She shivered and repeated her former gesture, veiling her vision from some atrocious spectacle.

"And the things that occurred afterward would exceed belief. It seems those men had been marching three days, and on top of that had fought at Beaumont like tigers; hence they were perishing with hunger, their eyes were starting from their sockets, they were beside themselves. The officers made no effort to restrain them; they broke into shops and private houses, smashing doors and windows, demolishing furniture, searching for something to eat and drink, no matter what, bolting whatever they could lay their hands on. I saw one in the shop of Monsieur Simonin, the grocer, ladling molasses from a cask with his helmet. Others were chewing strips of raw bacon, others again had filled their mouths with flour. They were told that our troops had been passing through the town for the last two days and there was nothing left, but here and there they found some trifling store that had been hid away, not sufficient to feed so many hungry mouths, and that made them think the folks were lying to them, and they went on to smash things more furiously than ever. In less than an hour, there was not a butcher's, grocer's, or baker's shop in the city left ungutted; even the private houses were entered, their cellars emptied, and their closets pillaged. At the doctor's—did you ever hear of such a thing? I caught one big fellow devouring the soap. But the cellar was the place where they did most mischief; we could hear them from upstairs smashing the bottles and yelling like demons, and they drew the spigots of the casks, so that the place was flooded with wine; when they came out their hands were red with the good wine they had spilled. And to show what happens, men when they make such brutes of themselves: a soldier found a large bottle of laudanum and drank it all down, in spite of Monsieur Dalichamp's efforts to prevent him. The poor wretch was in horrible agony when I came away; he must be dead by this time."

A great shudder ran through her, and she put her hand to her eyes to shut out the horrid sight.

"No, no! I cannot bear it; I saw too much!"

Father Fouchard had crossed the road and stationed himself at the open window where he could hear, and the tale of pillage made him uneasy; he had been told that the Prussians paid for all they took; were they going to start out as robbers at that late day? Maurice and Jean, too, were deeply interested in those details about an enemy whom the girl had seen, and whom they had not succeeded in setting eyes on in their whole month's campaigning, while Honore, pensive and with dry, parched lips, was conscious only of the sound of her voice; he could think of nothing save her and the misfortune that had parted them.

Just then the door of the adjoining room was opened, and little Charlot appeared. He had heard his mother's voice, and came trotting into the apartment in his nightgown to give her a kiss. He was a chubby, pink little urchin, large and strong for his age, with a thatch of curling, straw-colored hair and big blue eyes. Silvine shivered at his sudden appearance, as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of someone else that affected her disagreeably. Did she no longer recognize him, then, her darling child, that she looked at him thus, as if he were some evocation of that horrid nightmare! She burst into tears.

"My poor, poor child!" she exclaimed, and clasped him wildly to her breast, while Honore, ghastly pale, noted how strikingly like the little one was to Goliah; the same broad, pink face, the true Teutonic type, in all the health and strength of rosy, smiling childhood. The son of the Prussian, the Prussian, as the pothouse wits of Remilly had styled him! And the French mother, who sat there, pressing him to her bosom, her heart still bleeding with the recollection of the cruel sights she had witnessed that day!

"My poor child, be good; come with me back to bed. Say good-night, my poor child."

She vanished, bearing him away. When she returned from the adjoining room she was no longer weeping; her face wore its customary expression of calm and courageous resignation.

It was Honore who, with a trembling voice, started the conversation again.

"And what did the Prussians do then?"

"Ah, yes; the Prussians. Well, they plundered right and left, destroying everything, eating and drinking all they could lay hands on. They stole linen as well, napkins and sheets, and even curtains, tearing them in strips to make bandages for their feet. I saw some whose feet were one raw lump of flesh, so long and hard had been their march. One little group I saw, seated at the edge of the gutter before the doctor's house, who had taken off their shoes and were bandaging themselves with handsome chemises, trimmed with lace, stolen, doubtless, from pretty Madame Lefevre, the manufacturer's wife. The pillage went on until night. The houses had no doors or windows left, and one passing in the street could look within and see the wrecked furniture, a scene of destruction that would have aroused the anger of a saint. For my part, I was almost wild, and could remain there no longer. They tried in vain to keep me, telling me that the roads were blocked, that I would certainly be killed; I started, and as soon as I was out of Raucourt, struck off to the right and took to the fields. Carts, loaded with wounded French and Prussians, were coming in from Beaumont. Two passed quite close to me in the darkness; I could hear the shrieks and groans, and I ran, oh! how I ran, across fields, through woods, I could not begin to tell you where, except that I made a wide circuit over toward Villers.

"Twice I thought I heard soldiers coming and hid, but the only person I met was another woman, a fugitive like myself. She was from Beaumont, she said, and she told me things too horrible to repeat. After that we ran harder than ever. And at last I am here, so wretched, oh! so wretched with what I have seen!"

Her tears flowed again in such abundance as to choke her utterance. The horrors of the day kept rising to her memory and would not down; she related the story that the woman of Beaumont had told her. That person lived in the main street of the village, where she had witnessed the passage of all the German artillery after nightfall. The column was accompanied on either side of the road by a file of soldiers bearing torches of pitch-pine, which illuminated the scene with the red glare of a great conflagration, and between the flaring, smoking lights the impetuous torrent of horses, guns, and men tore onward at a mad gallop. Their feet were winged with the tireless speed of victory as they rushed on in devilish pursuit of the French, to overtake them in some last ditch and crush them, annihilate them there. They stopped for nothing; on, on they went, heedless of what lay in their way. Horses fell; their traces were immediately cut, and they were left to be ground and torn by the pitiless wheels until they were a shapeless, bleeding mass. Human beings, prisoners and wounded men, who attempted to cross the road, were ruthlessly borne down and shared their fate. Although the men were dying with hunger the fierce hurricane poured on unchecked; was a loaf thrown to the drivers, they caught it flying; the torch-bearers passed slices of meat to them on the end of their bayonets, and then, with the same steel that had served that purpose, goaded their maddened horses on to further effort. And the night grew old, and still the artillery was passing, with the mad roar of a tempest let loose upon the land, amid the frantic cheering of the men.

Maurice's fatigue was too much for him, and notwithstanding the interest with which he listened to Silvine's narrative, after the substantial meal he had eaten he let his head decline upon the table on his crossed arms. Jean's resistance lasted a little longer, but presently he too was overcome and fell dead asleep at the other end of the table. Father Fouchard had gone and taken his position in the road again; Honore was alone with Silvine, who was seated, motionless, before the still open window.

The artilleryman rose, and drawing his chair to the window, stationed himself there beside her. The deep peacefulness of the night was instinct with the breathing of the multitude that lay lost in slumber there, but on it now rose other and louder sounds; the straining and creaking of the bridge, the hollow rumble of wheels; the artillery was crossing on the half-submerged structure. Horses reared and plunged in terror at sight of the swift-running stream, the wheel of a caisson ran over the guard-rail; immediately a hundred strong arms seized the encumbrance and hurled the heavy vehicle to the bottom of the river that it might not obstruct the passage. And as the young man watched the slow, toilsome retreat along the opposite bank, a movement that had commenced the day before and certainly would not be ended by the coming dawn, he could not help thinking of that other artillery that had gone storming through Beaumont, bearing down all before it, crushing men and horses in its path that it might not be delayed the fraction of a second.

Honore drew his chair nearer to Silvine, and in the shuddering darkness, alive with all those sounds of menace, gently whispered:

"You are unhappy?"

"Oh! yes; so unhappy!"

She was conscious of the subject on which he was about to speak, and her head sank sorrowfully on her bosom.

"Tell me, how did it happen? I wish to know."

But she could not find words to answer him.

"Did he take advantage of you, or was it with your consent?"

Then she stammered, in a voice that was barely audible:

"Mon Dieu! I do not know; I swear to you, I do not know, more than a babe unborn. I will not lie to you—I cannot! No, I have no excuse to offer; I cannot say he beat me. You had left me, I was beside myself, and it happened, how, I cannot, no, I cannot tell!"

Sobs choked her utterance, and he, ashy pale and with a great lump rising in his throat, waited silently for a moment. The thought that she was unwilling to tell him a lie, however, was an assuagement to his rage and grief; he went on to question her further, anxious to know the many things, that as yet he had been unable to understand.

"My father has kept you here, it seems?"

She replied with her resigned, courageous air, without raising her eyes:

"I work hard for him, it does not cost much to keep me, and as there is now another mouth to feed he has taken advantage of it to reduce my wages. He knows well enough that now, when he orders, there is nothing left for me but to obey."

