I. THE ATTACK ON BAZEILLES--THE EMPEROR UNDER FIRE…

I. THE ATTACK ON BAZEILLES--THE EMPEROR UNDER FIRE

Weiss was fast asleep in his little room at Bazeilles, where all was dark, when a sudden disturbance made him spring out of bed. He listened, and heard the roar of cannon. Groping for the candle, he lighted it, and on looking at his watch found it was four o'clock; the dawn was scarcely breaking. He hastily put on his eye-glasses and scanned the high street--the Douzy road, which runs through the village--but the atmosphere there seemed full of thick dust, and nothing could be distinguished. He thereupon entered the adjoining room, the window of which overlooked the meadows on the side of the Meuse, and realised that the morning mist was rising from the river, obscuring the horizon. The guns were thundering more and more loudly from over yonder, across the water, but were hidden from view by the foggy veil. All at once a French battery replied with such a crash, and at so short a distance away, that the walls of the little house fairly shook.

Weiss's abode was nearly in the centre of Bazeilles, on the right-hand side, near the Place de l'Eglise. It stood back a little from the highway which it faced, and comprised a ground floor and upper floor, the latter being lighted by three windows and surmounted by a garret. In the rear there was a rather large garden, which sloped down towards the meadows, and whence the view extended over the immense panorama of hills from Remilly to Frénois. With the fervour of one who has but recently become a householder, Weiss had remained on his legs till nearly two o'clock in the morning, burying all his provisions in the cellar, and placing mattresses before all the windows, with the view of shielding his furniture as much as possible from the enemy's fire. He felt enraged at the idea that the Prussians might come and pillage this house, which he had so long coveted, which he had acquired with so much difficulty, and which he had had the enjoyment of during, as yet, so brief a space of time.

All at once he heard some one calling to him from the road: 'I say, Weiss, do you hear?'

He went down, and on opening the door found Delaherche, who had spent the night at his dyeworks, a large brick building, separated from the house merely by a party wall. All the workmen had already fled through the woods into Belgium, and the only person who remained to protect the place was the door-portress, a mason's widow, named Françoise Quitard. She, poor, trembling, scared creature, would have fled with the others had it not been for her boy, little Auguste, a lad some ten years of age, who was so ill with typhoid fever that he could not be removed.

'I say,' resumed Delaherche, 'do you hear? It's beginning nicely--it would be prudent for us to get back to Sedan at once.'

Weiss had formally promised his wife that he would leave Bazeilles as soon as there was any serious danger, and he was quite resolved to keep his promise. So far, however, merely a long-range artillery engagement was being fought, in a more or less random fashion, through the morning mist.

'Wait a bit,' the book-keeper replied, 'there's no hurry.'

Delaherche's curiosity was so acute and restless that it had almost lent him some courage. He had not closed his eyes during the night, being greatly interested in the defensive preparations that were being made by the French troops. Foreseeing that he would be attacked at daybreak, General Lebrun, who commanded the Twelfth Army Corps, had employed the night in entrenching himself in Bazeilles. Orders had been given him that he must at any cost prevent the enemy from occupying the village, and accordingly barricades had been thrown up across the high road and the side streets, each house had been garrisoned, and each lane and garden transformed into a fortress. And the men, quietly roused in the inky darkness, were already at their posts at three in the morning, each with ninety cartridges in his pouch and with his chassepot freshly lubricated. Thus it happened that the enemy's first cannon shot surprised nobody; and the French batteries, posted in the rear between Balan and Bazeilles, immediately answered it, more by way of announcing their presence, however, than for any serious purpose, for the firing was mere guess work and could hardly prove effective in such a fog.

'The dyeworks will be vigorously defended,' resumed Delaherche. 'I've got an entire section there. Come and see.'

