses! the horses!"

It was the starving, abandoned cavalry mounts making another charge.
They came up this time in a deep mass across a wide, smooth field,
manes and tails streaming in the wind, froth flying from their
nostrils, and the level rays of the fiery setting sun sent the shadow
of the infuriated herd clean across the plateau. Silvine rushed
forward and planted herself before the cart, raising her arms above
her head as if her puny form might have power to check them.
Fortunately the ground fell off just at that point, causing them to
swerve to the left; otherwise they would have crushed donkey, cart,
and all to powder. The earth trembled, and their hoofs sent a volley
of clods and small stones flying through the air, one of which struck
the donkey on the head and wounded him. The last that was seen of them
they were tearing down a ravine.

"It's hunger that starts them off like that," said Prosper. "Poor
beasts!"

Silvine, having bandaged the donkey's ear with her handkerchief, took
him again by the bridle, and the mournful little procession began to
retrace its steps across the plateau, to cover the two leagues that
lay between it and Remilly. Prosper had turned and cast a look on the
dead horses, his heart heavy within him to leave the field without
having seen Zephyr.

A little below the wood of la Garenne, as they were about to turn off
to the left to take the road that they had traversed that morning,
they encountered another German post and were again obliged to exhibit
their pass. And the officer in command, instead of telling them to
avoid Sedan, ordered them to keep straight on their course and pass
through the city; otherwise they would be arrested. This was the most
recent order; it was not for them to question it. Moreover, their
journey would be shortened by a mile and a quarter, which they did not
regret, weary and foot-sore as they were.

When they were within Sedan, however, they found their progress
retarded owing to a singular cause. As soon as they had passed the
fortifications their nostrils were saluted by such a stench, they were
obliged to wade through such a mass of abominable filth, reaching
almost to their knees, as fairly turned their stomachs. The city,
where for three days a hundred thousand men had lived without the
slightest provision being made for decency or cleanliness, had become
a cesspool, a foul sewer, and this devil's broth was thickened by all
sorts of solid matter, rotting hay and straw, stable litter, and the
excreta of animals. The carcasses of the horses, too, that were
knocked on the head, skinned, and cut up in the public squares, in
full view of everyone, had their full share in contaminating the
atmosphere; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, the bones
and heads were left lying on the pavement, where they attracted swarms
of flies. Pestilence would surely break out in the city unless they
made haste to rid themselves of all that carrion, of that stratum of
impurity, which, in the Rue de Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the
Place Turenne, reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian
authorities had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be
seen posted about the city, requisitioning the inhabitants,
irrespective of rank, laborers, merchants, bourgeois, magistrates, for
the morrow; they were ordered to assemble, armed with brooms and
shovels, and apply themselves to the task, and were warned that they
would be subjected to heavy penalties if the city was not clean by
night. The President of the Tribunal had taken time by the forelock,
and might even then be seen scraping away at the pavement before his
door and loading the results of his labors upon a wheelbarrow with a
fire-shovel.

Silvine and Prosper, who had selected the Grande Rue as their route
for traversi

II.


The crush was so great as the column of prisoners was leaving Torcy
that Maurice, who had stopped a moment to buy some tobacco, was parted
from Jean, and with all his efforts was unable thereafter to catch up
with his regiment through the dense masses of men that filled the
road. When he at last reached the bridge that spans the canal which
intersects the peninsula of Iges at its base, he found himself in a
mixed company of chasseurs d'Afrique and troops of the infanterie de
marine.

There were two pieces of artillery stationed at the bridge, their
muzzles turned upon the interior of the peninsula; it was a place easy
of access, but from which exit would seem to be attended with some
difficulties. Immediately beyond the canal was a comfortable house,
where the Prussians had established a post, commanded by a captain,
upon which devolved the duty of receiving and guarding the prisoners.
The formalities observed were not excessive; they merely counted the
men, as if they had been sheep, as they came streaming in a huddle
across the bridge, without troubling themselves overmuch about
uniforms or organizations, after which the prisoners were free of the
fields and at liberty to select their dwelling-place wherever chance
and the road they were on might direct.

The first thing that Maurice did was to address a question to a
Bavarian officer, who was seated astride upon a chair, enjoying a
tranquil smoke.

"The 106th of the line, sir, can you tell me where I shall find it?"

Either the officer was unlike most German officers and did not
understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil
of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion
that the other was to keep following the road he was pursuing.

Although Maurice had spent a good part of his life in the neighborhood
he had never before been on the peninsula; he proceeded to explore his
new surroundings, as a mariner might do when cast by a tempest on the
shore of a desolate island. He first skirted the Tour a Glaire, a very
handsome country-place, whose small park, situated as it was on the
bank of the Meuse, possessed a peculiarly attractive charm. After that
the road ran parallel with the river, of which the sluggish current
flowed on the right hand at the foot of high, steep banks. The way
from there was a gradually ascending one, until it wound around the
gentle eminence that occupied the central portion of the peninsula,
and there were abandoned quarries there and excavations in the ground,
in which a network of narrow paths had their termination. A little
further on was a mill, seated on the border of the stream. Then the
road curved and pursued a descending course until it entered the
village of Iges, which was built on the hillside and connected by
a ferry with the further shore, just opposite the rope-walk at
Saint-Albert. Last of all came meadows and cultivated fields, a broad
expanse of level, treeless country, around which the river swept in a
wide, circling bend. In vain had Maurice scrutinized every inch of
uneven ground on the hillside; all he could distinguish there was
cavalry and artillery, preparing their quarters for the night. He made
further inquiries, applying among others to a corporal of chasseurs
d'Afrique, who could give him no information. The prospect for finding
his regiment looked bad; night was coming down, and, leg-weary and
disheartened, he seated himself for a moment on a stone by the
wayside.

As he sat there, abandoning himself to the sensation of loneliness and
despair that crept over him, he beheld before him, across the Meuse,
the accursed fields where he had fought the day but one before. Bitter
memories rose to his mind, in the fading light of that day of gloom
and rain, as he surveyed the saturated, miry expanse of country that
rose from the river's bank and was lost on the horizon. The defile of
Saint-Albert, the narrow road by which the Prussians had gained their
rear, ran along the bend of the stream as far as the white cliffs of
the quarries of Montimont. The summits of the trees in the wood of la
Falizette rose in rounded, fleecy masses over the rising ground
of Seugnon. Directly before his eyes, a little to the left, was
Saint-Menges, the road from which descended by a gentle slope and
ended at the ferry; there, too, were the mamelon of Hattoy in the
center, and Illy, in the far distance, in the background, and
Fleigneux, almost hidden in its shallow vale, and Floing, less remote,
on the right. He recognized the plateau where he had spent
interminable hours among the cabbages, and the eminences that the
reserve artillery had struggled so gallantly to hold, where he had
seen Honore meet his death on his dismounted gun. And it was as if the
baleful scene were again before him with all its abominations,
steeping his mind in horror and disgust, until he was sick at heart.

The reflection that soon it would be quite dark and it would not do to
loiter there, however, caused him to resume his researches. He said to
himself that perhaps the regiment was encamped somewhere beyond the
village on the low ground, but the only ones he encountered there were
some prowlers, and he decided to make the circuit of the peninsula,
following the bend of the stream. As he was passing through a field of
potatoes he was sufficiently thoughtful to dig a few of the tubers and
put them in his pockets; they were not ripe, but he had nothing
better, for Jean, as luck would have it, had insisted on carrying both
the two loaves of bread that Delaherche had given them when they left
his house. He was somewhat surprised at the number of horses he met
with, roaming about the uncultivated lands, that fell off in an easy
descent from the central elevation to the Meuse, in the direction of
Donchery. Why should they have brought all those animals with them?
how were they to be fed? And now it was night in earnest, and quite
dark, when he came to a small piece of woods on the water's brink, in
which he was surprised to find the cent-gardes of the Emperor's
escort, providing for their creature comforts and drying themselves
before roaring fires. These gentlemen, who had a separate encampment
to themselves, had comfortable tents; their kettles were boiling
merrily, there was a milch cow tied to a tree. It did not take Maurice
long to see that he was not regarded with favor in that quarter, poor
devil of an infantryman that he was, with his ragged, mud-stained
uniform. They graciously accorded him permission to roast his potatoes
in the ashes of their fires, however, and he withdrew to the shelter
of a tree, some hundred yards away, to eat them. It was no longer
raining; the sky was clear, the stars were shining brilliantly in the
dark blue vault. He saw that he should have to spend the night in the
open air and defer his researches until the morrow. He was so utterly
used up that he could go no further; the trees would afford him some
protection in case it came on to rain again.

The strangeness of his situation, however, and the thought of his vast
prison house, open to the winds of heaven, would not let him sleep. It
had been an extremely clever move on the part of the Prussians to
select that place of confinement for the eighty thousand men who
constituted the remnant of the army of Chalons. The peninsula was
approximately three miles long by one wide, affording abundant space
for the broken fragments of the vanquished host, and Maurice could not
fail to observe that it was surrounded on every side by water, the
bend of the Meuse encircling it on the north, east and west, while on
the south, at the base, connecting the two arms of the loop at the
point where they drew together most closely, was the canal. Here alone
was an outlet, the bridge, that was defended by two guns; wherefore it
may be seen that the guarding of the camp was a comparatively easy
task, notwithstanding its great extent. He had already taken note of
the chain of sentries on the farther bank, a soldier being stationed
by the waterside at every fifty paces, with orders to fire on any man
who should attempt to escape by swimming. In the rear the different
posts were connected by patrols of uhlans, while further in the
distance, scattered over the broad fields, were the dark lines of the
Prussian regiments; a threefold living, moving wall, immuring the
captive army.

Maurice, in his sleeplessness, lay gazing with wide-open eyes into the
blackness of the night, illuminated here and there by the smoldering
watch-fires; the motionless forms of the sentinels were dimly visible
beyond the pale ribbon of the Meuse. Erect they stood, duskier spots
against the dusky shadows, beneath the faint light of the twinkling
stars, and at regular intervals their guttural call came to his ears,
a menacing watch-cry that was drowned in the hoarse murmur of the
river in the distance. At sound of those unmelodious phrases in a
foreign tongue, rising on the still air of a starlit night in the
sunny land of France, the vision of the past again rose before him:
all that he had beheld in memory an hour before, the plateau of Illy
cumbered still with dead, the accursed country round about Sedan that
had been the scene of such dire disaster; and resting on the ground in
that cool, damp corner of a wood, his head pillowed on a root, he
again yielded to the feeling of despair that had overwhelmed him the
day before while lying on Delaherche's sofa. And that which,
intensifying the suffering of his wounded pride, now harassed and
tortured him, was the question of the morrow, the feverish longing to
know how deep had been their fall, how great the wreck and ruin
sustained by their world of yesterday. The Emperor had surrendered his
sword to King William; was not, therefore, the abominable war ended?
But he recalled the remark he had heard made by two of the Bavarians
of the guard who had escorted the prisoners to Iges: "We're all in
France, we're all bound for Paris!" In his semi-somnolent, dreamy
state the vision of what was to be suddenly rose before his eyes: the
empire overturned and swept away amid a howl of universal execration,
the republic proclaimed with an outburst of patriotic fervor, while
the legend of '92 would incite men to emulate the glorious past, and,
flocking to the standards, drive from the country's soil the hated
foreigner with armies of brave volunteers. He reflected confusedly
upon all the aspects of the case, and speculations followed one
another in swift succession through his poor wearied brain: the harsh
terms imposed by the victors, the bitterness of defeat, the
determination of the vanquished to resist even to the last drop of
blood, the fate of those eighty thousand men, his companions, who were
to be captives for weeks, months, years, perhaps, first on the
peninsula and afterward in German fortresses. The foundations were
giving way, and everything was going down, down to the bottomless
depths of perdition.