"But why do you stay with him?"

The question surprised her so that she looked him in the face.

"Where would you have me go? Here my little one and I have at least a home and enough to keep us from starving."

They were silent again, both intently reading in the other's eyes, while up the shadowy valley the sounds of the sleeping camp came faintly to their ears, and the dull rumble of wheels upon the bridge of boats went on unceasingly. There was a shriek, the loud, despairing cry of man or beast in mortal peril, that passed, unspeakably mournful, through the dark night.

"Listen, Silvine," Honore slowly and feelingly went on; "you sent me a letter that afforded me great pleasure. I should have never come back here, but that letter—I have been reading it again this evening—speaks of things that could not have been expressed more delicately—"

She had turned pale when first she heard the subject mentioned. Perhaps he was angry that she had dared to write to him, like one devoid of shame; then, as his meaning became more clear, her face reddened with delight.

"I know you to be truthful, and knowing it, I believe what you wrote in that letter—yes, I believe it now implicitly. You were right in supposing that, if I were to die in battle without seeing you again, it would be a great sorrow to me to leave this world with the thought that you no longer loved me. And therefore, since you love me still, since I am your first and only love—" His tongue became thick, his emotion was so deep that expression failed him. "Listen, Silvine; if those beasts of Prussians let me live, you shall yet be mine, yes, as soon as I have served my time out we will be married."

She rose and stood erect upon her feet, gave a cry of joy, and threw herself upon the young man's bosom. She could not speak a word; every drop of blood in her veins was in her cheeks. He seated himself upon the chair and drew her down upon his lap.

"I have thought the matter over carefully; it was to say what I have said that I came here this evening. Should my father refuse us his consent, the earth is large; we will go away. And your little one, no one shall harm him, mon Dieu! More will come along, and among them all I shall not know him from the others."

She was forgiven, fully and entirely. Such happiness seemed too great to be true; she resisted, murmuring:

"No, it cannot be; it is too much; perhaps you might repent your generosity some day. But how good it is of you, Honore, and how I love you!"

He silenced her with a kiss upon the lips, and strength was wanting her longer to put aside the great, the unhoped-for good fortune that had come to her; a life of happiness where she had looked forward to one of loneliness and sorrow! With an involuntary, irresistible impulse she threw her arms about him, kissing him again and again, straining him to her bosom with all her woman's strength, as a treasure that was lost and found again, that was hers, hers alone, that thenceforth no one was ever to take from her. He was hers once more, he whom she had lost, and she would die rather than let anyone deprive her of him.

At that moment confused sounds reached their ears; the sleeping camp was awaking amid a tumult that rose and filled the dark vault of heaven. Hoarse voices were shouting orders, bugles were sounding, drums beating, and from the naked fields shadowy forms were seen emerging in indistinguishable masses, a surging, billowing sea whose waves were already streaming downward to the road beneath. The fires on the banks of the stream were dying down; all that could be seen there was masses of men moving confusedly to and fro; it was not even possible to tell if the movement across the river was still in progress. Never had the shades of night veiled such depths of distress, such abject misery of terror.

Father Fouchard came to the window and shouted that the troops were moving. Jean and Maurice awoke, stiff and shivering, and got on their feet. Honore took Silvine's hands in his and gave them a swift parting clasp.

"It is a promise. Wait for me."

She could find no word to say in answer, but all her soul went out to him in one long, last look, as he leaped from the window and hurried away to find his battery.

"Good-by, father!"

"Good-by, my boy!"

And that was all; peasant and soldier parted as they had met, without embracing, like a father and son whose existence was of little import to each other.

Maurice and Jean also left the farmhouse, and descended the steep hill on a run. When they reached the bottom the 106th was nowhere to be found; the regiments had all moved off. They made inquiries, running this way and that, and were directed first one way and then another. At last, when they had near lost their wits in the fearful confusion, they stumbled on their company, under the command of Lieutenant Rochas; as for the regiment and Captain Beaudoin, no one could say where they were. And Maurice was astounded when he noticed for the first time that that mob of men, guns, and horses was leaving Remilly and taking the Sedan road that lay on the left bank. Something was wrong again; the passage of the Meuse was abandoned, they were in full retreat to the north!

An officer of chasseurs, who was standing near, spoke up in a loud voice:

"Nom de Dieu! the time for us to make the movement was the 28th, when we were at Chene!"

Others were more explicit in their information; fresh news had been received. About two o'clock in the morning one of Marshal MacMahon's aides had come riding up to say to General Douay that the whole army was ordered to retreat immediately on Sedan, without loss of a minute's time. The disaster of the 5th corps at Beaumont had involved the three other corps. The general, who was at that time down at the bridge of boats superintending operations, was in despair that only a portion of his 3d division had so far crossed the stream; it would soon be day, and they were liable to be attacked at any moment. He therefore sent instructions to the several organizations of his command to make at once for Sedan, each independently of the others, by the most direct roads, while he himself, leaving orders to burn the bridge of boats, took the road on the left bank with his 2d division and the artillery, and the 3d division pursued that on the right bank; the 1st, that had felt the enemy's claws at Beaumont, was flying in disorder across the country, no one knew where. Of the 7th corps, that had not seen a battle, all that remained were those scattered, incoherent fragments, lost among lanes and by-roads, running away in the darkness.

It was not yet three o'clock, and the night was as black as ever. Maurice, although he knew the country, could not make out where they were in the noisy, surging throng that filled the road from ditch to ditch, pouring onward like a brawling mountain stream. Interspersed among the regiments were many fugitives from the rout at Beaumont, in ragged uniforms, begrimed with blood and dirt, who inoculated the others with their own terror. Down the wide valley, from the wooded hills across the stream, came one universal, all-pervading uproar, the scurrying tramp of other hosts in swift retreat; the 1st corps, coming from Carignan and Douzy, the 12th flying from Mouzon with the shattered remnants of the 5th, moved like puppets and driven onward, all of them, by that one same, inexorable, irresistible pressure that since the 28th had been urging the army northward and driving it into the trap where it was to meet its doom.

Day broke as Maurice's company was passing through Pont Maugis, and then he recognized their locality, the hills of Liry to the left, the Meuse running beside the road on the right. Bazeilles and Balan presented an inexpressibly funereal aspect, looming among the exhalations of the meadows in the chill, wan light of dawn, while against the somber background of her great forests Sedan was profiled in livid outlines, indistinct as the creation of some hideous nightmare. When they had left Wadelincourt behind them and were come at last to the Torcy gate, the governor long refused them admission; he only yielded, after a protracted conference, upon their threat to storm the place. It was five o'clock when at last the 7th corps, weary, cold, and hungry, entered Sedan.



VIII.

In the crush on the Place de Torcy that ensued upon the entrance of the troops into the city Jean became separated from Maurice, and all his attempts to find him again among the surging crowd were fruitless. It was a piece of extreme ill-luck, for he had accepted the young man's invitation to go with him to his sister's, where there would be rest and food for them, and even the luxury of a comfortable bed. The confusion was so great—the regiments disintegrated, no discipline, and no officers to enforce it—that the men were free to do pretty much as they pleased. There was plenty of time to look about them and hunt up their commands; they would have a few hours of sleep first.

Jean in his bewilderment found himself on the viaduct of Torcy, overlooking the broad meadows which, by the governor's orders, had been flooded with water from the river. Then, passing through another archway and crossing the Pont de Meuse, he entered the old, rampart-girt city, where, among the tall and crowded houses and the damp, narrow streets, it seemed to him that night was descending again, notwithstanding the increasing daylight. He could not so much as remember the name of Maurice's brother-in-law; he only knew that his sister's name was Henriette. The outlook was not encouraging; all that kept him awake was the automatic movement of walking; he felt that he should drop were he to stop. The indistinct ringing in his ears was the same that is experienced by one drowning; he was only conscious of the ceaseless onpouring of the stream of men and animals that carried him along with it on its current. He had partaken of food at Remilly, sleep was now his great necessity; and the same was true of the shadowy bands that he saw flitting past him in those strange, fantastic streets. At every moment a man would sink upon the sidewalk or tumble into a doorway, and there would remain, as if struck by death.