Forty and odd men of the Marine Infantry had indeed been posted there, under the command of a lieutenant, a tall, fair fellow, very young, but with an energetic, stubborn expression of countenance. His men had already taken possession of the building, and whilst some of them loopholed the shutters on the first floor, others embattled the low wall of the courtyard overlooking the meadows in the rear. It was in the courtyard that Delaherche and Weiss found the lieutenant, who was vainly trying to distinguish the enemy's positions through the morning mist.

'What a horrid fog!' he muttered. 'We can't fight groping.' And immediately afterwards, without the slightest transition, he inquired: 'What day is it?'

'Thursday,' replied Weiss.

'Thursday--oh, yes! The devil take me, but we live as though the world no longer existed.'

At that moment, amid the thundering of the guns, which did not for a moment cease, a lively fusillade burst forth on the outskirts of the meadows, some two or three hundred yards away. And just then there was a sudden change in the surroundings, similar to a transformation scene at a theatre--the sun arose, the vapour from the Meuse flew away in fragments like shreds of delicate muslin, and a blue sky of spotless limpidity appeared to view. A delightful morning was heralding in a glorious summer day.

'Ah!' exclaimed Delaherche, 'they are crossing the railway bridge--do you see them trying to gain ground along the line? What crass stupidity on our part--the bridge ought to have been blown up!'

The lieutenant made a gesture of anger. The mine was laid, he related, but, on the previous day, the commanders had forgotten to fire it, after the men had fought during four long hours to recapture this very bridge. 'It's our cursed luck,' he added curtly.

Weiss remained silent, gazing at the scene and trying to understand it. The French occupied a very strong position in Bazeilles. Built on either side of the road from Sedan to Douzy, the village overlooked the plain; and apart from this road, turning to the left and passing in front of the Château, there was only one other, branching out to the right, and leading to the railway bridge. It was, therefore, necessary for the Germans who were now advancing to cross the meadows and cultivated fields, all the vast open expanse edging the Meuse and the railway line. The enemy's prudence being well known, it seemed unlikely that the real attack would take place on this side, and yet dense masses of men were still coming up by way of the bridge, and this, despite all the havoc wrought in their ranks by the French mitrailleuses posted on the outskirts of the village. Those who succeeded in crossing the bridge immediately threw themselves in skirmishing order among the few pollard willows rising here and there, until the columns managed to reform, and again press forward. It was from this direction that came the fusillade of increasing intensity that had begun to crackle just as the mist rose.

'Hallo!' remarked Weiss, 'those fellows are Bavarians--I can tell it by their helmets.'

At the same time it seemed to him that some other columns, half hidden by the railway line, were pressing onward, on the right, and endeavouring to reach some distant trees, whence, by an oblique movement, they might again descend upon Bazeilles. Should they succeed in thus sheltering themselves in the park of Montivilliers, the village might be captured. This was vaguely but promptly realised by Weiss. However, as the front attack was becoming more determined, he ceased thinking of it. He had abruptly turned towards the heights of Floing, which rose up on the north, above the town of Sedan. A battery installed there had just opened fire, puffs of smoke could be seen ascending in the bright sunlight, and the detonations could be distinctly heard.

'Hum,' said Weiss, 'the dance will be a general one.'

The lieutenant, who was looking in the same direction, made a vigorous gesture of assent, and added: 'But Bazeilles is the important point. The issue of the battle will be decided here.'

'Do you really think so?' Weiss asked.

'There's no doubt about it. The marshal himself must certainly have that opinion, for he came here last night to tell us that we must fight to the last man rather than let the enemy take the village.'