The call of the sentinels, now loud, now low, seemed to sound more
faintly in his ears and to be receding in the distance, when suddenly,
as he turned on his hard couch, a shot rent the deep silence. A hollow
groan rose on the calm air of night, there was a splashing in the
water, the brief struggle of one who sinks to rise no more. It was
some poor wretch who had attempted to escape by swimming the Meuse and
had received a bullet in his brain.

The next morning Maurice was up and stirring with the sun. The sky was
cloudless; he was desirous to rejoin Jean and his other comrades of
the company with the least possible delay. For a moment he had an idea
of going to see what there was in the interior of the peninsula, then
resolved he would first complete its circuit. And on reaching the
canal his eyes were greeted with the sight of the 106th--or rather
what was left of it--a thousand men, encamped along the river bank
among some waste lands, with no protection save a row of slender
poplars. If he had only turned to the left the night before instead of
pursuing a straight course he could have been with his regiment at
once. And he noticed that almost all the line regiments were collected
along that part of the bank that extends from the Tour a Glaire to the
Chateau of Villette--another bourgeois country place, situated more in
the direction of Donchery and surrounded by a few hovels--all of them
having selected their bivouac near the bridge, sole issue from their
prison, as sheep will instinctively huddle together close to the door
of their fold, knowing that sooner or later it will be opened for
them.

Jean uttered a cry of pleasure. "Ah, so it's you, at last! I had begun
to think you were in the river."

He was there with what remained of the squad, Pache and Lapoulle,
Loubet and Chouteau. The last named had slept under doorways in Sedan
until the attention of the Prussian provost guard had finally restored
them to their regiment. The corporal, moreover, was the only surviving
officer of the company, death having taken away Sergeant Sapin,
Lieutenant Rochas and Captain Beaudoin, and although the victors had
abolished distinction of rank among the prisoners, deciding that
obedience was due to the German officers alone, the four men had,
nevertheless, rallied to him, knowing him to be a leader of prudence
and experience, upon whom they could rely in circumstances of
difficulty. Thus it was that peace and harmony reigned among them that
morning, notwithstanding the stupidity of some and the evil designs of
others. In the first place, the night before he had found them a place
to sleep in that was comparatively dry, where they had stretched
themselves on the ground, the only thing they had left in the way of
protection from the weather being the half of a shelter-tent. After
that he had managed to secure some wood and a kettle, in which Loubet
made coffee for them, the comforting warmth of which had fortified
their stomachs. The rain had ceased, the day gave promise of being
bright and warm, they had a small supply of biscuit and bacon left,
and then, as Chouteau said, it was a comfort to have no orders to
obey, to have their fill of loafing. They were prisoners, it was true,
but there was plenty of room to move about. Moreover, they would be
away from there in two or three days. Under these circumstances the
day, which was Sunday, the 4th, passed pleasantly enough.

Maurice, whose courage had returned to him now that he was with the
comrades once more, found nothing to annoy him except the Prussian
bands, which played all the afternoon beyond the canal. Toward evening
there was vocal music, and the men sang in chorus. They could be seen
outside the chain of sentries, walking to and fro in little groups and
singing solemn melodies in a loud, ringing voice in honor of the
Sabbath.

"Confound those bands!" Maurice at last impatiently exclaimed. "They
will drive me wild!"

Jean, whose nerves were less susceptible, shrugged his shoulders.

"_Dame_! they have reason to feel good; and then perhaps they think it
affords us pleasure. It hasn't been such a bad day; don't let's find
fault."

As night approached, however, the rain began to fall again. Some of
the men had taken possession of what few unoccupied houses there were
on the peninsula, others were provided with tents that they erected,
but by far the greater number, without shelter of any sort, destitute
of blankets even, were compelled to pass the night in the open air,
exposed to the pouring rain.

About one o'clock Maurice, who had been sleeping soundly as a result
of his fatigue, awoke and found himself in the middle of a miniature
lake. The trenches, swollen by the heavy downpour, had overflowed and
inundated the ground where he lay. Chouteau's and Loubet's wrath
vented itself in a volley of maledictions, while Pache shook Lapoulle,
who, unmindful of his ducking, slept through it all as if he was never
to wake again. Then Jean, remembering the row of poplars on the bank
of the canal, collected his little band and ran thither for shelter;
and there they passed the remainder of that wretched night, crouching
with their backs to the trees, their legs doubled under them, so as to
expose as little of their persons as might be to the big drops.

The next day, and the day succeeding it, the weather was truly
detestable, what with the continual showers, that came down so
copiously and at such frequent intervals that the men's clothing had
not time to dry on their backs. They were threatened with famine, too;
there was not a biscuit left in camp, and the coffee and bacon were
exhausted. During those two days, Monday and Tuesday, they existed on
potatoes that they dug in the adjacent fields, and even those
vegetables had become so scarce toward the end of the second day that
those soldiers who had money paid as high as five sous apiece for
them. It was true that the bugles sounded the call for "distribution";
the corporal had nearly run his legs off trying to be the first to
reach a great shed near the Tour a Glaire, where it was reported that
rations of bread were to be issued, but on the occasion of a first
visit he had waited there three hours and gone away empty-handed, and
on a second had become involved in a quarrel with a Bavarian. It was
well known that the French officers were themselves in deep distress
and powerless to assist their men; had the German staff driven the
vanquished army out there in the mud and rain with the intention of
letting them starve to death? Not the first step seemed to have been
taken, not an effort had been made, to provide for the subsistence of
those eighty thousand men in that hell on earth that the soldiers
subsequently christened Camp Misery, a name that the bravest of them
could never hear mentioned in later days without a shudder.

On his return from his wearisome and fruitless expedition to the shed,
Jean forgot his usual placidity and gave way to anger.

"What do they mean by calling us up when there's nothing for us? I'll
be hanged if I'll put myself out for them another time!"

And yet, whenever there was a call, he hurried off again. It was
inhuman to sound the bugles thus, merely because regulations
prescribed certain calls at certain hours, and it had another effect
that was near breaking Maurice's heart. Every time that the trumpets
sounded the French horses, that were running free on the other side of
the canal, came rushing up and dashed into the water to rejoin their
squadron, as excited at the well-known sound as they would be at the
touch of the spur; but in their exhausted condition they were swept
away by the current and few attained the shore. It was a cruel sight
to see their struggles; they were drowned in great numbers, and their
bodies, decomposing and swelling in the hot sunshine, drifted on the
bosom of the canal. As for those of them that got to land, they seemed
as if stricken with sudden madness, galloping wildly off and hiding
among the waste places of the peninsula.

"More bones for the crows to pick!" sorrowfully said Maurice,
remembering the great droves of horses that he had encountered on a
previous occasion. "If we remain here a few days we shall all be
devouring one another. Poor brutes!"

The night between Tuesday and Wednesday was most terrible of all, and
Jean, who was beginning to feel seriously alarmed for Maurice's
feverish state, made him wrap himself in an old blanket that they had
purchased from a zouave for ten francs, while he, with no protection
save his water-soaked capote, cheerfully took the drenching of the
deluge which that night pelted down without cessation. Their position
under the poplars had become untenable; it was a streaming river of
mud, the water rested in deep puddles on the surface of the saturated
ground. What was worst of all was that they had to suffer on an empty
stomach, the evening meal of the six men having consisted of two beets
which they had been compelled to eat raw, having no dry wood to make a
fire with, and the sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the
vegetables had quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning
sensation. Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused
by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the
atmosphere. More than ten times that night did Jean stretch forth his
hand to see that Maurice had not uncovered himself in the movements of
his slumber, and thus he kept watch and ward over his friend--his back
supported by the same tree-trunk, his legs in a pool of water--with
tenderness unspeakable. Since the day that on the plateau of Illy his
comrade had carried him off in his arms and saved him from the
Prussians he had repaid the debt a hundred-fold. He stopped not to
reason on it; it was the free gift of all his being, the total
forgetfulness of self for love of the other, the finest, most
delicate, grandest exhibition of friendship possible, and that, too,
in a peasant, whose lot had always been the lowly one of a tiller of
the soil and who had never risen far above the earth, who could not
find words to express what he felt, acting purely from instinct, in
all simplicity of soul. Many a time already he had taken the food from
his mouth, as the men of the squad were wont to say; now he would have
divested himself of his skin if with it he might have covered the
other, to protect his shoulders, to warm his feet. And in the midst of
the savage egoism that surrounded them, among that aggregation of
suffering humanity whose worst appetites were inflamed and intensified
by hunger, he perhaps owed it to his complete abnegation of self that
he had preserved thus far his tranquillity of mind and his vigorous
health, for he among them all, his great strength unimpaired, alone
maintained his composure and something like a level head.

After that distressful night Jean determined to carry into execution a
plan that he had been reflecting over since the day previous.

"See here, little one, we can get nothing to eat, and everyone seems
to have forgotten us here in this beastly hole; now unless we want to
die the death of dogs, it behooves us to stir about a bit. How are
your legs?"

The sun had come out again, fortunately, and Maurice was warmed and
comforted.

"Oh, my legs are all right!"

"Then we'll start off on an exploring expedition. We've money in our
pockets, and the deuce is in it if we can't find something to buy. And
we won't bother our heads about the others; they don't deserve it. Let
them take care of themselves."

The truth was that Loubet and Chouteau had disgusted him by their
trickiness and low selfishness, stealing whatever they could lay hands
on and never dividing with their comrades, while no good was to be got
out of Lapoulle, the brute, and Pache, the sniveling devotee.

The pair, therefore, Maurice and Jean, started out by the road along
the Meuse which the former had traversed once before, on the night of
his arrival. At the Tour a Glaire the park and dwelling-house
presented a sorrowful spectacle of pillage and devastation, the trim
lawns cut up and destroyed, the trees felled, the mansion dismantled.
A ragged, dirty crew of soldiers, with hollow cheeks and eyes
preternaturally bright from fever, had taken possession of the place
and were living like beasts in the filthy chambers, not daring to
leave their quarters for a moment lest someone else might come along
and occupy them. A little further on they passed the cavalry and
artillery, encamped on the hillsides, once so conspicuous by reason of
the neatness and jauntiness of their appearance, now run to seed like
all the rest, their organization gone, demoralized by that terrible,
torturing hunger that drove the horses wild and sent the men
straggling through the fields in plundering bands. Below them, to the
right, they beheld an apparently interminable line of artillerymen and
chasseurs d'Afrique defiling slowly before the mill; the miller was
selling them flour, measuring out two handfuls into their
handkerchiefs for a franc. The prospect of the long wait that lay
before them, should they take their place at the end of the line,
determined them to pass on, in the hope that some better opportunity
would present itself at the village of Iges; but great was their
consternation when they reached it to find the little place as bare
and empty as an Algerian village through which has passed a swarm of
locusts; not a crumb, not a fragment of anything eatable, neither
bread, nor meat, nor vegetables, the wretched inhabitants utterly
destitute. General Lebrun was said to be there, closeted with the
mayor. He had been endeavoring, ineffectually, to arrange for an issue
of bonds, redeemable at the close of the war, in order to facilitate
the victualing of the troops. Money had ceased to have any value when
there was nothing that it could purchase. The day before two francs
had been paid for a biscuit, seven francs for a bottle of wine, a
small glass of brandy was twenty sous, a pipeful of tobacco ten sous.
And now officers, sword in hand, had to stand guard before the
general's house and the neighboring hovels, for bands of marauders
were constantly passing, breaking down doors and stealing even the oil
from the lamps and drinking it.