Raising his eyes, Jean read upon a signboard: Avenue de la Sous-Prefecture. At the end of the street was a monument standing in a public garden, and at the corner of the avenue he beheld a horseman, a chasseur d'Afrique, whose face seemed familiar to him. Was it not Prosper, the young man from Remilly, whom he had seen in Maurice's company at Vouziers? Perhaps he had been sent in with dispatches. He had dismounted, and his skeleton of a horse, so weak that he could scarcely stand, was trying to satisfy his hunger by gnawing at the tail-board of an army wagon that was drawn up against the curb. There had been no forage for the animals for the last two days, and they were literally dying of starvation. The big strong teeth rasped pitifully on the woodwork of the wagon, while the soldier stood by and wept as he watched the poor brute.

Jean was moving away when it occurred to him that the trooper might be able to give him the address of Maurice's sister. He returned, but the other was gone, and it would have been useless to attempt to find him in that dense throng. He was utterly disheartened, and wandering aimlessly from street to street at last found himself again before the Sous-Prefecture, whence he struggled onward to the Place Turenne. Here he was comforted for an instant by catching sight of Lieutenant Rochas, standing in front of the Hotel de Ville with a few men of his company, at the foot of the statue he had seen before; if he could not find his friend he could at all events rejoin the regiment and have a tent to sleep under. Nothing had been seen of Captain Beaudoin; doubtless he had been swept away in the press and landed in some place far away, while the lieutenant was endeavoring to collect his scattered men and fruitlessly inquiring of everyone he met where division headquarters were. As he advanced into the city, however, his numbers, instead of increasing, dwindled. One man, with the gestures of a lunatic, entered an inn and was seen no more. Three others were halted in front of a grocer's shop by a party of zouaves who had obtained possession of a small cask of brandy; one was already lying senseless in the gutter, while the other two tried to get away, but were too stupid and dazed to move. Loubet and Chouteau had nudged each other with the elbow and disappeared down a blind alley in pursuit of a fat woman with a loaf of bread, so that all who remained with the lieutenant were Pache and Lapoulle, with some ten or a dozen more.

Rochas was standing by the base of the bronze statue of Turenne, making heroic efforts to keep his eyes open. When he recognized Jean he murmured:

"Ah, is it you, corporal? Where are your men?"

Jean, by a gesture expressive in its vagueness, intimated that he did not know, but Pache, pointing to Lapoulle, answered with tears in his eyes:

"Here we are; there are none left but us two. The merciful Lord have pity on our sufferings; it is too hard!"

The other, the colossus with the colossal appetite, looked hungrily at Jean's hands, as if to reproach them for being always empty in those days. Perhaps, in his half-sleeping state, he had dreamed that Jean was away at the commissary's for rations.

"D——n the luck!" he grumbled, "we'll have to tighten up our belts another hole!"

Gaude, the bugler, was leaning against the iron railing, waiting for the lieutenant's order to sound the assembly; sleep came to him so suddenly that he slid from his position and within a second was lying flat on his back, unconscious. One by one they all succumbed to the drowsy influence and snored in concert, except Sergeant Sapin alone, who, with his little pinched nose in his small pale face, stood staring with distended eyes at the horizon of that strange city, as if trying to read his destiny there.

Lieutenant Rochas meantime had yielded to an irresistible impulse and seated himself on the ground. He attempted to give an order.

"Corporal, you will—you will—"

And that was as far as he could proceed, for fatigue sealed his lips, and like the rest he suddenly sank down and was lost in slumber.

Jean, not caring to share his comrades' fate and pillow his head on the hard stones, moved away; he was bent on finding a bed in which to sleep. At a window of the Hotel of the Golden Cross, on the opposite side of the square, he caught a glimpse of General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, already half-undressed and on the point of tasting the luxury of clean white sheets. Why should he be more self-denying than the rest of them? he asked himself; why should he suffer longer? And just then a name came to his recollection that caused him a thrill of delight, the name of the manufacturer in whose employment Maurice's brother-in-law was. M. Delaherche! yes, that was it. He accosted an old man who happened to be passing.

"Can you tell me where M. Delaherche lives?"

"In the Rue Maqua, near the corner of the Rue au Beurre; you can't mistake it; it is a big house, with statues in the garden."

The old man turned away, but presently came running back. "I see you belong to the 106th. If it is your regiment you are looking for, it left the city by the Chateau, down there. I just met the colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil; I used to know him when he lived at Mezieres."

But Jean went his way, with an angry gesture of impatience. No, no! no sleeping on the hard ground for him, now that he was certain of finding Maurice. And yet he could not help feeling a twinge of remorse as he thought of the dignified old colonel, who stood fatigue so manfully in spite of his years, sharing the sufferings of his men, with no more luxurious shelter than his tent. He strode across the Grande Rue with rapid steps and soon was in the midst of the tumult and uproar of the city; there he hailed a small boy, who conducted him to the Rue Maqua.

There it was that in the last century a grand-uncle of the present Delaherche had built the monumental structure that had remained in the family a hundred and sixty years. There is more than one cloth factory in Sedan that dates back to the early years of Louis XV.; enormous piles, they are, covering as much ground as the Louvre, and with stately facades of royal magnificence. The one in the Rue Maqua was three stories high, and its tall windows were adorned with carvings of severe simplicity, while the palatial courtyard in the center was filled with grand old trees, gigantic elms that were coeval with the building itself. In it three generations of Delaherches had amassed comfortable fortunes for themselves. The father of Charles, the proprietor in our time, had inherited the property from a cousin who had died without being blessed with children, so that it was now a younger branch that was in possession. The affairs of the house had prospered under the father's control, but he was something of a blade and a roisterer, and his wife's existence with him was not one of unmixed happiness; the consequence of which was that the lady, when she became a widow, not caring to see a repetition by the son of the performances of the father, made haste to find a wife for him in the person of a simple-minded and exceedingly devout young woman, and subsequently kept him tied to her apron string until he had attained the mature age of fifty and over. But no one in this transitory world can tell what time has in store for him; when the devout young person's time came to leave this life Delaherche, who had known none of the joys of youth, fell head over ears in love with a young widow of Charleville, pretty Madame Maginot, who had been the subject of some gossip in her day, and in the autumn preceding the events recorded in this history had married her, in spite of all his mother's prayers and tears. It is proper to add that Sedan, which is very straitlaced in its notions of propriety, has always been inclined to frown on Charleville, the city of laughter and levity. And then again the marriage would never have been effected but for the fact that Gilberte's uncle was Colonel de Vineuil, who it was supposed would soon be made a general. This relationship and the idea that he had married into army circles was to the cloth manufacturer a source of great delight.

That morning Delaherche, when he learned that the army was to pass through Mouzon, had invited Weiss, his accountant, to accompany him on that carriage ride of which we have heard Father Fouchard speak to Maurice. Tall and stout, with a florid complexion, prominent nose and thick lips, he was of a cheerful, sanguine temperament and had all the French bourgeois' boyish love for a handsome display of troops. Having ascertained from the apothecary at Mouzon that the Emperor was at Baybel, a farm in the vicinity, he had driven up there; had seen the monarch, and even had been near speaking to him, an adventure of such thrilling interest that he had talked of it incessantly ever since his return. But what a terrible return that had been, over roads choked with the panic-stricken fugitives from Beaumont! twenty times their cabriolet was near being overturned into the ditch. Obstacle after obstacle they had encountered, and it was night before the two men reached home. The element of the tragic and unforeseen there was in the whole business, that army that Delaherche had driven out to pass in review and which had brought him home with it, whether he would or no, in the mad gallop of its retreat, made him repeat again and again during their long drive:

"I supposed it was moving on Verdun and would have given anything rather than miss seeing it. Ah well! I have seen it now, and I am afraid we shall see more of it in Sedan than we desire."

The following morning he was awakened at five o'clock by the hubbub, like the roar of water escaping from a broken dam, made by the 7th corps as it streamed through the city; he dressed in haste and went out, and almost the first person he set eyes on in the Place Turenne was Captain Beaudoin. When pretty Madame Maginot was living at Charleville the year before the captain had been one of her best friends, and Gilberte had introduced him to her husband before they were married. Rumor had it that the captain had abdicated his position as first favorite and made way for the cloth merchant from motives of delicacy, not caring to stand in the way of the great good fortune that seemed coming to his fair friend.

"Hallo, is that you?" exclaimed Delaherche. "Good Heavens, what a state you're in!"

It was but too true; the dandified Beaudoin, usually so trim and spruce, presented a sorry spectacle that morning in his soiled uniform and with his grimy face and hands. Greatly to his disgust he had had a party of Turcos for traveling companions, and could not explain how he had become separated from his company. Like all the others he was ready to drop with fatigue and hunger, but that was not what most afflicted him; he had not been able to change his linen since leaving Rheims, and was inconsolable.