Weiss shook his head, however, scanned the horizon around him, and then, in a hesitating way, as though he were talking to himself, remarked: 'Well, no--no--I hardly fancy that--I'm afraid of something else--something I hardly dare say----' He spoke no further, but held out his arms as though they were the branches of a vice; and then turning towards the north, he brought his hands together as if the vice-chops had suddenly met. In this fashion he expressed the fears that had been troubling him since the previous day, fears based on his knowledge of the country, and on everything that he had observed of the march of the hostile armies. And even now, when the broad plain expanded in the radiant sunshine, his eyes returned once more to the hills on the left bank of the river, over which, throughout an entire day and an entire night, there had marched such an interminable, black swarm of German troops. A battery was firing from the left of Remilly, but the one whose shells were beginning to fall at Bazeilles was installed at Pont-Maugis on the bank of the river. Weiss folded his eye-glasses one over the other, and held them to one eye that he might the more effectually explore the wooded slopes. However, he could only see the white puffs of smoke with which the guns were, each minute, capping the heights. What had become, then, of the human torrent which had streamed along those hills? All that he could distinguish, after prolonged scrutiny, was a cluster of horses and uniforms--some general and his staff, no doubt--perched at the corner of a pine wood on the Marfée hill, above Noyers and Frénois. Farther on was the loop of the Meuse, barring the west; and on this side the only possible line of retreat on Mézières lay along the narrow road passing through the defile of St. Albert, between the river and the forest of the Ardennes. On the previous day, chancing to meet a general in a hollow road of the valley of Givonne--a general who he afterwards learnt was Ducrot, the commander of the First Corps--Weiss had ventured to speak to him of this one possible line of retreat. Unless the troops immediately retired by the road in question, if they waited until the Prussians had crossed the Meuse at Donchery and intercepted the passage of the river, they would certainly find themselves immobilised, brought to a stand at the Belgian frontier. That same evening, moreover, it had already seemed too late to effect the movement, for the Uhlans were reported to be in possession of the Donchery bridge--another bridge which had not been blown up, in this case through forgetfulness to bring the powder required for the purpose. And now, thought Weiss despairingly, the whole stream of men, the great black swarm, must be crossing the plain of Donchery on its way towards the defile of St. Albert, with its advance guard already threatening St. Menges and Floing, whither he had conducted Jean and Maurice the previous night. He could espy the distant steeple of Floing looking like a fine white needle in the brilliant sunlight.

On the east was the other branch of the vice. Although Weiss could descry the line of battle of the Seventh Corps, stretching on the northern side from the plateau of Illy to that of Floing, and ineffectually supported by the Fifth Corps, posted as a reserve force under the ramparts, it was impossible for him to tell what was taking place on the east, where the First Corps was drawn up in the valley of Givonne from the wood of La Garenne to the village of Daigny. However, the guns were already thundering in that direction, and it seemed as if an engagement were being fought in the Chevalier Wood in front of the village. And Weiss was the more disquieted as some peasants had already, on the previous day, reported the arrival of the Prussians at Francheval, so that the movement which was being effected on the west by way of Donchery was also being effected on the east by way of Francheval; and it seemed certain that the vice-chops would eventually meet at the Calvary of Illy, on the northern side, should the all-enveloping march on either hand not be promptly stayed. He knew nothing of military science; he had simply his common sense to guide him, but he trembled at sight of that huge triangle, one side of which was formed by the Meuse, whilst the other two were represented by the Seventh Corps on the north, and the First on the east; the Twelfth posted at Bazeilles on the south, occupying the extreme angle, and all three turning the back to one another and awaiting, nobody knew how or why, the foe who was now coming up on every side. And in the centre, in the depths of a pit as it were, was the town of Sedan, armed with guns that were past service, and having neither a supply of ammunition nor a supply of food.

'Don't you see,' said Weiss, repeating the gesture he had previously made--his arms stretched out and his finger-tips meeting--'that's how it will be if your generals don't take care--the enemy are playing with you at Bazeilles.'

He explained himself, however, in a confused, unsatisfactory manner, and the lieutenant, not being acquainted with the district, failed to understand him, and impatiently shrugged his shoulders, full of disdain for this spectacled civilian, who claimed to know better than Marshal MacMahon. On Weiss repeating that the attack upon Bazeilles was probably only a feint, intended to conceal the enemy's real design, the young officer became quite irritated, and exclaimed: 'Pray mind your own business. We are going to drive your Bavarians into the Meuse, and they'll learn what it is to play with us.'