Three zouaves invited Maurice and Jean to join them. Five would do the
work more effectually than three.

"Come along. There are horses dying in plenty, and if we can but get
some dry wood--"

Then they fell to work on the miserable cabin of a poor peasant,
smashing the closet doors, tearing the thatch from the roof. Some
officers, who came up on a run, threatened them with their revolvers
and put them to flight.

Jean, who saw that the few villagers who had remained at Iges were no
better off than the soldiers, perceived he had made a mistake in
passing the mill without buying some flour.

"There may be some left; we had best go back."

But Maurice was so reduced from inanition and was beginning to suffer
so from fatigue that he left him behind in a sheltered nook among the
quarries, seated on a fragment of rock, his face turned upon the wide
horizon of Sedan. He, after waiting in line for two long hours,
finally returned with some flour wrapped in a piece of rag. And they
ate it uncooked, dipping it up in their hands, unable to devise any
other way. It was not so very bad; It had no particular flavor, only
the insipid taste of dough. Their breakfast, such as it was, did them
some good, however. They were even so fortunate as to discover a
little pool of rain-water, comparatively pure, in a hollow of a rock,
at which they quenched their thirst with great satisfaction.

But when Jean proposed that they should spend the remainder of the
afternoon there, Maurice negatived the motion with a great display of
violence.

"No, no; not here! I should be ill if I were to have that scene before
my eyes for any length of time--" With a hand that trembled he pointed
to the remote horizon, the hill of Hattoy, the plateaux of Floing and
Illy, the wood of la Garenne, those abhorred, detested fields of
slaughter and defeat. "While you were away just now I was obliged to
turn my back on it, else I should have broken out and howled with
rage. Yes, I should have howled like a dog tormented by boys--you
can't imagine how it hurts me; it drives me crazy!"

Jean looked at him in surprise; he could not understand that pride,
sensitive as a raw sore, that made defeat so bitter to him; he was
alarmed to behold in his eyes that wandering, flighty look that he had
seen there before. He affected to treat the matter lightly.

"Good! we'll seek another country; that's easy enough to do."

Then they wandered as long as daylight lasted, wherever the paths they
took conducted them. They visited the level portion of the peninsula
in the hope of finding more potatoes there, but the artillerymen had
obtained a plow and turned up the ground, and not a single potato had
escaped their sharp eyes. They retraced their steps, and again they
passed through throngs of listless, glassy-eyed, starving soldiers,
strewing the ground with their debilitated forms, falling by hundreds
in the bright sunshine from sheer exhaustion. They were themselves
many times overcome by fatigue and forced to sit down and rest; then
their deep-seated sensation of suffering would bring them to their
feet again and they would recommence their wandering, like animals
impelled by instinct to move on perpetually in quest of pasturage. It
seemed to them to last for years, and yet the moments sped by rapidly.
In the more inland region, over Donchery way, they received a fright
from the horses and sought the protection of a wall, where they
remained a long time, too exhausted to rise, watching with vague,
lack-luster eyes the wild course of the crazed beasts as they raced
athwart the red western sky where the sun was sinking.

As Maurice had foreseen, the thousands of horses that shared the
captivity of the army, and for which it was impossible to provide
forage, constituted a peril that grew greater day by day. At first
they had nibbled the vegetation and gnawed the bark off trees, then
had attacked the fences and whatever wooden structures they came
across, and now they seemed ready to devour one another. It was a
frequent occurrence to see one of them throw himself upon another and
tear out great tufts from his mane or tail, which he would grind
between his teeth, slavering meanwhile at the mouth profusely. But it
was at night that they became most terrible, as if they were visited
by visions of terror in the darkness. They collected in droves, and,
attracted by the straw, made furious rushes upon what few tents there
were, overturning and demolishing them. It was to no purpose that the
men built great fires to keep them away; the device only served to
madden them the more. Their shrill cries were so full of anguish, so
dreadful to the ear, that they might have been mistaken for the howls
of wild beasts. Were they driven away, they returned, more numerous
and fiercer than before. Scarce a moment passed but out in the
darkness could be heard the shriek of anguish of some unfortunate
soldier whom the crazed beasts had crushed in their wild stampede.

The sun was still above the horizon when Jean and Maurice, on their
way back to the camp, were astonished by meeting with the four men of
the squad, lurking in a ditch, apparently for no good purpose. Loubet
hailed them at once, and Chouteau constituted himself spokesman:

"We are considering ways and means for dining this evening. We shall
die if we go on this way; it is thirty-six hours since we have had
anything to put in our stomach--so, as there are horses plenty, and
horse-meat isn't such bad eating--"

"You'll join us, won't you, corporal?" said Loubet, interrupting,
"for, with such a big, strong animal to handle, the more of us there
are the better it will be. See, there is one, off yonder, that we've
been keeping an eye on for the last hour; that big bay that is in such
a bad way. He'll be all the easier to finish."

And he pointed to a horse that was dying of starvation, on the edge of
what had once been a field of beets. He had fallen on his flank, and
every now and then would raise his head and look about him pleadingly,
with a deep inhalation that sounded like a sigh.

"Ah, how long we have to wait!" grumbled Lapoulle, who was suffering
torment from his fierce appetite. "I'll go and kill him--shall I?"

But Loubet stopped him. Much obliged! and have the Prussians down on
them, who had given notice that death would be the penalty for killing
a horse, fearing that the carcass would breed a pestilence. They must
wait until it was dark. And that was the reason why the four men were
lurking in the ditch, waiting, with glistening, hungry eyes fixed on
the dying brute.

"Corporal," asked Pache, in a voice that faltered a little, "you have
lots of ideas in your head; couldn't you kill him painlessly?"

Jean refused the cruel task with a gesture of disgust. What, kill that
poor beast that was even then in its death agony! oh, no, no! His
first impulse had been to fly and take Maurice with him, that neither
of them might be concerned in the revolting butchery; but looking at
his companion and beholding him so pale and faint, he reproached
himself for such an excess of sensibility. What were animals created
for after all, _mon Dieu_, unless to afford sustenance to man! They
could not allow themselves to starve when there was food within reach.
And it rejoiced him to see Maurice cheer up a little at the prospect
of eating; he said in his easy, good-natured way:

"Faith, you're wrong there; I've no ideas in my head, and if he has
got to be killed without pain--"

"Oh! that's all one to me," interrupted Lapoulle. "I'll show you."

The two newcomers seated themselves in the ditch and joined the others
in their expectancy. Now and again one of the men would rise and make
certain that the horse was still there, its neck outstretched to catch
the cool exhalations of the Meuse and the last rays of the setting
sun, as if bidding farewell to life. And when at last twilight crept
slowly o'er the scene the six men were erect upon their feet,
impatient that night was so tardy in its coming, casting furtive,
frightened looks about them to see they were not observed.

"Ah, _zut_!" exclaimed Chouteau, "the time is come!"

Objects were still discernible in the fields by the uncertain,
mysterious light "between dog and wolf," and Lapoulle went forward
first, followed by the five others. He had taken from the ditch a
large, rounded boulder, and, with it in his two brawny hands, rushing
upon the horse, commenced to batter at his skull as with a club. At
the second blow, however, the horse, stung by the pain, attempted to
get on his feet. Chouteau and Loubet had thrown themselves across his
legs and were endeavoring to hold him down, shouting to the others to
help them. The poor brute's cries were almost human in their accent of
terror and distress; he struggled desperately to shake off his
assailants, and would have broken them like a reed had he not been
half dead with inanition. The movements of his head prevented the
blows from taking effect; Lapoulle was unable to despatch him.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ how hard his bones are! Hold him, somebody, until I
finish him."

Jean and Maurice stood looking at the scene in silent horror; they
heard not Chouteau's appeals for assistance; were powerless to raise a
hand. And Pache, in a sudden outburst of piety and pity, dropped on
his knees, joined his hands, and began to mumble the prayers that are
repeated at the bedside of the dying.

"Merciful God, have pity on him. Let him, good Lord, depart in
peace--"

Again Lapoulle struck ineffectually, with no other effect than to
destroy an ear of the wretched creature, that threw back its head and
gave utterance to a loud, shrill scream.

"Hold on!" growled Chouteau; "this won't do; he'll get us all in the
lockup. We must end the matter. Hold him fast, Loubet."

He took from his pocket a penknife, a small affair of which the blade
was scarcely longer than a man's finger, and casting himself prone on
the animal's body and passing an arm about its neck, began to hack
away at the live flesh, cutting away great morsels, until he found and
severed the artery. He leaped quickly to one side; the blood spurted
forth in a torrent, as when the plug is removed from a fountain, while
the feet stirred feebly and convulsive movements ran along the skin,
succeeding one another like waves of the sea. It was near five minutes
before the horse was dead. His great eyes, dilated wide and filled
with melancholy and affright, were fixed upon the wan-visaged men who
stood waiting for him to die; then they grew dim and the light died
from out them.

"Merciful God," muttered Pache, still on his knees, "keep him in thy
holy protection--succor him, Lord, and grant him eternal rest."

Afterward, when the creature's movements had ceased, they were at a
loss to know where the best cut lay and how they were to get at it.
Loubet, who was something of a Jack-of-all-trades, showed them what
was to be done in order to secure the loin, but as he was a tyro at
the butchering business and, moreover, had only his small penknife to
work with, he quickly lost his way amid the warm, quivering flesh. And
Lapoulle, in his impatience, having attempted to be of assistance by
making an incision in the belly, for which there was no necessity
whatever, the scene of bloodshed became truly sickening. They wallowed
in the gore and entrails that covered the ground about them, like a
pack of ravening wolves collected around the carcass of their prey,
fleshing their keen fangs in it.

"I don't know what cut that may be," Loubet said at last, rising to
his feet with a huge lump of meat in his hands, "but by the time we've
eaten it, I don't believe any of us will be hungry."

Jean and Maurice had averted their eyes in horror from the disgusting
spectacle; still, however, the pangs of hunger were gnawing at their
vitals, and when the band slunk rapidly away, so as not to be caught
in the vicinity of the incriminating carcass, they followed it.
Chouteau had discovered three large beets, that had somehow been
overlooked by previous visitors to the field, and carried them off
with him. Loubet had loaded the meat on Lapoulle's shoulders so as to
have his own arms free, while Pache carried the kettle that belonged
to the squad, which they had brought with them on the chance of
finding something to cook in it. And the six men ran as if their lives
were at stake, never stopping to take breath, as if they heard the
pursuers at their heels.

Suddenly Loubet brought the others to a halt.

"It's idiotic to run like this; let's decide where we shall go to cook
the stuff."