"Just think of it!" he wailed, "those idiots, those scoundrels, lost my baggage at Vouziers. If I ever catch them I will break every bone in their body! And now I haven't a thing, not a handkerchief, not a pair of socks! Upon my word, it is enough to make one mad!"

Delaherche was for taking him home to his house forthwith, but he resisted. No, no; he was no longer a human being, he would not frighten people out of their wits. The manufacturer had to make solemn oath that neither his wife nor his mother had risen yet; and besides he should have soap, water, linen, everything he needed.

It was seven o'clock when Captain Beaudoin, having done what he could with the means at his disposal to improve his appearance, and comforted by the sensation of wearing under his uniform a clean shirt of his host's, made his appearance in the spacious, high-ceiled dining room with its somber wainscoting. The elder Madame Delaherche was already there, for she was always on foot at daybreak, notwithstanding she was seventy-eight years old. Her hair was snowy white; in her long, lean face was a nose almost preternaturally thin and sharp and a mouth that had long since forgotten how to laugh. She rose, and with stately politeness invited the captain to be seated before one of the cups of cafe au lait that stood on the table.

"But, perhaps, sir, you would prefer meat and wine after the fatigue to which you have been subjected?"

He declined the offer, however. "A thousand thanks, madame; a little milk, with bread and butter, will be best for me."

At that moment a door was smartly opened and Gilberte entered the room with outstretched hand. Delaherche must have told her who was there, for her ordinary hour of rising was ten o'clock. She was tall, lithe of form and well-proportioned, with an abundance of handsome black hair, a pair of handsome black eyes, and a very rosy, wholesome complexion withal; she had a laughing, rather free and easy way with her, and it did not seem possible she could ever look angry. Her peignoir of beige, embroidered with red silk, was evidently of Parisian manufacture.

"Ah, Captain," she rapidly said, shaking hands with the young man, "how nice of you to stop and see us, away up in this out-of-the-world place!" But she was the first to see that she had "put her foot in it" and laugh at her own blunder. "Oh, what a stupid thing I am! I might know you would rather be somewhere else than at Sedan, under the circumstances. But I am very glad to see you once more."

She showed it; her face was bright and animated, while Madame Delaherche, who could not have failed to hear something of the gossip that had been current among the scandalmongers of Charleville, watched the pair closely with her puritanical air. The captain was very reserved in his behavior, however, manifesting nothing more than a pleasant recollection of hospitalities previously received in the house where he was visiting.

They had no more than sat down at table than Delaherche, burning to relieve himself of the subject that filled his mind, commenced to relate his experiences of the day before.

"You know I saw the Emperor at Baybel."

He was fairly started and nothing could stop him. He began by describing the farmhouse, a large structure with an interior court, surrounded by an iron railing, and situated on a gentle eminence overlooking Mouzon, to the left of the Carignan road. Then he came back to the 12th corps, whom he had visited in their camp among the vines on the hillsides; splendid troops they were, with their equipments brightly shining in the sunlight, and the sight of them had caused his heart to beat with patriotic ardor.

"And there I was, sir, when the Emperor, who had alighted to breakfast and rest himself a bit, came out of the farmhouse. He wore a general's uniform and carried an overcoat across his arm, although the sun was very hot. He was followed by a servant bearing a camp stool. He did not look to me like a well man; ah no, far from it; his stooping form, the sallowness of his complexion, the feebleness of his movements, all indicated him to be in a very bad way. I was not surprised, for the druggist at Mouzon, when he recommended me to drive on to Baybel, told me that an aide-de-camp had just been in his shop to get some medicine—you understand what I mean, medicine for—" The presence of his wife and mother prevented him from alluding more explicitly to the nature of the Emperor's complaint, which was an obstinate diarrhea that he had contracted at Chene and which compelled him to make those frequent halts at houses along the road. "Well, then, the attendant opened the camp stool and placed it in the shade of a clump of trees at the edge of a field of wheat, and the Emperor sat down on it. Sitting there in a limp, dejected attitude, perfectly still, he looked for all the world like a small shopkeeper taking a sun bath for his rheumatism. His dull eyes wandered over the wide horizon, the Meuse coursing through the valley at his feet, before him the range of wooded heights whose summits recede and are lost in the distance, on the left the waving tree-tops of Dieulet forest, on the right the verdure-clad eminence of Sommanthe. He was surrounded by his military family, aides and officers of rank, and a colonel of dragoons, who had already applied to me for information about the country, had just motioned me not to go away, when all at once—" Delaherche rose from his chair, for he had reached the point where the dramatic interest of his story culminated and it became necessary to re-enforce words by gestures. "All at once there is a succession of sharp reports and right in front of us, over the wood of Dieulet, shells are seen circling through the air. It produced on me no more effect than a display of fireworks in broad daylight, sir, upon my word it didn't! The people about the Emperor, of course, showed a good deal of agitation and uneasiness. The colonel of dragoons comes running up again to ask if I can give them an idea whence the firing proceeds. I answer him off-hand: 'It is at Beaumont; there is not the slightest doubt about it.' He returns to the Emperor, on whose knees an aide-de-camp was unfolding a map. The Emperor was evidently of opinion that the fighting was not at Beaumont, for he sent the colonel back to me a third time. But I couldn't well do otherwise than stick to what I had said before, could I, now? the more that the shells kept flying through the air, nearer and nearer, following the line of the Mouzon road. And then, sir, as sure as I see you standing there, I saw the Emperor turn his pale face toward me. Yes sir, he looked at me a moment with those dim eyes of his, that were filled with an expression of melancholy and distrust. And then his face declined upon his map again and he made no further movement."

Delaherche, although he was an ardent Bonapartist at the time of the plebiscite, had admitted after our early defeats that the government was responsible for some mistakes, but he stood up for the dynasty, compassionating and excusing Napoleon III., deceived and betrayed as he was by everyone. It was his firm opinion that the men at whose door should be laid the responsibility for all our disasters were none other than those Republican deputies of the opposition who had stood in the way of voting the necessary men and money.

"And did the Emperor return to the farmhouse?" asked Captain Beaudoin.

"That's more than I can say, my dear sir; I left him sitting on his stool. It was midday, the battle was drawing nearer, and it occurred to me that it was time to be thinking of my own return. All that I can tell you besides is that a general to whom I pointed out the position of Carignan in the distance, in the plain to our rear, appeared greatly surprised to learn that the Belgian frontier lay in that direction and was only a few miles away. Ah, that the poor Emperor should have to rely on such servants!"

Gilberte, all smiles, was giving her attention to the captain and keeping him supplied with buttered toast, as much at ease as she had ever been in bygone days when she received him in her salon during her widowhood. She insisted that he should accept a bed with them, but he declined, and it was agreed that he should rest for an hour or two on a sofa in Delaherche's study before going out to find his regiment. As he was taking the sugar bowl from the young woman's hands old Madame Delaherche, who had kept her eye on them, distinctly saw him squeeze her fingers, and the old lady's suspicions were confirmed. At that moment a servant came to the door.

"Monsieur, there is a soldier outside who wants to know the address of Monsieur Weiss."

There was nothing "stuck-up" about Delaherche, people said; he was fond of popularity and was always delighted to have a chat with those of an inferior station.

"He wants Weiss's address! that's odd. Bring the soldier in here."

Jean entered the room in such an exhausted state that he reeled as if he had been drunk. He started at seeing his captain seated at the table with two ladies, and involuntarily withdrew the hand that he had extended toward a chair in order to steady himself; he replied briefly to the questions of the manufacturer, who played his part of the soldier's friend with great cordiality. In a few words he explained his relation toward Maurice and the reason why he was looking for him.

"He is a corporal in my company," the captain finally said by way of cutting short the conversation, and inaugurated a series of questions on his own account to learn what had become of the regiment. As Jean went on to tell that the colonel had been seen crossing the city to reach his camp at the head of what few men were left him, Gilberte again thoughtlessly spoke up, with the vivacity of a woman whose beauty is supposed to atone for her indiscretion:

"Oh! he is my uncle; why does he not come and breakfast with us? We could fix up a room for him here. Can't we send someone for him?"

But the old lady discouraged the project with an authority there was no disputing. The good old bourgeois blood of the frontier towns flowed in her veins; her austerely patriotic sentiments were almost those of a man. She broke the stern silence that she had preserved during the meal by saying:

"Never mind Monsieur de Vineuil; he is doing his duty."