The enemy's skirmishers seemed to have drawn somewhat nearer during the last minute or two, and several bullets having struck the brick wall of the dyeworks with a dull thud, the French soldiers began to return the fire, sheltered by the low wall of the courtyard. The clear, sharp report of a chassepot resounded every second.

'Drive them into the Meuse--yes, no doubt,' muttered Weiss, 'and pass over them and march back on Carignan--that would be a good idea.' Then addressing Delaherche, who in his fear of the bullets had hidden himself behind the pump, he added: 'All the same, the proper plan was to have hurried off to Mézières yesterday evening. I should have preferred that if I'd been in the place of the generals. However, one must fight now, for retreat is not longer possible.'

'Are you coming?' asked Delaherche, who, despite his ardent curiosity, was beginning to blanch. 'If we stay here much longer we sha'n't be able to get back to Sedan.'

'Yes, wait a minute. I'll go with you.'

Then, in spite of the danger to which he exposed himself, Weiss rose on tip-toe, obstinately bent on finding out how matters were progressing. On the right were the meadows flooded by order of the Governor of Sedan, quite a large lake protecting the town from Torcy to Balan. A delicate azure tint suffused the broad sheet of unruffled water in the early sunlight. But the lake did not stretch far enough to cover the outskirts of Bazeilles, and the Bavarians, advancing through the grass, had indeed drawn nearer, taking advantage of every ditch and every tree they came upon. They were now, perhaps, five hundred yards away, and Weiss was struck with the slowness of their movements, the patient manner in which they gradually gained ground, exposing themselves as little as possible. Moreover, a powerful artillery was supporting them, and at each moment shells came hissing through the fresh, pure atmosphere. Weiss raised his eyes and saw that the battery of Pont-Maugis was not the only one that was firing on Bazeilles; two others, planted midway up the Liry hill, had also opened fire, not merely cannonading the village, but sweeping the bare ground of La Moncelle farther on, where the reserves of the Twelfth Corps were posted, and even the wooded slopes of Daigny, occupied by a division of the First Corps. And, indeed, flames were now flashing from all the hill-crests on the left bank of the river. The guns seemed to spring out of the soil. At each moment the circle of fire extended--at Noyers a battery was firing on Balan, at Wadelincourt a battery was firing on Sedan itself, and at Frénois, just below the Marfée hill, a formidable battery was hurling shells right over the town, shells which went plunging and bursting among the troops of the Seventh Corps on the plateau of Floing. And it was with terrified anguish that Weiss now gazed on those slopes that he loved so well, those rounded hills which fringed the valley afar off with so gay a greenery, and which he had never imagined could serve any other purpose than that of delighting the eyesight; but now, all at once, they had become, as it were, a fearful, gigantic fortress, ready to pulverise the futile fortifications of Sedan.

He suddenly raised his head on seeing a little plaster fall to the ground. A bullet had chipped it off the front of his house, which he could perceive above the party-wall. 'Are those brigands going to demolish my house?' he growled, feeling greatly annoyed.

Just then, however, he was astonished to hear a slight noise behind him, and on turning round he saw a soldier falling on his back with a bullet in the heart. For a moment the poor fellow's legs were stirred by a supreme convulsion, but death came so swiftly that his face retained its peaceful, youthful expression. This was the first man killed; Weiss, however, was most disturbed by the clatter of the soldier's chassepot, which as it escaped from his hands rebounded on the paving-stones of the yard.

'Oh! I'm off,' stammered Delaherche. 'If you won't come I shall go alone.'

The lieutenant, whom the presence of these civilians disturbed, intervened approvingly: 'Yes, gentlemen, you had better go away. We may now be attacked at any moment.'