Jean, who was beginning to recover his self-possession, proposed the
quarries. They were only three hundred yards distant, and in them were
secret recesses in abundance where they could kindle a fire without
being seen. When they reached the spot, however, difficulties of every
description presented themselves. First, there was the question of
wood; fortunately a laborer, who had been repairing the road, had gone
home and left his wheelbarrow behind him; Lapoulle quickly reduced it
to fragments with the heel of his boot. Then there was no water to be
had that was fit to drink; the hot sunshine had dried up all the pools
of rain-water. True there was a pump at the Tour a Glaire, but that
was too far away, and besides it was never accessible before midnight;
the men forming in long lines with their bowls and porringers, only
too happy when, after waiting for hours, they could escape from the
jam with their supply of the precious fluid unspilled. As for the few
wells in the neighborhood, they had been dry for the last two days,
and the bucket brought up nothing save mud and slime. Their sole
resource appeared to be the water of the Meuse, which was parted from
them by the road.

"I'll take the kettle and go and fill it," said Jean.

The others objected.

"No, no! We don't want to be poisoned; it is full of dead bodies!"

They spoke the truth. The Meuse was constantly bringing down corpses
of men and horses; they could be seen floating with the current at any
moment of the day, swollen and of a greenish hue, in the early stages
of decomposition. Often they were caught in the weeds and bushes on
the bank, where they remained to poison the atmosphere, swinging to
the tide with a gentle, tremulous motion that imparted to them a
semblance of life. Nearly every soldier who had drunk that abominable
water had suffered from nausea and colic, often succeeded afterward by
dysentery. It seemed as if they must make up their mind to use it,
however, as there was no other; Maurice explained that there would be
no danger in drinking it after it was boiled.

"Very well, then; I'll go," said Jean. And he started, taking Lapoulle
with him to carry the kettle.

By the time they got the kettle filled and on the fire it was quite
dark. Loubet had peeled the beets and thrown them into the water to
cook--a feast fit for the gods, he declared it would be--and fed the
fire with fragments of the wheelbarrow, for they were all suffering so
from hunger that they could have eaten the meat before the pot began
to boil. Their huge shadows danced fantastically in the firelight on
the rocky walls of the quarry. Then they found it impossible longer to
restrain their appetite, and threw themselves upon the unclean mess,
tearing the flesh with eager, trembling fingers and dividing it among
them, too impatient even to make use of the knife. But, famishing as
they were, their stomachs revolted; they felt the want of salt, they
could not swallow that tasteless, sickening broth, those chunks of
half-cooked, viscid meat that had a taste like clay. Some among them
had a fit of vomiting. Pache was very ill. Chouteau and Loubet heaped
maledictions on that infernal old nag, that had caused them such
trouble to get him to the pot and then given them the colic. Lapoulle
was the only one among them who ate abundantly, but he was in a very
bad way that night when, with his three comrades, he returned to their
resting-place under the poplars by the canal.

On their way back to camp Maurice, without uttering a word, took
advantage of the darkness to seize Jean by the arm and drag him into a
by-path. Their comrades inspired him with unconquerable disgust; he
thought he should like to go and sleep in the little wood where he had
spent his first night on the peninsula. It was a good idea, and Jean
commended it highly when he had laid himself down on the warm, dry
ground, under the shelter of the dense foliage. They remained there
until the sun was high in the heavens, and enjoyed a sound, refreshing
slumber, which restored to them something of their strength.

The following day was Thursday, but they had ceased to note the days;
they were simply glad to observe that the weather seemed to be coming
off fine again. Jean overcame Maurice's repugnance and prevailed on
him to return to the canal, to see if their regiment was not to move
that day. Not a day passed now but detachments of prisoners, a
thousand to twelve hundred strong, were sent off to the fortresses in
Germany. The day but one before they had seen, drawn up in front of
the Prussian headquarters, a column of officers of various grades, who
were going to Pont-a-Mousson, there to take the railway. Everyone was
possessed with a wild, feverish longing to get away from that camp
where they had seen such suffering. Ah! if it but might be their turn!
And when they found the 106th still encamped on the bank of the canal,
in the inevitable disorder consequent upon such distress, their
courage failed them and they despaired.

Jean and Maurice that day thought they saw a prospect of obtaining
something to eat. All the morning a lively traffic had been going on
between the prisoners and the Bavarians on the other side of the
canal; the former would wrap their money in a handkerchief and toss it
across to the opposite shore, the latter would return the handkerchief
with a loaf of coarse brown bread, or a plug of their common, damp
tobacco. Even soldiers who had no money were not debarred from
participating in this commerce, employing, instead of currency, their
white uniform gloves, for which the Germans appeared to have a
weakness. For two hours packages were flying across the canal in its
entire length under this primitive system of exchanges. But when
Maurice dispatched his cravat with a five-franc piece tied in it to
the other bank, the Bavarian who was to return him a loaf of bread
gave it, whether from awkwardness or malice, such an ineffectual toss
that it fell in the water. The incident elicited shouts of laughter
from the Germans. Twice again Maurice repeated the experiment, and
twice his loaf went to feed the fishes. At last the Prussian officers,
attracted by the uproar, came running up and prohibited their men from
selling anything to the prisoners, threatening them with dire
penalties and punishments in case of disobedience. The traffic came to
a sudden end, and Jean had hard work to pacify Maurice, who shook his
fists at the scamps, shouting to them to give him back his five-franc
pieces.

This was another terrible day, notwithstanding the warm, bright
sunshine. Twice the bugle sounded and sent Jean hurrying off to the
shed whence rations were supposed to be issued, but on each occasion
he only got his toes trod on and his ribs racked in the crush. The
Prussians, whose organization was so wonderfully complete, continued
to manifest the same brutal inattention to the necessities of the
vanquished army. On the representations of Generals Douay and Lebrun,
they had indeed sent in a few sheep as well as some wagon-loads of
bread, but so little care was taken to guard them that the sheep were
carried off bodily and the wagons pillaged as soon as they reached the
bridge, the consequence of which was that the troops who were encamped
a hundred yards further on were no better off than before; it was only
the worst element, the plunderers and bummers, who benefited by the
provision trains. And thereon Jean, who, as he said, saw how the trick
was done, brought Maurice with him to the bridge to keep an eye on the
victuals.

It was four o'clock, and they had not had a morsel to eat all that
beautiful bright Thursday, when suddenly their eyes were gladdened by
the sight of Delaherche. A few among the citizens of Sedan had with
infinite difficulty obtained permission to visit the prisoners, to
whom they carried provisions, and Maurice had on several occasions
expressed his surprise at his failure to receive any tidings of his
sister. As soon as they recognized Delaherche in the distance,
carrying a large basket and with a loaf of bread under either arm,
they darted forward fast as their legs could carry them, but even thus
they were too late; a crowding, jostling mob closed in, and in the
confusion the dazed manufacturer was relieved of his basket and one of
his loaves, which vanished from his sight so expeditiously that he was
never able to tell the manner of their disappearance.

"Ah, my poor friends!" he stammered, utterly crestfallen in his
bewilderment and stupefaction, he who but a moment before had
come through the gate with a smile on his lips and an air of
good-fellowship, magnanimously forgetting his superior advantages in
his desire for popularity.

Jean had taken possession of the remaining loaf and saved it from the
hungry crew, and while he and Maurice, seated by the roadside, were
making great inroads in it, Delaherche opened his budget of news for
their benefit. His wife, the Lord be praised! was very well, but he
was greatly alarmed for the colonel, who had sunk into a condition of
deep prostration, although his mother continued to bear him company
from morning until night.

"And my sister?" Maurice inquired.

"Ah, yes! your sister; true. She insisted on coming with me; it was
she who brought the two loaves of bread. She had to remain over
yonder, though, on the other side of the canal; the sentries wouldn't
let her pass the gate. You know the Prussians have strictly prohibited
the presence of women in the peninsula."

Then he spoke of Henriette, and of her fruitless attempts to see her
brother and come to his assistance. Once in Sedan chance had brought
her face to face with Cousin Gunther, the man who was captain in the
Prussian Guards. He had passed her with his haughty, supercilious air,
pretending not to recognize her. She, also, with a sensation of
loathing, as if she were in the presence of one of her husband's
murderers, had hurried on with quickened steps; then, with a sudden
change of purpose for which she could not account, had turned back and
told him all the manner of Weiss's death, in harsh accents of
reproach. And he, thus learning how horribly a relative had met his
fate, had taken the matter coolly; it was the fortune of war; the same
thing might have happened to himself. His face, rendered stoically
impassive by the discipline of the soldier, had barely betrayed the
faintest evidence of interest. After that, when she informed him that
her brother was a prisoner and besought him to use his influence to
obtain for her an opportunity of seeing him, he had excused himself on
the ground that he was powerless in the matter; the instructions were
explicit and might not be disobeyed. He appeared to place the
regimental orderly book on a par with the Bible. She left him with the
clearly defined impression that he believed he was in the country for
the sole purpose of sitting in judgment on the French people, with all
the intolerance and arrogance of the hereditary enemy, swollen by his
personal hatred for the nation whom it had devolved on him to
chastise.

"And now," said Delaherche in conclusion, "you won't have to go to bed
supperless to-night; you have had a little something to eat. The worst
is that I am afraid I shall not be able to secure another pass."

He asked them if there was anything he could do for them outside, and
obligingly consented to take charge of some pencil-written letters
confided to him by other soldiers, for the Bavarians had more than
once been seen to laugh as they lighted their pipes with missives
which they had promised to forward. Then, when Jean and Maurice had
accompanied him to the gate, he exclaimed:

"Look! over yonder, there's Henriette! Don't you see her waving her
handkerchief?"

True enough, among the crowd beyond the line of sentinels they
distinguished a little, thin, pale face, a white dot that trembled in
the sunshine. Both were deeply affected, and, with moist eyes, raising
their hands above their head, answered her salutation by waving them
frantically in the air.

The following day was Friday, and it was then that Maurice felt that
his cup of horror was full to overflowing. After another night of
tranquil slumber in the little wood he was so fortunate as to secure
another meal, Jean having come across an old woman at the Chateau of
Villette who was selling bread at ten francs the pound. But that day
they witnessed a spectacle of which the horror remained imprinted on
their minds for many weeks and months.

The day before Chouteau had noticed that Pache had ceased complaining
and was going about with a careless, satisfied air, as a man might do
who had dined well. He immediately jumped at the conclusion that the
sly fox must have a concealed treasure somewhere, the more so that he
had seen him absent himself for near an hour that morning and come
back with a smile lurking on his face and his mouth filled with
unswallowed food. It must be that he had had a windfall, had probably
joined some marauding party and laid in a stock of provisions. And
Chouteau labored with Loubet and Lapoulle to stir up bad feeling
against the comrade, with the latter more particularly. _Hein!_ wasn't
he a dirty dog, if he had something to eat, not to go snacks with the
comrades! He ought to have a lesson that he would remember, for his
selfishness.

"To-night we'll keep a watch on him, don't you see. We'll learn
whether he dares to stuff himself on the sly, when so many poor devils
are starving all around him."

"Yes, yes, that's the talk! we'll follow him," Lapoulle angrily
declared. "We'll see about it!"