Her short speech was productive of embarrassment among the party. Delaherche conducted the captain to his study, where he saw him safely bestowed upon the sofa; Gilberte moved lightly off about her business, no more disconcerted by her rebuff than is the bird that shakes its wings in gay defiance of the shower; while the handmaid to whom Jean had been intrusted led him by a very labyrinth of passages and staircases through the various departments of the factory.

The Weiss family lived in the Rue des Voyards, but their house, which was Delaherche's property, communicated with the great structure in the Rue Maqua. The Rue des Voyards was at that time one of the most squalid streets in Sedan, being nothing more than a damp, narrow lane, its normal darkness intensified by the proximity of the ramparts, which ran parallel to it. The roofs of the tall houses almost met, the dark passages were like the mouths of caverns, and more particularly so at that end where rose the high college walls. Weiss, however, with free quarters and free fuel on his third floor, found the location a convenient one on account of its nearness to his office, to which he could descend in slippers without having to go around by the street. His life had been a happy one since his marriage with Henriette, so long the object of his hopes and wishes since first he came to know her at Chene, filling her dead mother's place when only six years old and keeping the house for her father, the tax-collector; while he, entering the big refinery almost on the footing of a laborer, was picking up an education as best he could, and fitting himself for the accountant's position which was the reward of his unremitting toil. And even when he had attained to that measure of success his dream was not to be realized; not until the father had been removed by death, not until the brother at Paris had been guilty of those excesses: that brother Maurice to whom his twin sister had in some sort made herself a servant, to whom she had sacrificed her little all to make him a gentleman—not until then was Henriette to be his wife. She had never been aught more than a little drudge at home; she could barely read and write; she had sold house, furniture, all she had, to pay the young man's debts, when good, kind Weiss came to her with the offer of his savings, together with his heart and his two strong arms; and she had accepted him with grateful tears, bringing him in return for his devotion a steadfast, virtuous affection, replete with tender esteem, if not the stormier ardors of a passionate love. Fortune had smiled on them; Delaherche had spoken of giving Weiss an interest in the business, and when children should come to bless their union their felicity would be complete.

"Look out!" the servant said to Jean; "the stairs are steep."

He was stumbling upward as well as the intense darkness of the place would let him, when suddenly a door above was thrown open, a broad belt of light streamed out across the landing, and he heard a soft voice saying:

"It is he."

"Madame Weiss," cried the servant, "here is a soldier who has been inquiring for you."

There came the sound of a low, pleased laugh, and the same soft voice replied:

"Good! good! I know who it is." Then to the corporal, who was hesitating, rather diffidently, on the landing: "Come in, Monsieur Jean. Maurice has been here nearly two hours, and we have been wondering what detained you."

Then, in the pale sunlight that filled the room, he saw how like she was to Maurice, with that wonderful resemblance that often makes twins so like each other as to be indistinguishable. She was smaller and slighter than he, however; more fragile in appearance, with a rather large mouth and delicately molded features, surmounted by an opulence of the most beautiful hair imaginable, of the golden yellow of ripened grain. The feature where she least resembled him was her gray eyes, great calm, brave orbs, instinct with the spirit of the grandfather, the hero of the Grand Army. She used few words, was noiseless in her movements, and was so gentle, so cheerful, so helpfully active that where she passed her presence seemed to linger in the air, like a fragrant caress.

"Come this way, Monsieur Jean," she said. "Everything will soon be ready for you."

He stammered something inarticulately, for his emotion was such that he could find no word of thanks. In addition to that his eyes were closing he beheld her through the irresistible drowsiness that was settling on him as a sea-fog drifts in and settles on the land, in which she seemed floating in a vague, unreal way, as if her feet no longer touched the earth. Could it be that it was all a delightful apparition, that friendly young woman who smiled on him with such sweet simplicity? He fancied for a moment that she had touched his hand and that he had felt the pressure of hers, cool and firm, loyal as the clasp of an old tried friend.

That was the last moment in which Jean was distinctly conscious of what was going on about him. They were in the dining room; bread and meat were set out on the table, but for the life of him he could not have raised a morsel to his lips. A man was there, seated on a chair. Presently he knew it was Weiss, whom he had seen at Mulhausen, but he had no idea what the man was saying with such a sober, sorrowful air, with slow and emphatic gestures. Maurice was already sound asleep, with the tranquillity of death resting on his face, on a bed that had been improvised for him beside the stove, and Henriette was busying herself about a sofa on which a mattress had been thrown; she brought in a bolster, pillow and coverings; with nimble, dexterous hands she spread the white sheets, snowy white, dazzling in their whiteness.

Ah! those clean, white sheets, so long coveted, so ardently desired; Jean had eyes for naught save them. For six weeks he had not had his clothes off, had not slept in a bed. He was as impatient as a child waiting for some promised treat, or a lover expectant of his mistress's coming; the time seemed long, terribly long to him, until he could plunge into those cool, white depths and lose himself there. Quickly, as soon as he was alone, he removed his shoes and tossed his uniform across a chair, then, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, threw himself on the bed. He opened his eyes a little way for a last look about him before his final plunge into unconsciousness, and in the pale morning light that streamed in through the lofty window beheld a repetition of his former pleasant vision, only fainter, more aerial; a vision of Henriette entering the room on tiptoe, and placing on the table at his side a water-jug and glass that had been forgotten before. She seemed to linger there a moment, looking at the sleeping pair, him and her brother, with her tranquil, ineffably tender smile upon her lips, then faded into air, and he, between his white sheets, was as if he were not.

Hours—or was it years? slipped by; Jean and Maurice were like dead men, without a dream, without consciousness of the life that was within them. Whether it was ten years or ten minutes, time had stood still for them; the overtaxed body had risen against its oppressor and annihilated their every faculty. They awoke simultaneously with a great start and looked at each other inquiringly; where were they? what had happened? how long had they slept? The same pale light was entering through the tall window. They felt as if they had been racked; joints stiffer, limbs wearier, mouth more hot and dry than when they had lain down; they could not have slept more than an hour, fortunately. It did not surprise them to see Weiss sitting where they had seen him before, in the same dejected attitude, apparently waiting for them to awake.

"Fichtre!" exclaimed Jean, "we must get up and report ourselves to the first sergeant before noon."

He uttered a smothered cry of pain as he jumped to the floor and began to dress.

"Before noon!" said Weiss. "Are you aware that it is seven o'clock in the evening? You have slept about twelve hours."

Great heavens, seven o'clock! They were thunderstruck. Jean, who by that time was completely dressed, would have run for it, but Maurice, still in bed, found he no longer had control of his legs; how were they ever to find their comrades? would not the army have marched away? They took Weiss to task for having let them sleep so long. But the accountant shook his head sorrowfully and said:

"You have done just as well to remain in bed, for all that has been accomplished."

All that day, from early morning, he had been scouring Sedan and its environs in quest of news, and was just come in, discouraged with the inactivity of the troops and the inexplicable delay that had lost them the whole of that precious day, the 31st. The sole excuse was that the men were worn out and rest was an absolute necessity for them, but granting that, he could not see why the retreat should not have been continued after giving them a few hours of repose.

"I do not pretend to be a judge of such matters," he continued, "but I have a feeling, so strong as to be almost a conviction, that the army is very badly situated at Sedan. The 12th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning; the 1st is strung out along the Givonne between la Moncelle and Holly, while the 7th is encamped on the plateau of Floing, and the 5th, what is left of it, is crowded together under the ramparts of the city, on the side of the Chateau. And that is what alarms me, to see them all concentrated thus about the city, waiting for the coming of the Prussians. If I were in command I would retreat on Mezieres, and lose no time about it, either. I know the country; it is the only line of retreat that is open to us, and if we take any other course we shall be driven into Belgium. Come here! let me show you something."

He took Jean by the hand and led him to the window.

"Tell me what you see over yonder on the crest of the hills."

Looking from the window over the ramparts, over the adjacent buildings, their view embraced the valley of the Meuse to the southward of Sedan. There was the river, winding through broad meadows; there, to the left, was Remilly in the background, Pont Maugis and Wadelincourt before them and Frenois to the right; and shutting in the landscape the ranges of verdant hills, Liry first, then la Marfee and la Croix Piau, with their dense forests. A deep tranquillity, a crystalline clearness reigned over the wide prospect that lay there in the mellow light of the declining day.

"Do you see that moving line of black upon the hilltops, that procession of small black ants?"

Jean stared in amazement, while Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his neck to see.

"Yes, yes!" they cried. "There is a line, there is another, and another, and another! They are everywhere."