Thereupon, after glancing once more at the meadows, where the Bavarians were still gaining ground, Weiss made up his mind to follow Delaherche. But, on reaching the street, he paused to double-lock the door of his house, and when he again rejoined his companion an unforeseen spectacle once more stayed their flight. The Place de l'Eglise, some three hundred yards away, at the end of the road, was at that moment being attacked by a strong column of Bavarians debouching from the Douzy highway. After a time the regiment of Marine Infantry, entrusted with the defence of the Place, appeared to slacken fire as though to let the foe advance, but, all at once, when the German column was massed in front of the French, the latter resorted to a strange and, on the enemy's part, evidently unexpected manœuvre. The Marines sprang on one or the other side of the way, a large number of them flinging themselves upon the ground; and then, through the space thus suddenly opened, the French mitrailleuses, in position at the other end of the road, rained a perfect storm of bullets upon the foe. The hostile column was virtually swept away, and the Marines thereupon bounded to their feet and charged the scattered survivors of the Bavarian force at the bayonet's point, bringing many of them to the ground and throwing the others far back. And twice again was this same manœuvre repeated, and with the same success. Three women, who had remained in a little house at the corner of a lane, could be seen tranquilly installed at one of the windows there, laughing and clapping their hands at the sight, and looking indeed as much amused as though they were at a theatre.

'Ah! dash it!' suddenly said Weiss; 'I forgot to lock up my cellar and take the key. Wait a bit. I sha'n't be a second.'

As this first attack seemed to have been repulsed, Delaherche, whose curiosity once more began to gain the upper hand, was in less haste to get away. Standing outside the dyeworks, he began talking to the portress, who had stepped to the threshold of the room she occupied, on the ground floor.

'You ought to come away with us, Françoise,' he said. 'It's not right for a woman to remain here all alone in the midst of such horrible things.'

She raised her trembling arms and answered: 'Ah, sir, I should certainly have gone away if it hadn't been for my little Auguste, who's so ill. Will you come in and look at him, sir?'

He did not go in, but craned his neck forward and shook his head ominously as he espied the lad lying in a clean white bed, with the purple flush of fever suffusing his face, whilst with flaming eyes he looked fixedly at his mother.

'But now I think of it,' said the manufacturer, 'why don't you take him away? I'll fix you up at Sedan. Wrap him in a warm blanket, and come with us.'

'Oh! it can't be done, sir. The doctor told me it would kill the boy to move him. If only his poor father were still alive. But there are only we two left, and, needing one another as we do, we must be very careful. And, after all, perhaps those Prussians won't do any harm to a lone woman and a sick child.'

At this moment Weiss returned, delighted at having made every door in his house secure. 'They'll have to smash everything if they want to get in,' said he. 'And now let's get off. It won't be an easy job--we had better keep close to the houses or we may be hit by a bullet.'

The enemy was, indeed, evidently preparing a fresh attack, for the fusillade was increasing in violence, and there was no pause now in the hissing of the shells. A couple of the latter had already fallen in the road about a hundred yards away, whilst a third had plunged into the soft soil of a neighbouring garden without bursting.

'I must say good-bye to your little Auguste, Françoise,' resumed Weiss. 'Oh! he doesn't look so bad now; in a couple of days he'll be out of danger. Well, keep your spirits up. Mind you go indoors at once. Don't venture out here.'

At last the two men turned to go off.

'Good-bye, Françoise.'

'Good-bye, gentlemen.'

But at that very moment there was a terrible crash. After overthrowing one of the chimneys of Weiss's house, a shell had fallen on the footway, where it burst with so fearful an explosion that every window-pane near by was shivered to pieces. For a moment a mass of thick dust, a cloud of heavy smoke obscured everything. Then the front of the dyeworks reappeared, displaying a gaping aperture, and across the threshold of her room lay Françoise, dead, her backbone broken, and her head crushed--now merely a bundle of human rags, covered with blood, and hideous to behold.

Weiss rushed up furiously. He was stammering, and oaths alone could give expression to his feelings: 'Curse them! Curse them!' he shouted. Yes, she was indeed dead. He had stooped down and felt her hands. As he was rising again his eyes encountered the blotched face of little Auguste, who had raised his head to look at his mother. The lad said nothing, he did not shriek or cry, but his large eyes, full of fever, were quite dilated as they gazed upon that frightfully mangled body, which he could no longer recognise. 'Curse them!' shouted Weiss at last, 'so now they are killing women!'