He doubled his fists; he was like a crazy man whenever the subject of
eating was mentioned in his presence. His enormous appetite caused him
to suffer more than the others; his torment at times was such that he
had been known to stuff his mouth with grass. For more than thirty-six
hours, since the night when they had supped on horseflesh and he had
contracted a terrible dysentery in consequence, he had been without
food, for he was so little able to look out for himself that,
notwithstanding his bovine strength, whenever he joined the others in
a marauding raid he never got his share of the booty. He would have
been willing to give his blood for a pound of bread.

As it was beginning to be dark Pache stealthily made his way to the
Tour a Glaire and slipped into the park, while the three others
cautiously followed him at a distance.

"It won't do to let him suspect anything," said Chouteau. "Be on your
guard in case he should look around."

But when he had advanced another hundred paces Pache evidently had no
idea there was anyone near, for he began to hurry forward at a swift
gait, not so much as casting a look behind. They had no difficulty in
tracking him to the adjacent quarries, where they fell on him as he
was in the act of removing two great flat stones, to take from the
cavity beneath part of a loaf of bread. It was the last of his store;
he had enough left for one more meal.

"You dirty, sniveling priest's whelp!" roared Lapoulle, "so that is
why you sneak away from us! Give me that; it's my share!"

Why should he give his bread? Weak and puny as he was, his slight form
dilated with anger, while he clutched the loaf against his bosom with
all the strength he could master. For he also was hungry.

"Let me alone. It's mine."

Then, at sight of Lapoulle's raised fist, he broke away and ran,
sliding down the steep banks of the quarries, making his way across
the bare fields in the direction of Donchery, the three others after
him in hot pursuit. He gained on them, however, being lighter than
they, and possessed by such overmastering fear, so determined to hold
on to what was his property, that his speed seemed to rival the wind.
He had already covered more than half a mile and was approaching the
little wood on the margin of the stream when he encountered Jean and
Maurice, who were on their way back to their resting-place for the
night. He addressed them an appealing, distressful cry as he passed;
while they, astounded by the wild hunt that went fleeting by, stood
motionless at the edge of a field, and thus it was that they beheld
the ensuing tragedy.

As luck would have it, Pache tripped over a stone and fell. In an
instant the others were on top of him--shouting, swearing, their
passion roused to such a pitch of frenzy that they were like wolves
that had run down their prey.

"Give me that," yelled Lapoulle, "or by G-d I'll kill you!"

And he had raised his fist again when Chouteau, taking from his pocket
the penknife with which he had slaughtered the horse and opening it,
placed it in his hand.

"Here, take it! the knife!"

But Jean meantime had come hurrying up, desirous to prevent the
mischief he saw brewing, losing his wits like the rest of them,
indiscreetly speaking of putting them all in the guardhouse; whereon
Loubet, with an ugly laugh, told him he must be a Prussian, since they
had no longer any commanders, and the Prussians were the only ones who
issued orders.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" Lapoulle repeated, "will you give me that?"

Despite the terror that blanched his cheeks Pache hugged the bread
more closely to his bosom, with the obstinacy of the peasant who never
cedes a jot or tittle of that which is his.

"No!"

Then in a second all was over; the brute drove the knife into the
other's throat with such violence that the wretched man did not even
utter a cry. His arms relaxed, the bread fell to the ground, into the
pool of blood that had spurted from the wound.

At sight of the imbecile, uncalled-for murder, Maurice, who had until
then been a silent spectator of the scene, appeared as if stricken by
a sudden fit of madness. He raved and gesticulated, shaking his fist
in the face of the three men and calling them murderers, assassins,
with a violence that shook his frame from head to foot. But Lapoulle
seemed not even to hear him. Squatted on the ground beside the corpse,
he was devouring the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid
ferocity on his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while
Chouteau and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of
his wild-beast appetite, did not even dare claim their portion.

By this time night had fallen, a pleasant night with a clear sky
thick-set with stars, and Maurice and Jean, who had regained the
shelter of their little wood, presently perceived Lapoulle wandering
up and down the river bank. The two others had vanished, had doubtless
returned to the encampment by the canal, their mind troubled by reason
of the corpse they left behind them. He, on the other hand, seemed to
dread going to rejoin the comrades. When he was more himself and his
brutish, sluggish intellect showed him the full extent of his crime,
he had evidently experienced a twinge of anguish that made motion a
necessity, and not daring to return to the interior of the peninsula,
where he would have to face the body of his victim, had sought the
bank of the stream, where he was now tramping to and fro with uneven,
faltering steps. What was going on within the recesses of that
darkened mind that guided the actions of that creature, so degraded as
to be scarce higher than the animal? Was it the awakening of remorse?
or only the fear lest his crime might be discovered? He could not
remain there; he paced his beat as a wild beast shambles up and down
its cage, with a sudden and ever-increasing longing to fly, a longing
that ached and pained like a physical hurt, from which he felt he
should die, could he do nothing to satisfy it. Quick, quick, he
must fly, must fly at once, from that prison where he had slain a
fellow-being. And yet, the coward in him, it may be, gaining the
supremacy, he threw himself on the ground, and for a long time lay
crouched among the herbage.

And Maurice said to Jean in his horror and disgust:

"See here, I cannot remain longer in this place; I tell you plainly I
should go mad. I am surprised that the physical part of me holds out
as it does; my bodily health is not so bad, but the mind is going;
yes! it is going, I am certain of it. If you leave me another day in
this hell I am lost. I beg you, let us go away, let us start at once!"

And he went on to propound the wildest schemes for getting away. They
would swim the Meuse, would cast themselves on the sentries and
strangle them with a cord he had in his pocket, or would beat out
their brains with rocks, or would buy them over with the money they
had left and don their uniform to pass through the Prussian lines.

"My dear boy, be silent!" Jean sadly answered; "it frightens me to
hear you talk so wildly. Is there any reason in what you say, are any
of your plans feasible? Wait; to-morrow we'll see about it. Be
silent!"

He, although his heart, no less than his friend's, was wrung by the
horrors that surrounded them on every side, had preserved his mental
balance amid the debilitating effects of famine, among the grisly
visions of that existence than which none could approach more nearly
the depth of human misery. And as his companion's frenzy continued to
increase and he talked of casting himself into the Meuse, he was
obliged to restrain him, even to the point of using violence, scolding
and supplicating, tears standing in his eyes. Then suddenly he said:

"See! look there!"

A splash was heard coming from the river, and t

III.


That morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time to the gay,
ringing notes of the French bugles, and now they were on their way to
Pont-a-Mousson, marching in the ranks of the convoy of prisoners,
which was guarded front and rear by platoons of Prussian infantry,
while a file of men with fixed bayonets flanked the column on either
side. Whenever they came to a German post they heard only the
lugubrious, ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets.

Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left-hand road
and would pass through Sedan; perhaps he would have an opportunity of
seeing his sister Henriette. All the pleasure, however, that he had
experienced at his release from that foul cesspool where he had spent
nine days of agony was dashed to the ground and destroyed during the
three-mile march from the peninsula of Iges to the city. It was but
another form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners,
shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock of
sheep with the dog at their heels. There is no spectacle in all the
world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished troops being
marched off into captivity under guard of their conquerors, without
arms, their empty hands hanging idly at their sides; and these men,
clad in rags and tatters, besmeared with the filth in which they had
lain for more than a week, gaunt and wasted after their long fast,
were more like vagabonds than soldiers; they resembled loathsome,
horribly dirty tramps, whom the gendarmes would have picked up along
the highways and consigned to the lockup. As they passed through the
Faubourg of Torcy, where men paused on the sidewalks and women came to
their doors to regard them with mournful, compassionate interest, the
blush of shame rose to Maurice's cheek, he hung his head and a bitter
taste came to his mouth.

Jean, whose epidermis was thicker and mind more practical, thought
only of their stupidity in not having brought off with them a loaf of
bread apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt departure they had even
gone off without breakfasting, and hunger soon made its presence felt
by the nerveless sensation in their legs. Others among the prisoners
appeared to be in the same boat, for they held out money, begging the
people of the place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an
extremely tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold piece,
extending it above the heads of the soldiers of the escort; and he was
almost frantic that he could purchase nothing. Just at that time Jean,
who had been keeping his eyes open, perceived a bakery a short
distance ahead, before which were piled a dozen loaves of bread; he
immediately got his money ready and, as the column passed, tossed the
baker a five-franc piece and endeavored to secure two of the loaves;
then, when the Prussian who was marching at his side pushed him back
roughly into the ranks, he protested, demanding that he be allowed to
recover his money from the baker. But at that juncture the captain
commanding the detachment, a short, bald-headed man with a brutal
expression of face, came hastening up; he raised his revolver over
Jean's head as if about to strike him with the butt, declaring with an
oath that he would brain the first man that dared to lift a finger.
And the rest of the captives continued to shamble on, stirring up the
dust of the road with their shuffling feet, with eyes averted and
shoulders bowed, cowed and abjectly submissive as a drove of cattle.

"Oh! how good it would seem to slap the fellow's face just once!"
murmured Maurice, as if he meant it. "How I should like to let him
have just one from the shoulder, and drive his teeth down his dirty
throat!"

And during the remainder of their march he could not endure to look on
that captain, with his ugly, supercilious face.

They had entered Sedan and were crossing the Pont de Meuse, and the
scenes of violence and brutality became more numerous than ever. A
woman darted forward and would have embraced a boyish young sergeant
--likely she was his mother--and was repulsed with a blow from a
musket-butt that felled her to the ground. On the Place Turenne the
guards hustled and maltreated some citizens because they cast
provisions to the prisoners. In the Grande Rue one of the convoy fell
in endeavoring to secure a bottle that a lady extended to him, and was
assisted to his feet with kicks. For a week now Sedan had witnessed
the saddening spectacle of the defeated driven like cattle through its
streets, and seemed no more accustomed to it than at the beginning;
each time a fresh detachment passed the city was stirred to its very
depths by a movement of pity and indignation.

Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like Maurice's,
reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him that they might
see Delaherche somewhere among the throng. He gave his friend a nudge
of the elbow.

"Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street presently, will
you?"

They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, indeed, when they
became aware of several pairs of eyes turned on the column from one of
the tall windows of the factory, and as they drew nearer recognized
Delaherche and his wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing
of the balcony, and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame
Delaherche. They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer
was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched with
tremulous eagerness to receive them. Maurice saw at once that his
sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched the flying loaves,
fearing there might none be left for them. They both had raised their
arms and were waving them frantically above their head, shouting
meanwhile with all the force of their lungs:

"Here we are! This way, this way!"

The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst of their
surprise. Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly brightened, and
they displayed by the warmth of their gestures the pleasure they
experienced in the encounter. There was one solitary loaf left, which
Gilberte insisted on throwing with her own hands, and pitched it into
Jean's extended arms in such a charmingly awkward way that she gave a
winsome laugh at her own expense. Maurice, unable to stop on account
of the pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted, in a tone
of anxious inquiry:

"And Henriette? Henriette?"

Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was inaudible in
the shuffling tramp of so many feet. He seemed to understand that the
young man had failed to catch his meaning, for he gesticulated like a
semaphore; there was one gesture in particular that he repeated
several times, extending his arm with a sweeping motion toward the
south, apparently intending to convey the idea of some point in the
remote distance: Off there, away off there. Already the head of the
column was wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the facade of the factory
was lost to sight, together with the kindly faces of the three
Delaherches; the last the two friends saw of them was the fluttering
of the white handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them a farewell.