"Well," continued Weiss, "those are Prussians. I have been watching them since morning, and they have been coming, coming, as if there were no end to them! You may be sure of one thing: if our troops are waiting for them, they have no intention of disappointing us. And not I alone, but every soul in the city saw them; it is only the generals who persist in being blind. I was talking with a general officer a little while ago; he shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely certain that he had not over seventy thousand men in his front. God grant he may be right! But look and see for yourselves; the ground is hid by them! they keep coming, ever coming, the black swarm!"

At this juncture Maurice threw himself back in his bed and gave way to a violent fit of sobbing. Henriette came in, a smile on her face. She hastened to him in alarm.

"What is it?"

But he pushed her away. "No, no! leave me, have nothing more to do with me; I have never been anything but a burden to you. When I think that you were making yourself a drudge, a slave, while I was attending college—oh! to what miserable use have I turned that education! And I was near bringing dishonor on our name; I shudder to think where I might be now, had you not beggared yourself to pay for my extravagance and folly."

Her smile came back to her face, together with her serenity.

"Is that all? Your sleep don't seem to have done you good, my poor friend. But since that is all gone and past, forget it! Are you not doing your duty now, like a good Frenchman? I am very proud of you, I assure you, now that you are a soldier."

She had turned toward Jean, as if to ask him to come to her assistance, and he looked at her with some surprise that she appeared to him less beautiful than yesterday; she was paler, thinner, now that the glamour was no longer in his drowsy eyes. The one striking point that remained unchanged was her resemblance to her brother, and yet the difference in their two natures was never more strongly marked than at that moment; he, weak and nervous as a woman, swayed by the impulse of the hour, displaying in his person all the fitful and emotional temperament of his nation, vibrating from one moment to another between the loftiest enthusiasm and the most abject despair; she, the patient, indomitable housewife, such an inconsiderable little creature in her resignation and self-effacement, meeting adversity with a brave face and eyes full of inexpugnable courage and resolution, fashioned from the stuff of which heroes are made.

"Proud of me!" cried Maurice. "Ah! truly, you have great reason to be. For a month and more now we have been flying, like the cowards that we are!"

"What of it? we are not the only ones," said Jean with his practical common sense; "we do what we are told to do."

But the young man broke out more furiously than ever: "I have had enough of it, I tell you! Our imbecile leaders, our continual defeats, our brave soldiers led like sheep to the slaughter—is it not enough, seeing all these things, to make one weep tears of blood? We are here now in Sedan, caught in a trap from which there is no escape; you can see the Prussians closing in on us from every quarter, and certain destruction is staring us in the face; there is no hope, the end is come. No! I shall remain where I am; I may as well be shot as a deserter. Jean, do you go, and leave me here. No! I won't go back there; I will stay here."

He sank upon the pillow in a renewed outpour of tears. It was an utter breakdown of the nervous system, sweeping everything before it, one of those sudden lapses into hopelessness to which he was so subject, in which he despised himself and all the world. His sister, knowing as she did the best way of treating such crises, kept an unruffled face.

"That would not be a nice thing to do, dear Maurice—desert your post in the hour of danger."

He rose impetuously to a sitting posture: "Then give me my musket! I will go and blow my brains out; that will be the shortest way of ending it." Then, pointing with outstretched arm to Weiss, where he sat silent and motionless, he said: "There! that is the only sensible man I have seen; yes, he is the only one who saw things as they were. You remember what he said to me, Jean, at Mulhausen, a month ago?"

"It is true," the corporal assented; "the gentleman said we should be beaten."

And the scene rose again before their mind's eye, that night of anxious vigil, the agonized suspense, the prescience of the disaster at Froeschwiller hanging in the sultry heavy air, while the Alsatian told his prophetic fears; Germany in readiness, with the best of arms and the best of leaders, rising to a man in a grand outburst of patriotism; France dazed, a century behind the age, debauched, and a prey to intestine disorder, having neither commanders, men, nor arms to enable her to cope with her powerful adversary. How quickly the horrible prediction had proved itself true!

Weiss raised his trembling hands. Profound sorrow was depicted on his kind, honest face, with its red hair and beard and its great prominent blue eyes.

"Ah!" he murmured, "I take no credit to myself for being right. I don't claim to be wiser than others, but it was all so clear, when one only knew the true condition of affairs! But if we are to be beaten we shall first have the pleasure of killing some of those Prussians of perdition. There is that comfort for us; I believe that many of us are to leave their bones there, and I hope there will be plenty of Prussians to keep them company; I would like to see the ground down there in the valley heaped with dead Prussians!" He arose and pointed down the valley of the Meuse. Fire flashed from his myopic eyes, which had exempted him from service with the army. "A thousand thunders! I would fight, yes, I would, if they would have me. I don't know whether it is seeing them assume the airs of masters in my country—in this country where once the Cossacks did such mischief; but whenever I think of their being here, of their entering our houses, I am seized with an uncontrollable desire to cut a dozen of their throats. Ah! if it were not for my eyes, if they would take me, I would go!" Then, after a moment's silence: "And besides; who can tell?"

It was the hope that sprang eternal, even in the breast of the least confident, of the possibility of victory, and Maurice, ashamed by this time of his tears, listened and caught at the pleasing speculation. Was it not true that only the day before there had been a rumor that Bazaine was at Verdun? Truly, it was time that Fortune should work a miracle for that France whose glories she had so long protected. Henriette, with an imperceptible smile on her lips, silently left the room, and was not the least bit surprised when she returned to find her brother up and dressed, and ready to go back to his duty. She insisted, however, that he and Jean should take some nourishment first. They seated themselves at the table, but the morsels choked them; their stomachs, weakened by their heavy slumber, revolted at the food. Like a prudent old campaigner Jean cut a loaf in two halves and placed one in Maurice's sack, the other in his own. It was growing dark, it behooved them to be going. Henriette, who was standing at the window watching the Prussian troops incessantly defiling on distant la Marfee, the swarming legions of black ants that were gradually being swallowed up in the gathering shadows, involuntarily murmured:

"Oh, war! what a dreadful thing it is!"

Maurice, seeing an opportunity to retort her sermon to him, immediately took her up:

"How is this, little sister? you are anxious to have people fight, and you speak disrespectfully of war!"

She turned and faced him, valiantly as ever: "It is true; I abhor it, because it is an abomination and an injustice. It may be simply because I am a woman, but the thought of such butchery sickens me. Why cannot nations adjust their differences without shedding blood?"

Jean, the good fellow, seconded her with a nod of the head, and nothing to him, too, seemed easier—to him, the unlettered man—than to come together and settle matters after a fair, honest talk; but Maurice, mindful of his scientific theories, reflected on the necessity of war—war, which is itself existence, the universal law. Was it not poor, pitiful man who conceived the idea of justice and peace, while impassive nature revels in continual slaughter?

"That is all very fine!" he cried. "Yes, centuries hence, if it shall come to pass that then all the nations shall be merged in one; centuries hence man may look forward to the coming of that golden age; and even in that case would not the end of war be the end of humanity? I was a fool but now; we must go and fight, since it is nature's law." He smiled and repeated his brother-in-law's expression: "And besides, who can tell?"

He saw things now through the mirage of his vivid self-delusion, they came to his vision distorted through the lens of his diseased nervous sensibility.

"By the way," he continued cheerfully, "what do you hear of our cousin Gunther? You know we have not seen a German yet, so you can't look to me to give you any foreign news."

The question was addressed to his brother-in-law, who had relapsed into a thoughtful silence and answered by a motion of his hand, expressive of his ignorance.

"Cousin Gunther?" said Henriette, "Why, he belongs to the Vth corps and is with the Crown Prince's army; I read it in one of the newspapers, I don't remember which. Is that army in this neighborhood?"

Weiss repeated his gesture, which was imitated by the two soldiers, who could not be supposed to know what enemies were in front of them when their generals did not know. Rising to his feet, the master of the house at last made use of articulate speech.

"Come along; I will go with you. I learned this afternoon where the 106th's camp is situated." He told his wife that she need not expect to see him again that night, as he would sleep at Bazeilles, where they had recently bought and furnished a little place to serve them as a residence during the hot months. It was near a dyehouse that belonged to M. Delaherche. The accountant's mind was ill at ease in relation to certain stores that he had placed in the cellar—a cask of wine and a couple of sacks of potatoes; the house would certainly be visited by marauders if it was left unprotected, he said, while by occupying it that night he would doubtless save it from pillage. His wife watched him closely while he was speaking.