He had again drawn himself erect, and he shook his fist at the Bavarians, whose helmets were once more appearing to view in the direction of the church. Then the sight of the roof of his house, half broken in by the fallen chimney, put the finishing touch to his mad exasperation. 'You dirty blackguards!' he shouted, 'you kill women and you knock my house to pieces! No, no, it is impossible, I can't go off like that; I shall stay!'

He darted into the courtyard of the dyeworks, and bounded back again, carrying the chassepot and cartridge pouch of the dead soldier. For use on important occasions, when he was desirous of seeing anything very distinctly, he always carried a pair of spectacles in his pocket, though he seldom wore them through a coquettish regard for the feelings of his young wife. Now, however, he promptly took off his folding glasses and put on his spectacles; and then this stout civilian, whose good-natured, full face was quite transfigured by anger, who looked almost comical yet superb in his heroism, began to fire, aiming at the detachment of Bavarians massed at the end of the street. It was in his blood, as he was wont to say; he had longed to stretch some of them on the ground ever since hearing the stories of 1814, related to him in his childish days, in his Alsatian home.

'Ah! the dirty blackguards, the dirty blackguards!'

And still he kept on firing--so rapidly in fact that the barrel of his chassepot began to burn his fingers.

Everything now betokened a terrible attack. The fusillade had ceased on the side of the meadows. The Bavarians had become masters of a narrow stream fringed with poplars and pollard willows, and were preparing to assault the houses defending the Place de l'Eglise. Their skirmishers had prudently fallen back, and now the sunshine alone was drowsily streaming in a golden sheet over the immense grassy expanse, flecked here and there with black patches--the corpses of the soldiers who had been killed. And accordingly, the Lieutenant of Marine Infantry, realising that danger would henceforth come from the side of the street, evacuated the courtyard of the dyeworks, leaving merely a sentry there; and speedily ranged his men along the side-walk, informing them that should the enemy obtain possession of the Place de l'Eglise they were to barricade themselves inside the building, on the first floor, and defend it as long as they had a cartridge left them. The men fired as they pleased, lying on the ground, screened by border stones and profiting by the slightest projections of the buildings; and along the broad, deserted highway, bright with sunshine, there now sped a perfect hurricane of lead, with streaks of smoke--a hailstorm, as it were, driven along by a violent wind. A girl was seen to dart madly across the road without receiving any injury; then an old peasant in a blouse, stubbornly bent upon taking his horse into the stable, was struck by a bullet in the forehead, the force of the shock throwing him into the middle of the road. Moreover, the roof of the church had just been broken in by a shell, and two other projectiles had set fire to some houses, whose timbers crackled and blazed in the broad sunlight. And the sight of that poor creature, Françoise, pounded to pieces near her ailing child, of the peasant lying in the road with the bullet in his skull, of the damaged church and the flaming houses, put the finishing touch to the wrath of the inhabitants, who, rather than fly to Belgium, had preferred to stay and meet death in their modest homes. And men of the middle classes and sons of toil, men in coats and men in blouses, fired on the enemy from their windows with a fury akin to madness.

'Ah! the bandits!' suddenly exclaimed Weiss. 'They have got round. I saw them running along the railway line. There! can't you hear them over yonder on the left?'

A fusillade had indeed just broken out in the rear of the park of Montivilliers which skirted the road. If the foe should secure possession of that park Bazeilles would be captured. The violence of the firing proved, however, that the Commander of the Twelfth Corps had foreseen this movement on the enemy's part, and that the park was being defended.

'Take care, you clumsy chap!' suddenly exclaimed the lieutenant, forcing Weiss to draw back close to the wall; 'you'll be cut in half!'