"What did he say?" asked Jean.

Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear where
there was nothing to be seen. "I don't know; I could not understand
him; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear from her."

And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the Prussians
urging on the weary men with the brutality of conquerors; the column
left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, long-drawn array,
hastening their steps, like sheep at whose heels the dogs are
snapping.

When they passed through Bazeilles Jean and Maurice thought of Weiss,
and cast their eyes about in an effort to distinguish the site of the
little house that had been defended with such bravery. While they were
at Camp Misery they had heard the woeful tale of slaughter and
conflagration that had blotted the pretty village from existence, and
the abominations that they now beheld exceeded all they had dreamed of
or imagined. At the expiration of twelve days the ruins were smoking
still; the tottering walls had fallen in, there were not ten houses
standing. It afforded them some small comfort, however, to meet a
procession of carts and wheelbarrows loaded with Bavarian helmets and
muskets that had been collected after the conflict. That evidence of
the chastisement that had been inflicted on those murderers and
incendiaries went far toward mitigating the affliction of defeat.

The column was to halt at Douzy to give the men an opportunity to eat
breakfast. It was not without much suffering that they reached that
place; already the prisoners' strength was giving out, exhausted as
they were by their ten days of fasting. Those who the day before had
availed of the abundant supplies to gorge themselves were seized with
vertigo, their enfeebled legs refused to support their weight, and
their gluttony, far from restoring their lost strength, was a further
source of weakness to them. The consequence was that, when the train
was halted in a meadow to the left of the village, these poor
creatures flung themselves upon the ground with no desire to eat. Wine
was wanting; some charitable women who came, bringing a few bottles,
were driven off by the sentries. One of them in her affright fell and
sprained her ankle, and there ensued a painful scene of tears and
hysterics, during which the Prussians confiscated the bottles and
drank their contents amid jeers and insulting laughter. This tender
compassion of the peasants for the poor soldiers who were being led
away into captivity was manifested constantly along the route, while
it was said the harshness they displayed toward the generals amounted
almost to cruelty. At that same Douzy, only a few days previously, the
villagers had hooted and reviled a number of paroled officers who were
on their way to Pont-a-Mousson. The roads were not safe for general
officers; men wearing the blouse--escaped soldiers, or deserters, it
may be--fell on them with pitch-forks and endeavored to take their
life as traitors, credulously pinning their faith to that legend of
bargain and sale which, even twenty years later, was to continue to
shed its opprobrium upon those leaders who had commanded armies in
that campaign.

Maurice and Jean ate half their bread, and were so fortunate as to
have a mouthful of brandy with which to wash it down, thanks to the
kindness of a worthy old farmer. When the order was given to resume
their advance, however, the distress throughout the convoy was
extreme. They were to halt for the night at Mouzon, and although the
march was a short one, it seemed as if it would tax the men's strength
more severely than they could bear; they could not get on their feet
without giving utterance to cries of pain, so stiff did their tired
legs become the moment they stopped to rest. Many removed their shoes
to relieve their galled and bleeding feet. Dysentery continued to
rage; a man fell before they had gone half a mile, and they had to
prop him against a wall and leave him. A little further on two others
sank at the foot of a hedge, and it was night before an old woman came
along and picked them up. All were stumbling, tottering, and dragging
themselves along, supporting their forms with canes, which the
Prussians, perhaps in derision, had suffered them to cut at the margin
of a wood. They were a straggling array of tramps and beggars, covered
with sores, haggard, emaciated, and footsore; a sight to bring tears
to the eyes of the most stony-hearted. And the guards continued to be
as brutally strict as ever; those who for any purpose attempted to
leave the ranks were driven back with blows, and the platoon that
brought up the rear had orders to prod with their bayonets those who
hung back. A sergeant having refused to go further, the captain
summoned two of his men and instructed them to seize him, one by
either arm, and in this manner the wretched man was dragged over the
ground until he agreed to walk. And what made the whole thing more
bitter and harder to endure was the utter insignificance of that
little pimply-faced, bald-headed officer, so insufferably
consequential in his brutality, who took advantage of his knowledge of
French to vituperate the prisoners in it in curt, incisive words that
cut and stung like the lash of a whip.

"Oh!" Maurice furiously exclaimed, "to get the puppy in my hands and
drain him of his blood, drop by drop!"

His powers of endurance were almost exhausted, but it was his rage
that he had to choke down, even more than his fatigue, that was cause
of his suffering. Everything exasperated him and set on edge his
tingling nerves; the harsh notes of the Prussian trumpets
particularly, which inspired him with a desire to scream each time he
heard them. He felt he should never reach the end of their cruel
journey without some outbreak that would bring down on him the utmost
severity of the guard. Even now, when traversing the smallest hamlets,
he suffered horribly and felt as if he should die with shame to behold
the eyes of the women fixed pityingly on him; what would it be when
they should enter Germany, and the populace of the great cities should
crowd the streets to laugh and jeer at them as they passed? And he
pictured to himself the cattle cars into which they would be crowded
for transportation, the discomforts and humiliations they would have
to suffer on the journey, the dismal life in German fortresses under
the leaden, wintry sky. No, no; he would have none of it; better to
take the risk of leaving his bones by the roadside on French soil than
go and rot off yonder, for months and months, perhaps, in the dark
depths of a casemate.

"Listen," he said below his breath to Jean, who was walking at his
side; "we will wait until we come to a wood; then we'll break through
the guards and run for it among the trees. The Belgian frontier is not
far away; we shall have no trouble in finding someone to guide us to
it."

Jean, accustomed as he was to look at things coolly and calculate
chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, too, in his
revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of an escape.

"Have you taken leave of your senses! the guard will fire on us, and
we shall both be killed."

But Maurice replied there was a chance the soldiers might not hit
them, and then, after all, if their aim should prove true, it would
not matter so very much.

"Very well!" rejoined Jean, "but what is going to become of us
afterward, dressed in uniform as we are? You know perfectly well that
the country is swarming in every direction with Prussian troops; we
could not go far unless we had other clothes to put on. No, no, my
lad, it's too risky; I'll not let you attempt such an insane project."

And he took the young man's arm and held it pressed against his side,
as if they were mutually sustaining each other, continuing meanwhile
to chide and soothe him in a tone that was at once rough and
affectionate.

Just then the sound of a whispered conversation close behind them
caused them to turn and look around. It was Chouteau and Loubet, who
had left the peninsula of Iges that morning at the same time as they,
and whom they had managed to steer clear of until the present moment.
Now the two worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have
overheard Maurice's words, his plan for escaping through the mazes of
a forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf. His breath was hot
upon their neck as he murmured:

"Say, comrades, count us in on that. That's a capital idea of yours,
to skip the ranch. Some of the boys have gone already, and sure we're
not going to be such fools as to let those bloody pigs drag us away
like dogs into their infernal country. What do you say, eh? Shall we
four make a break for liberty?"

Maurice's excitement was rising to fever-heat again; Jean turned and
said to the tempter:

"If you are so anxious to get away, why don't you go? there's nothing
to prevent you. What are you up to, any way?"

He flinched a little before the corporal's direct glance, and allowed
the true motive of his proposal to escape him.

"_Dame_! it would be better that four should share the undertaking.
One or two of us might have a chance of getting off."

Then Jean, with an emphatic shake of the head, refused to have
anything whatever to do with the matter; he distrusted the gentleman,
he said, as he was afraid he would play them some of his dirty tricks.
He had to exert all his authority with Maurice to retain him on his
side, for at that very moment an opportunity presented itself for
attempting the enterprise; they were passing the border of a small but
very dense wood, separated from the road only by the width of a field
that was covered by a thick growth of underbrush. Why should they not
dash across that field and vanish in the thicket? was there not safety
for them in that direction?

Loubet had so far said nothing. His mind was made up, however, that he
was not going to Germany to run to seed in one of their dungeons, and
his nose, mobile as a hound's, was sniffing the atmosphere, his shifty
eyes were watching for the favorable moment. He would trust to his
legs and his mother wit, which had always helped him out of his
scrapes thus far. His decision was quickly made.

"Ah, _zut_! I've had enough of it; I'm off!"

He broke through the line of the escort, and with a single bound was
in the field, Chouteau following his example and running at his side.
Two of the Prussian soldiers immediately started in pursuit, but the
others seemed dazed, and it did not occur to them to send a ball after
the fugitives. The entire episode was so soon over that it was not
easy to note its different phases. Loubet dodged and doubled among the
bushes and it appeared as if he would certainly succeed in getting
off, while Chouteau, less nimble, was on the point of being captured,
but the latter, summoning up all his energies in a supreme burst of
speed, caught up with his comrade and dexterously tripped him; and
while the two Prussians were lumbering up to secure the fallen man,
the other darted into the wood and vanished. The guard, finally
remembering that they had muskets, fired a few ineffectual shots, and
there was some attempt made to search the thicket, which resulted in
nothing.

Meantime the two soldiers were pummeling poor Loubet, who had not
regained his feet. The captain came running up, beside himself with
anger, and talked of making an example, and with this encouragement
kicks and cuffs and blows from musket-butts continued to rain down
upon the wretched man with such fury that when at last they stood him
on his feet he was found to have an arm broken and his skull
fractured. A peasant came along, driving a cart, in which he was
placed, but he died before reaching Mouzon.

"You see," was all that Jean said to Maurice.

The two friends cast a look in the direction of the wood that
sufficiently expressed their sentiments toward the scoundrel who had
gained his freedom by such base means, while their hearts were stirred
with feelings of deepest compassion for the poor devil whom he had
made his victim, a guzzler and a toper, who certainly did not amount
to much, but a merry, good-natured fellow all the same, and nobody's
fool. And that was always the way with those who kept bad company,
Jean moralizingly observed: they might be very fly, but sooner or
later a bigger rascal was sure to come along and make a meal of them.

Notwithstanding this terrible lesson Maurice, upon reaching Mouzon,
was still possessed by his unalterable determination to attempt an
escape. The prisoners were in such an exhausted condition when they
reached the place that the Prussians had to assist them to set up the
few tents that were placed at their disposal. The camp was formed near
the town, on low and marshy ground, and the worst of the business was
that another convoy having occupied the spot the day before, the field
was absolutely invisible under the superincumbent filth; it was no
better than a common cesspool, of unimaginable foulness. The sole
means the men had of self-protection was to scatter over the ground
some large flat stones, of which they were so fortunate as to find a
number in the vicinity. By way of compensation they had a somewhat
less hard time of it that evening; the strictness of their guardians
was relaxed a little once the captain had disappeared, doubtless to
seek the comforts of an inn. The sentries began by winking at the
irregularity of the proceeding when some children came along and
commenced to toss fruit, apples and pears, over their heads to the
prisoners; the next thing was they allowed the people of the
neighborhood to enter the lines, so that in a short time the camp was
swarming with impromptu merchants, men and women, offering for sale
bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who had money had no trouble in
supplying their needs so far as eating, drinking, and smoking were
concerned. A bustling animation prevailed in the dim twilight; it was
like a corner of the market place in a town where a fair is being
held.

But Maurice drew Jean behind their tent and again said to him in his
nervous, flighty way:

"I can't stand it; I shall make an effort to get away as soon as it is
dark. To-morrow our course will take us away from the frontier; it
will be too late."