"You need not be alarmed," he added, with a smile; "I harbor no darker design than the protection of our property, and I pledge my word that if the village is attacked, or if there is any appearance of danger, I will come home at once."

"Well, then, go," she said. "But remember, if you are not back in good season you will see me out there looking for you."

Henriette went with them to the door, where she embraced Maurice tenderly and gave Jean a warm clasp of the hand.

"I intrust my brother to your care once more. He has told me of your kindness to him, and I love you for it."

He was too flustered to do more than return the pressure of the small, firm hand. His first impression returned to him again, and he beheld Henriette in the light in which she had first appeared to him, with her bright hair of the hue of ripe golden grain, so alert, so sunny, so unselfish, that her presence seemed to pervade the air like a caress.

Once they were outside they found the same gloomy and forbidding Sedan that had greeted their eyes that morning. Twilight with its shadows had invaded the narrow streets, sidewalk and carriage-way alike were filled with a confused, surging throng. Most of the shops were closed, the houses seemed to be dead or sleeping, while out of doors the crowd was so dense that men trod on one another. With some little difficulty, however, they succeeded in reaching the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, where they encountered M. Delaherche, intent on picking up the latest news and seeing what was to be seen. He at once came up and greeted them, apparently delighted to meet Maurice, to whom he said that he had just returned from accompanying Captain Beaudoin over to Floing, where the regiment was posted, and he became, if that were possible, even more gracious than ever upon learning that Weiss proposed to pass the night at Bazeilles, where he himself, he declared, had just been telling the captain that he intended to take a bed, in order to see how things were looking at the dyehouse.

"We'll go together and be company for each other, Weiss. But first let's go as far as the Sous-Prefecture; we may be able to catch a glimpse of the Emperor."

Ever since he had been so near having the famous conversation with him at Baybel his mind had been full of Napoleon III.; he was not satisfied until he had induced the two soldiers to accompany him. The Place de la Sous-Prefecture was comparatively empty; a few men were standing about in groups, engaged in whispered conversation, while occasionally an officer hurried by, haggard and careworn. The bright hues of the foliage were beginning to fade and grow dim in the melancholy, thick-gathering shades of night; the hoarse murmur of the Meuse was heard as its current poured onward beneath the houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to his imperial master had often puzzled the army. Others again declared, and called upon their honor to substantiate their story, that they had seen the army wagons containing the imperial treasure, one hundred millions, all in brand-new twenty-franc pieces, drive into the courtyard of the Prefecture. This convoy was, in fact, neither more nor less than the vehicles for the personal use of the Emperor and his suite, the char a banc, the two caleches, the twelve baggage and supply wagons, which had almost excited a riot in the villages through which they had passed—Courcelles, le Chene, Raucourt; assuming in men's imagination the dimensions of a huge train that had blocked the road and arrested the march of armies, and which now, shorn of their glory, execrated by all, had come in shame and disgrace to hide themselves among the sous-prefect's lilac bushes.

While Delaherche was raising himself on tiptoe and trying to peer through the windows of the rez-de-chaussee, an old woman at his side, some poor day-worker of the neighborhood, with shapeless form and hands calloused and distorted by many years of toil, was mumbling between her teeth:

"An emperor—I should like to see one once—just once—so I could say I had seen him."

Suddenly Delaherche exclaimed, seizing Maurice by the arm:

"See, there he is! at the window, to the left. I had a good view of him yesterday; I can't be mistaken. There, he has just raised the curtain; see, that pale face, close to the glass."

The old woman had overheard him and stood staring with wide-open mouth and eyes, for there, full in the window, was an apparition that resembled a corpse more than a living being; its eyes were lifeless, its features distorted; even the mustache had assumed a ghastly whiteness in that final agony. The old woman was dumfounded; forthwith she turned her back and marched off with a look of supreme contempt.

"That thing an emperor! a likely story."

A zouave was standing near, one of those fugitive soldiers who were in no haste to rejoin their commands. Brandishing his chassepot and expectorating threats and maledictions, he said to his companion:

"Wait! see me put a bullet in his head!"

Delaherche remonstrated angrily, but by that time the Emperor had disappeared. The hoarse murmur of the Meuse continued uninterruptedly; a wailing lament, inexpressibly mournful, seemed to pass above them through the air, where the darkness was gathering intensity. Other sounds rose in the distance, like the hollow muttering of the rising storm; were they the "March! march!" that terrible order from Paris that had driven that ill-starred man onward day by day, dragging behind him along the roads of his defeat the irony of his imperial escort, until now he was brought face to face with the ruin he had foreseen and come forth to meet? What multitudes of brave men were to lay down their lives for his mistakes, and how complete the wreck, in all his being, of that sick man, that sentimental dreamer, awaiting in gloomy silence the fulfillment of his destiny!

Weiss and Delaherche accompanied the two soldiers to the plateau of Floing, where the 7th corps camps were.

"Adieu!" said Maurice as he embraced his brother-in-law.

"No, no; not adieu, the deuce! Au revoir!" the manufacturer gayly cried.

Jean's instinct led him at once to their regiment, the tents of which were pitched behind the cemetery, where the ground of the plateau begins to fall away. It was nearly dark, but there was sufficient light yet remaining in the sky to enable them to distinguish the black huddle of roofs above the city, and further in the distance Balan and Bazeilles, lying in the broad meadows that stretch away to the range of hills between Remilly and Frenois, while to the right was the dusky wood of la Garenne, and to the left the broad bosom of the Meuse had the dull gleam of frosted silver in the dying daylight. Maurice surveyed the broad landscape that was momentarily fading in the descending shadows.

"Ah, here is the corporal!" said Chouteau. "I wonder if he has been looking after our rations!"

The camp was astir with life and bustle. All day the men had been coming in, singly and in little groups, and the crowd and confusion were such that the officers made no pretense of punishing or even reprimanding them; they accepted thankfully those who were so kind as to return and asked no questions. Captain Beaudoin had made his appearance only a short time before, and it was about two o'clock when Lieutenant Rochas had brought in his collection of stragglers, about one-third of the company strength. Now the ranks were nearly full once more. Some of the men were drunk, others had not been able to secure even a morsel of bread and were sinking from inanition; again there had been no distribution of rations. Loubet, however, had discovered some cabbages in a neighboring garden, and cooked them after a fashion, but there was no salt or lard; the empty stomachs continued to assert their claims.

"Come, now, corporal, you are a knowing old file," Chouteau tauntingly continued, "what have you got for us? Oh, it's not for myself I care; Loubet and I had a good breakfast; a lady gave it us. You were not at distribution, then?"

Jean beheld a circle of expectant eyes bent on him; the squad had been waiting for him with anxiety, Pache and Lapoulle in particular, luckless dogs, who had found nothing they could appropriate; they all relied on him, who, as they expressed it, could get bread out of a stone. And the corporal's conscience smote him for having abandoned his men; he took pity on them and divided among them half the bread that he had in his sack.

"Name o' God! Name o' God!" grunted Lapoulle as he contentedly munched the dry bread; it was all he could find to say; while Pache repeated a Pater and an Ave under his breath to make sure that Heaven should not forget to send him his breakfast in the morning.

Gaude, the bugler, with his darkly mysterious air, as of a man who has had troubles of which he does not care to speak, sounded the call for evening muster with a glorious fanfare; but there was no necessity for sounding taps that night, the camp was immediately enveloped in profound silence. And when he had verified the names and seen that none of his half-section were missing, Sergeant Sapin, with his thin, sickly face and his pinched nose, softly said:

"There will be one less to-morrow night."

Then, as he saw Jean looking at him inquiringly, he added with calm conviction, his eyes bent upon the blackness of the night, as if reading there the destiny that he predicted:

"It will be mine; I shall be killed to-morrow."

It was nine o'clock, with promise of a chilly, uncomfortable night, for a dense mist had risen from the surface of the river, so that the stars were no longer visible. Maurice shivered, where he lay with Jean beneath a hedge, and said they would do better to go and seek the shelter of the tent; the rest they had taken that day had left them wakeful, their joints seemed stiffer and their bones sorer than before; neither could sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who, stretched on the damp ground and wrapped in his blanket, was snoring like a trooper, not far away. For a long time after that they watched with interest the feeble light of a candle that was burning in a large tent where the colonel and some officers were in consultation. All that evening M. de Vineuil had manifested great uneasiness that he had received no instructions to guide him in the morning. He felt that his regiment was too much "in the air," too much advanced, although it had already fallen back from the exposed position that it had occupied earlier in the day. Nothing had been seen of General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, who was said to be ill in bed at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and the colonel decided to send one of his officers to advise him of the danger of their new position in the too extended line of the 7th corps, which had to cover the long stretch from the bend in the Meuse to the wood of la Garenne. There could be no doubt that the enemy would attack with the first glimpse of daylight; only for seven or eight hours now would that deep tranquillity remain unbroken. And shortly after the dim light in the colonel's tent was extinguished Maurice was amazed to see Captain Beaudoin glide by, keeping close to the hedge, with furtive steps, and vanish in the direction of Sedan.