"Very well, we'll try it," Jean replied, his powers of resistance
exhausted, his imagination, too, seduced by the pleasing idea of
freedom. "They can't do more than kill us."

After that he began to scrutinize more narrowly the venders who
surrounded him on every side. There were some among the comrades who
had succeeded in supplying themselves with blouse and trousers, and it
was reported that some of the charitable people of the place had
regular stocks of garments on hand, designed to assist prisoners in
escaping. And almost immediately his attention was attracted to a
pretty girl, a tall blonde of sixteen with a pair of magnificent eyes,
who had on her arm a basket containing three loaves of bread. She was
not crying her wares like the rest; an anxious, engaging smile played
on her red lips, her manner was hesitating. He looked her steadily in
the face; their glances met and for an instant remained confounded.
Then she came up, with the embarrassed smile of a girl unaccustomed to
such business.

"Do you wish to buy some bread?"

He made no reply, but questioned her by an imperceptible movement of
the eyelids. On her answering yes, by an affirmative nod of the head,
he asked in a very low tone of voice:

"There is clothing?"

"Yes, under the loaves."

Then she began to cry her merchandise aloud: "Bread! bread! who'll buy
my bread?" But when Maurice would have slipped a twenty-franc piece
into her fingers she drew back her hand abruptly and ran away, leaving
the basket with them. The last they saw of her was the happy, tender
look in her pretty eyes, as in the distance she turned and smiled on
them.

When they were in possession of the basket Jean and Maurice found
difficulties staring them in the face. They had strayed away from
their tent, and in their agitated condition felt they should never
succeed in finding it again. Where were they to bestow themselves? and
how effect their change of garments? It seemed to them that the eyes
of the entire assemblage were focused on the basket, which Jean
carried with an awkward air, as if it contained dynamite, and that its
contents must be plainly visible to everyone. It would not do to waste
time, however; they must be up and doing. They stepped into the first
vacant tent they came to, where each of them hurriedly slipped on a
pair of trousers and donned a blouse, having first deposited their
discarded uniforms in the basket, which they placed on the ground in a
dark corner of the tent and abandoned to its fate. There was a
circumstance that gave them no small uneasiness, however; they found
only one head-covering, a knitted woolen cap, which Jean insisted
Maurice should wear. The former, fearing his bare-headedness might
excite suspicion, was hanging about the precincts of the camp on the
lookout for a covering of some description, when it occurred to him to
purchase his hat from an extremely dirty old man who was selling
cigars.

"Brussels cigars, three sous apiece, two for five!"

Customs regulations were in abeyance since the battle of Sedan, and
the imports of Belgian merchandise had been greatly stimulated. The
old man had been making a handsome profit from his traffic, but that

did not prevent him from driving a sharp bargain when he understood
the reason why the two men wanted to buy his hat, a greasy old affair
of felt with a great hole in its crown. He finally consented to part
with it for two five-franc pieces, grumbling that he should certainly
have a cold in his head.

Then Jean had another idea, which was neither more nor less than to
buy out the old fellow's stock in trade, the two dozen cigars that
remained unsold. The bargain effected, he pulled his hat down over his
eyes and began to cry in the itinerant hawker's drawling tone:

"Here you are, Brussels cigars, two for three sous, two for three
sous!"

Their safety was now assured. He signaled Maurice to go on before. It
happened to the latter to discover an umbrella lying on the grass; he
picked it up and, as a few drops of rain began to fall just then,
opened it tranquilly as they were about to pass the line of sentries.

"Two for three sous, two for three sous, Brussels cigars!"

It took Jean less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of
merchandise. The men came crowding about him with chaff and laughter:
a reasonable fellow, that; he didn't rob poor chaps of their money!
The Prussians themselves were attracted by such unheard-of bargains,
and he was compelled to trade with them. He had all the time been
working his way toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two
cigars went to a big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not
speak a word of French.

"Don't walk so fast, confound it!" Jean breathed in a whisper behind
Maurice's back. "You'll have them after us."

Their legs seemed inclined to run away with them, although they did
their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a great effort to
pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a number of people were
collected before an inn. Some villagers were chatting peaceably with
German soldiers, and the two runaways made a pretense of listening,
and even hazarded a few observations on the weather and the
probability of the rain continuing during the night. They trembled
when they beheld a man, a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively,
but as he smiled with an air of great good-nature they thought they
might venture to address him, asking in a whisper:

"Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir?"

"Yes, it is; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and afterward
cut across the fields, to the left."

Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the
slumbering trees, where no sound reached their ears, where nothing
stirred and they believed their safety was assured them, they sank
into each other's arms in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion.
Maurice was sobbing violently, while big tears trickled slowly down
Jean's cheeks. It was the natural revulsion of their overtaxed
feelings after the long-protracted ordeal they had passed through, the
joy and delight of their mutual assurance that their troubles were at
an end, and that thenceforth suffering and they were to be strangers.
And united by the memory of what they had endured together in ties
closer than those of brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild
embrace, and the kiss that they exchanged at that moment seemed to
them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they had never
experienced before in all their life; a kiss such as they never could
receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying friendship, giving
additional confirmation to the certainty that thereafter their two
hearts would be but one, for all eternity.

When they had separated at last: "Little one," said Jean, in a
trembling voice, "it is well for us to be here, but we are not at the
end. We must look about a bit and try to find our bearings."

Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of the
frontier, declared that all they had to do was to pursue a straight
course, whereon they resumed their way, moving among the trees in
Indian file with the greatest circumspection, until they reached
the edge of the thicket. There, mindful of the injunction of the
kind-hearted villager, they were about to turn to the left and take a
short cut across the fields, but on coming to a road, bordered with a
row of poplars on either side they beheld directly in their path the
watch-fire of a Prussian detachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing
his beat, gleamed in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their
soup and conversing; the fugitives stood not upon the order of their
going, but plunged into the recesses of the wood again, in mortal
terror lest they might be pursued. They thought they heard the sound
of voices, of footsteps on their trail, and thus for over an hour they
wandered at random among the copses, until all idea of locality was
obliterated from their brain; now racing like affrighted animals
through the underbrush, again brought up all standing, the cold sweat
trickling down their face, before a tree in which they beheld a
Prussian. And the end of it was that they again came out on the
poplar-bordered road not more than ten paces from the sentry, and
quite near the soldiers, who were toasting their toes in tranquil
comfort.

"Hang the luck!" grumbled Jean. "This must be an enchanted wood."

This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of snapping twigs
and rolling stones betrayed them. And as they did not answer the
challenge of the sentry, but made off at the double-quick, the men
seized their muskets and sent a shower of bullets crashing through the
thicket, into which the fugitives had plunged incontinently.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain.

He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in the calf
of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it drove him up
against a tree.

"Are you hurt?" Maurice anxiously inquired.

"Yes, and in the leg, worse luck!"

They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread
expectancy of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels; but the
firing had ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense stillness that
had again settled down upon the wood and the surrounding country. It
was evident that the Prussians had no inclination to beat up the
thicket.

Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet; forced back a groan.
Maurice sustained him with his arm.

"Can't you walk?"

"I should say not!" He gave way to a fit of rage, he, always so
self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have thumped himself.
"God in Heaven, if this is not hard luck! to have one's legs knocked
from under him at the very time he is most in need of them! It's too
bad, too bad, by my soul it is! Go on, you, and put yourself in
safety!"

But Maurice laughed quietly as he answered:

"That is silly talk!"

He took his friend's arm and helped him along, for neither of them had
any desire to linger there. When, laboriously and by dint of heroic
effort, they had advanced some half-dozen paces further, they halted
again with renewed alarm at beholding before them a house, standing at
the margin of the wood, apparently a sort of farmhouse. Not a light
was visible at any of the windows, the open courtyard gate yawned upon
the dark and deserted dwelling. And when they plucked up their courage
a little and ventured to enter the courtyard, great was their surprise
to find a horse standing there with a saddle on his back, with nothing
to indicate the why or wherefore of his being there. Perhaps it was
the owner's intention to return, perhaps he was lying behind a bush
with a bullet in his brain. They never learned how it was.

But Maurice had conceived a new scheme, which appeared to afford him
great satisfaction.

"See here, the frontier is too far away; we should never succeed in
reaching it without a guide. What do you say to changing our plan and
going to Uncle Fouchard's, at Remilly? I am so well acquainted with
every inch of the road that I'm sure I could take you there with my
eyes bandaged. Don't you think it's a good idea, eh? I'll put you on
this horse, and I suppose Uncle Fouchard will grumble, but he'll take
us in."

Before starting he wished to take a look at the injured leg. There
were two orifices; the ball appeared to have entered the limb and
passed out, fracturing the tibia in its course. The flow of blood had
not been great; he did nothing more than bandage the upper part of the
calf tightly with his handkerchief.

"Do you fly, and leave me here," Jean said again.

"Hold your tongue; you are silly!"

When Jean was seated firmly in the saddle Maurice took the bridle and
they made a start. It was somewhere about eleven o'clock, and he hoped
to make the journey in three hours, even if they should be unable to
proceed faster than a walk. A difficulty that he had not thought of
until then, however, presented itself to his mind and for a moment
filled him with consternation: how were they to cross the Meuse in
order to get to the left bank? The bridge at Mouzon would certainly be
guarded. At last he remembered that there was a ferry lower down the
stream, at Villers, and trusting to luck to befriend him, he shaped
his course for that village, striking across the meadows and tilled
fields of the right bank. All went well enough at first; they had only
to dodge a cavalry patrol which forced them to hide in the shadow of a
wall and remain there half an hour. Then the rain began to come down
in earnest and his progress became more laborious, compelled as he was
to tramp through the sodden fields beside the horse, which fortunately
showed itself to be a fine specimen of the equine race, and perfectly
gentle. On reaching Villers he found that his trust in the blind
goddess, Fortune, had not been misplaced; the ferryman, who, at that
late hour, had just returned from setting a Bavarian officer across
the river, took them at once and landed them on the other shore
without delay or accident.

And it was not until they reached the village, where they narrowly
escaped falling into the clutches of the pickets who were stationed
along the entire length of the Remilly road, that their dangers and
hardships really commenced; again they were obliged to take to the
fields, feeling their way along blind paths and cart-tracks that could
scarcely be discerned in the darkness. The most trivial obstacle
sufficed to drive them a long way out of their course. They squeezed
through hedges, scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches,
forced a passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in
whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling rain, had sunk down
crosswise on his saddle in a condition of semi-consciousness, holding
on with both hands by the horse's mane, while Maurice, who had slipped
the bridle over his right arm, had to steady him by the legs to keep
him from tumbling to the ground. For more than a league, for two long,
weary hours that seemed like an eternity, did they toil onward in this
fatiguing way; floundering, stumbling, slipping in such a manner that
it seemed at every moment as if men and beast must land together in a
heap at the bottom of some descent. The spectacle they presented was
one of utter, abject misery, besplashed with mud, the horse trembling
in every limb, the man upon his back a helpless mass, as if at his
last gasp, the other, wild-eyed and pale as death, keeping his feet
only by an effort of fraternal love. Day was breaking; it was not far
from five o'clock when at last they came to Remilly.

In the courtyard of his little farmhouse, which was situated at the
extremity of the pass of Harancourt, overlooking the village, Father
Fouchard was stowing away in his carriole the carcasses of two sheep
that he had slaughtered the day before. The sight of his nephew,
coming to him at that hour and in that sorry plight, caused him such
perturbation of spirit that, after the first explanatory words, he
roughly cried:

"You want me to take you in, you and your friend? and then settle
matters with the Prussians afterward, I suppose. I'm much obliged to
you, but no! I might as well die right straight off and have done with
it."

He did not go so far, however, as to prohibit Maurice and Prosper from
taking Jean from the horse and laying him on the great table in the
kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster from her bed and slipped it
beneath the head of the wounded man, who was still unconscious. But it
irritated the old fellow to see the man lying on his table; he
grumbled and fretted, saying that the kitchen was no place for him;
why did they not take him away to the hospital at once? since there
fortunately was a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the old
schoolhouse; and there was a big room in it, with everything nice and
comfortable.

"To the hospital!" Maurice hotly replied, "and have the Prussians pack
him off to Germany as soon as he is well, for you know they treat all
the wounded as prisoners of war. Do you take me for a fool, uncle? I
did not bring him here to give him up."

Things were beginning to look dubious, the uncle was threatening to
pitch them out upon the road, when someone mentioned Henriette's name.

"What about Henriette?" inquired the young man.

And he learned that his sister had been an inmate of the house at
Remilly for the last two days; her affliction had weighed so heavily
on her that life at Sedan, where her existence had hitherto been a
happy one, was become a burden greater than she could bear. Chancing
to meet with Doctor Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was
acquainted, her conversation with him had been the means of bringing
her to take up her abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she had
a little bedroom, in order to devote herself entirely to the care of
the sufferers in the neighboring hospital. That alone, she said, would
serve to quiet her bitter memories. She paid her board and was the
means of introducing many small comforts into the life of the
farmhouse, which caused Father Fouchard to regard her with an eye of
favor. The weather was always fine with him, provided he was making
money.

"Ah! so my sister is here," said Maurice. "That must have been what M.
Delaherche wished to tell me, with his gestures that I could not
understand. Very well; if she is here, that settles it; we shall
remain."

Notwithstanding his fatigue he started off at once in quest of her at
the ambulance, where she had been on duty during the preceding night,
while the uncle cursed his luck that kept him from being off with the
carriole to sell his mutton among the neighboring villages, so long as
the confounded business that he had got mixed up in remained
unfinished.

When Maurice returned with Henriette they caught the old man making a
critical examination of the horse, that Prosper had led away to the
stable. The animal seemed to please him; he was knocked up, but showed
signs of strength and endurance. The young man laughed and told his
uncle he might have him as a gift if he fancied him, while Henriette,
taking her relative aside, assured him Jean should be no expense to
him; that she would take charge of him and nurse him, and he might
have the little room behind the cow-stables, where no Prussian would
ever think to look for him. And Father Fouchard, still wearing a very
sulky face and but half convinced that there was anything to be made
out of the affair, finally closed the discussion by jumping into his
carriole and driving off, leaving her at liberty to act as she
pleased.

It took Henriette but a few minutes, with the assistance of Silvine
and Prosper, to put the room in order; then she had Jean brought in
and they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he giving no sign of life
during the operation save to mutter some unintelligible words. He
opened his eyes and looked about him, but seemed not to be conscious
of anyone's presence in the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to
be aware how utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a
glass of wine and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from the
yesterday's dinner, when Doctor Dalichamp came in, as was his daily
custom previous to visiting the hospital, and the young man, in his
anxiety for his friend, mustered up his strength to follow him,
together with his sister, to the bedside of the patient.

The doctor was a short, thick-set man, with a big round head, on which
the hair, as well as the fringe of beard about his face, had long
since begun to be tinged with gray. The skin of his ruddy, mottled
face was tough and indurated as a peasant's, spending as he did most
of his time in the open air, always on the go to relieve the
sufferings of his fellow-creatures; while the large, bright eyes, the
massive nose, indicative of obstinacy, and the benignant if somewhat
sensual mouth bore witness to the lifelong charities and good works of
the honest country doctor; a little brusque at times, not a man of
genius, but whom many years of practice in his profession had made an
excellent healer.

When he had examined Jean, still in a comatose state, he murmured:

"I am very much afraid that amputation will be necessary."

The words produced a painful impression on Maurice and Henriette.
Presently, however, he added:

"Perhaps we may be able to save the leg, but it will require the
utmost care and attention, and will take a very long time. For the
moment his physical and mental depression is such that the only thing
to do is to let him sleep. To-morrow we shall know more."

Then, having applied a dressing to the wound, he turned to Maurice,
whom he had known in bygone days, when he was a boy.

"And you, my good fellow, would be better off in bed than sitting
there."

The young man continued to gaze before him into vacancy, as if he had
not heard. In the confused hallucination that was due to his fatigue
he developed a kind of delirium, a supersensitive nervous excitation
that embraced all he had suffered in mind and body since the beginning
of the campaign. The spectacle of his friend's wretched state, his own
condition, scarce less pitiful, defeated, his hands tied, good for
nothing, the reflection that all those heroic efforts had culminated
in such disaster, all combined to incite him to frantic rebellion
against destiny. At last he spoke.

"It is not ended; no, no! we have not seen the end, and I must go
away. Since _he_ must lie there on his back for weeks, for months,
perhaps, I cannot stay; I must go, I must go at once. You will assist
me, won't you, doctor? you will supply me with the means to escape and
get back to Paris?"

Pale and trembling, Henriette threw her arms about him and caught him
to her bosom.

"What words are those you speak? enfeebled as you are, after all the
suffering you have endured! but think not I shall let you go; you
shall stay here with me! Have you not paid the debt you owe your
country? and should you not think of me, too, whom you would leave to
loneliness? of me, who have nothing now in all the wide world save
you?"

Their tears flowed and were mingled. They held each other in a wild
tumultuous embrace, with that fond affection which, in twins, often
seems as if it antedated existence. But for all that his exaltation
did not subside, but assumed a higher pitch.

"I tell you I must go. Should I not go I feel I should die of grief
and shame. You can have no idea how my blood boils and seethes in my
veins at the thought of remaining here in idleness. I tell you that
this business is not going to end thus, that we must be avenged. On
whom, on what? Ah! that I cannot tell; but avenged we must and shall
be for such misfortune, in order that we may yet have courage to live
on!"

Doctor Dalichamp, who had been watching the scene with intense
interest, cautioned Henriette by signal to make no reply. Maurice
would doubtless be more rational after he should have slept; and sleep
he did, all that day and all the succeeding night, for more than
twenty hours, and never stirred hand or foot. When he awoke next
morning, however, he was as inflexible as ever in his determination to
go away. The fever had subsided; he was gloomy and restless, in haste
to withdraw himself from influences that he feared might weaken his
patriotic fervor. His sister, with many tears, made up her mind that
he must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor Dalichamp, when he came
to make his morning visit, promised to do what he could to facilitate
the young man's escape by turning over to him the papers of a hospital
attendant who had died recently at Raucourt. It was arranged that
Maurice should don the gray blouse with the red cross of Geneva on its
sleeve and pass through Belgium, thence to make his way as best he
might to Paris, access to which was as yet uninterrupted.

He did not leave the house that day, keeping himself out of sight and
waiting for night to come. He scarcely opened his mouth, although he
did make an attempt to enlist the new farm-hand in his enterprise.

"Say, Prosper, don't you feel as if you would like to go back and have
one more look at the Prussians?"

The ex-chasseur d'Afrique, who was eating a cheese sandwich, stopped
and held his knife suspended in the air.

"It don't strike me that it is worth while, from what we were allowed
to see of them before. Why should you wish me to go back there, when
the only use our generals can find for the cavalry is to send it in
after the battle is ended and let it be cut to pieces? No, faith, I'm
sick of the business, giving us such dirty work as that to do!" There
was silence between them for a moment; then he went on, doubtless to
quiet the reproaches of his conscience as a soldier: "And then the
work is too heavy here just now; the plowing is just commencing, and
then there'll be the fall sowing to be looked after. We must think of
the farm work, mustn't we? for fighting is well enough in its way, but
what would become of us if we should cease to till the ground? You see
how it is; I can't leave my work. Not that I am particularly in love
with Father Fouchard, for I doubt very strongly if I shall ever see
the color of his money, but the beasties are beginning to take to me,
and faith! when I was up there in the Old Field this morning, and gave
a look at that d----d Sedan lying yonder in the distance, you can't
tell how good it made me feel to be guiding my oxen and driving the
plow through the furrow, all alone in the bright sunshine."

As soon as it was fairly dark, Doctor Dalichamp came driving up in his
old gig. It was his intention to see Maurice to the frontier. Father
Fouchard, well pleased to be rid of one of his guests at least,
stepped out upon the road to watch and make sure there were none of
the enemy's patrols prowling in the neighborhood, while Silvine put a
few stitches in the blouse of the defunct ambulance man, on the sleeve
of which the red cross of the corps was prominently displayed. The
doctor, before taking his place in the vehicle, examined Jean's leg
anew, but could not as yet promise that he would be able to save it.
The patient was still in a profound lethargy, recognizing no one,
never opening his mouth to speak, and Maurice was about to leave him
without the comfort of a farewell, when, bending over to give him a
last embrace, he saw him open his eyes to their full extent; the lips
parted, and in a faint voice he said:

"You are going away?" And in reply to their astonished looks: "Yes, I
heard what you said, though I could not stir. Take the remainder of
the money, then. Put your hand in my trousers' pocket and take it."

Each of them had remaining nearly two hundred francs of the sum they
had received from the corps paymaster.

But Maurice protested. "The money!" he exclaimed. "Why, you have more
need of it than I, who have the use of both my legs. Two hundred
francs will be abundantly sufficient to see me to Paris, and to get
knocked in the head afterward won't cost me a penny. I thank you,
though, old fellow, all the same, and good-by and good-luck to you;
thanks, too, for having always been so good and thoughtful, for, had
it not been for you, I should certainly be lying now at the bottom of
some ditch, like a dead dog."

Jean made a deprecating gesture. "Hush. You owe me nothing; we are
quits. Would not the Prussians have gathered me in out there the other
day had you not picked me up and carried me off on your back? and
yesterday again you saved me from their clutches. Twice have I been
beholden to you for my life, and now I am in your debt. Ah, how
unhappy I shall be when I am no longer with you!" His voice trembled
and tears rose to his eyes. "Kiss me, dear boy!"

They embraced, and, as it had been in the wood the day before, that
kiss set the seal to the brotherhood of dangers braved in each other's
company, those few weeks of soldier's life in common that had served
to bind their hearts together with closer ties than years of ordinary
friendship could have done. Days of famine, sleepless nights, the
fatigue of the weary march, death ever present to their eyes, these
things made the foundation on which their affection rested. When two
hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the
other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to
sever the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before,
among the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of
their new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in
their bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and
doubt unutterable. Would they meet again some day? and how, under what
circumstances of sorrow or of gladness?

Doctor Dalichamp had clambered into his gig and was calling to
Maurice. The young man threw all his heart and soul into the embrace
he gave his sister Henriette, who, pale as death in her black mourning
garments, looked on his face in silence through her tears.

"He whom I leave to your care is my brother. Watch over him, love him
as I love him!"