The darkness settled down on them, denser and denser; the chill mists rose from the stream and enshrouded everything in a dank, noisome fog.

"Are you asleep, Jean?"

Jean was asleep, and Maurice was alone. He could not endure the thought of going to the tent where Lapoulle and the rest of them were slumbering; he heard their snoring, responsive to Rochas' strains, and envied them. If our great captains sleep soundly the night before a battle, it is like enough for the reason that their fatigue will not let them do otherwise. He was conscious of no sound save the equal, deep-drawn breathing of that slumbering multitude, rising from the darkening camp like the gentle respiration of some huge monster; beyond that all was void. He only knew that the 5th corps was close at hand, encamped beneath the rampart, that the 1st's line extended from the wood of la Garenne to la Moncelle, while the 12th was posted on the other side of the city, at Bazeilles; and all were sleeping; the whole length of that long line, from the nearest tent to the most remote, for miles and miles, that low, faint murmur ascended in rhythmic unison from the dark, mysterious bosom of the night. Then outside this circle lay another region, the realm of the unknown, whence also sounds came intermittently to his ears, so vague, so distant, that he scarcely knew whether they were not the throbbings of his own excited pulses; the indistinct trot of cavalry plashing over the low ground, the dull rumble of gun and caisson along the roads, and, still more marked, the heavy tramp of marching men; the gathering on the heights above of that black swarm, engaged in strengthening the meshes of their net, from which night itself had not served to divert them. And below, there by the river's side, was there not the flash of lights suddenly extinguished, was not that the sound of hoarse voices shouting orders, adding to the dread suspense of that long night of terror while waiting for the coming of the dawn?

Maurice put forth his hand and felt for Jean's; at last he slumbered, comforted by the sense of human companionship. From a steeple in Sedan came the deep tones of a bell, slowly, mournfully, tolling the hour; then all was blank and void.



PART SECOND



I.

Weiss, in the obscurity of his little room at Bazeilles, was aroused by a commotion that caused him to leap from his bed. It was the roar of artillery. Groping about in the darkness he found and lit a candle to enable him to consult his watch: it was four o'clock, just beginning to be light. He adjusted his double eyeglass upon his nose and looked out into the main street of the village, the road that leads to Douzy, but it was filled with a thick cloud of something that resembled dust, which made it impossible to distinguish anything. He passed into the other room, the windows of which commanded a view of the Meuse and the intervening meadows, and saw that the cause of his obstructed vision was the morning mist arising from the river. In the distance, behind the veil of fog, the guns were barking more fiercely across the stream. All at once a French battery, close at hand, opened in reply, with such a tremendous crash that the walls of the little house were shaken.

Weiss's house was situated near the middle of the village, on the right of the road and not far from the Place de l'Eglise. Its front, standing back a little from the street, displayed a single story with three windows, surmounted by an attic; in the rear was a garden of some extent that sloped gently downward toward the meadows and commanded a wide panoramic view of the encircling hills, from Remilly to Frenois. Weiss, with the sense of responsibility of his new proprietorship strong upon him, had spent the night in burying his provisions in the cellar and protecting his furniture, as far as possible, against shot and shell by applying mattresses to the windows, so that it was nearly two o'clock before he got to bed. His blood boiled at the idea that the Prussians might come and plunder the house, for which he had toiled so long and which had as yet afforded him so little enjoyment.

He heard a voice summoning him from the street.

"I say, Weiss, are you awake?"

He descended and found it was Delaherche, who had passed the night at his dyehouse, a large brick structure, next door to the accountant's abode. The operatives had all fled, taking to the woods and making for the Belgian frontier, and there was no one left to guard the property but the woman concierge, Francoise Quittard by name, the widow of a mason; and she also, beside herself with terror, would have gone with the others had it not been for her ten-year-old boy Charles, who was so ill with typhoid fever that he could not be moved.

"I say," Delaherche continued, "do you hear that? It is a promising beginning. Our best course is to get back to Sedan as soon as possible."

Weiss's promise to his wife, that he would leave Bazeilles at the first sign of danger, had been given in perfect good faith, and he had fully intended to keep it; but as yet there was only an artillery duel at long range, and the aim could not be accurate enough to do much damage in the uncertain, misty light of early morning.

"Wait a bit, confound it!" he replied. "There is no hurry."

Delaherche, too, was curious to see what would happen; his curiosity made him valiant. He had been so interested in the preparations for defending the place that he had not slept a wink. General Lebrun, commanding the 12th corps, had received notice that he would be attacked at daybreak, and had kept his men occupied during the night in strengthening the defenses of Bazeilles, which he had instructions to hold in spite of everything. Barricades had been thrown up across the Douzy road, and all the smaller streets; small parties of soldiers had been thrown into the houses by way of garrison; every narrow lane, every garden had become a fortress, and since three o'clock the troops, awakened from their slumbers without beat of drum or call of bugle in the inky blackness, had been at their posts, their chassepots freshly greased and cartridge boxes filled with the obligatory ninety rounds of ammunition. It followed that when the enemy opened their fire no one was taken unprepared, and the French batteries, posted to the rear between Balan and Bazeilles, immediately commenced to answer, rather with the idea of showing they were awake than for any other purpose, for in the dense fog that enveloped everything the practice was of the wildest.

"The dyehouse will be well defended," said Delaherche. "I have a whole section in it. Come and see."

It was true; forty and odd men of the infanterie de marine had been posted there under the command of a lieutenant, a tall, light-haired young fellow, scarcely more than a boy, but with an expression of energy and determination on his face. His men had already taken full possession of the building, some of them being engaged in loopholing the shutters of the ground-floor windows that commanded the street, while others, in the courtyard that overlooked the meadows in the rear, were breaching the wall for musketry. It was in this courtyard that Delaherche and Weiss found the young officer, straining his eyes to discover what was hidden behind the impenetrable mist.

"Confound this fog!" he murmured. "We can't fight when we don't know where the enemy is." Presently he asked, with no apparent change of voice or manner: "What day of the week is this?"

"Thursday," Weiss replied.

"Thursday, that's so. Hanged if I don't think the world might come to an end and we not know it!"

But just at that moment the uninterrupted roar of the artillery was diversified by a brisk rattle of musketry proceeding from the edge of the meadows, at a distance of two or three hundred yards. And at the same time there was a transformation, as rapid and startling, almost, as the stage effect in a fairy spectacle: the sun rose, the exhalations of the Meuse were whirled away like bits of finest, filmiest gauze, and the blue sky was revealed, in serene limpidity, undimmed by a single cloud. It was the exquisite morning of a faultless summer day.

"Ah!" exclaimed Delaherche, "they are crossing the railway bridge. See, they are making their way along the track. How stupid of us not to have blown up the bridge!"

The officer's face bore an expression of dumb rage. The mines had been prepared and charged, he averred, but they had fought four hours the day before to regain possession of the bridge and then had forgot to touch them off.

"It is just our luck," he curtly said.

Weiss was silent, watching the course of events and endeavoring to form some idea of the true state of affairs. The position of the French in Bazeilles was a very strong one. The village commanded the meadows, and was bisected by the Douzy road, which, turning sharp to the left, passed under the walls of the Chateau, while another road, the one that led to the railway bridge, bent around to the right and forked at the Place de l'Eglise. There was no cover for any force advancing by these two approaches; the Germans would be obliged to traverse the meadows and the wide, bare level that lay between the outskirts of the village and the Meuse and the railway. Their prudence in avoiding unnecessary risks was notorious, hence it seemed improbable that the real attack would come from that quarter. They kept coming across the bridge, however, in deep masses, and that notwithstanding the slaughter that a battery of mitrailleuses, posted at the edge of the village, effected in their ranks, and all at once those who had crossed rushed forward in open order, under cover of the straggling willows, the columns were re-formed and began to advance. It was from there that the musketry fire, which was growing hotter, had proceeded.