Though he could not help smiling at this big spectacled fellow, he had begun to feel interested in him, doubtless on account of the bravery he displayed; and, hearing a shell coming, he had in a fraternal way pushed him on one side. The projectile fell a dozen paces off, and, in bursting, covered them both with splinters. The civilian, however, remained erect without a scratch, whereas the unfortunate lieutenant had both legs broken. 'Ah! curse it!' he muttered. 'I'm done for.'

He had been thrown down on the side-walk, and he instructed his men to place him in a sitting posture with his back against a door, near the spot where the corpse of that unfortunate woman Françoise was stretched across the threshold of her room. And the lieutenant's young face still retained its stubborn, energetic expression. 'It's of no consequence, my lads,' said he. 'Listen to me. Fire at your ease, don't hurry--I'll tell you when the time comes to charge them.'

And thus, with his head erect, watching the distant movements of the foe, he continued commanding his men. Another house across the road caught fire. The crackling of the fusillade and the loud explosions of the shells rent the dust-and-smoke-pervaded atmosphere. Men were toppling over at each street corner, and wherever the dead had fallen--now singly, now in clusters--there were dark spots splashed with blood; whilst over and above the village arose a frightful, growing clamour, the threatening uproar of thousands of men rushing on a few hundred brave fellows who were resolved to die.

And now Delaherche, who had repeatedly called to Weiss, asked him for the last time: 'Are you coming? No? So much the worse, but I'm off--good-bye!'

It was about seven o'clock, and he had already delayed his departure longer than was prudent. So far as there were houses skirting the road, he took advantage of their projections and recesses, bolting into a doorway or behind a wall each time there was a volley. And so rapidly did he glide along, with all the suppleness of a snake, that he was surprised to find himself still so young and nimble. But on reaching the limits of Bazeilles, when it became necessary that he should follow the bare, deserted road, swept by the Liry batteries for a distance of three hundred yards, he fairly shivered, albeit he was perspiring from every pore. For a moment or two, bending low, he continued advancing along a ditch, then all at once he broke into a mad gallop and rushed straight before him along the road, with detonation after detonation resounding like thunderclaps in his ears. His eyes were burning, and he fancied he was running through flames. It seemed to last an eternity; but all at once he espied a small house on his left, and promptly darted towards it. Once sheltered by its walls he felt a tremendous weight uplifted from his chest. There were several people near him, men on foot and men on horseback. At first he failed to distinguish any of them, but as he recovered his self-possession the sight he beheld filled him with astonishment.

Was not that the Emperor and his staff? He hesitated to answer the query affirmatively, although, since he had almost spoken to Napoleon at Baybel, he had flattered himself he should at once recognise him anywhere. Then he suddenly opened his mouth and looked on gaping. Yes, it was indeed Napoleon III., to all appearance taller now that he was on horseback,[26] and with his moustaches so carefully waxed, and his cheeks so highly coloured that Delaherche immediately came to the conclusion that he had sought to make himself look young again--in a word, that he had made himself up for the occasion like an actor. Ay, without doubt he had caused his valet to paint his face so that he might not appear among his troops spreading discouragement and fright around him with his pale, haggard countenance distorted by suffering, his contracted nose, and dim, bleared eyes. And warned, at five o'clock, that there was fighting going on at Bazeilles, he had set out thither, silent and mournful like a phantom, but with his cheeks all aglow with rouge.

On the way some brickworks afforded a shelter. The walls on one side were being riddled by the bullets raining upon them; and shells were at every moment falling on the road. The entire escort halted.

'It is really dangerous, sire,' said some one; but the Emperor turned round, and with a wave of the hand simply ordered his staff to draw up in a narrow lane skirting the works, where both men and horses would be completely hidden. 'It's really madness, sire--we beg you, sire----'

However, he simply repeated his gesture, as though to say that the appearance of a number of uniforms on that bare road would certainly attract the attention of the hostile batteries on the left bank of the Meuse. And then, all alone, he rode forward amid the bullets and the shells, without evincing any haste, but still and ever in the same mournful, indifferent manner, as though he were going in search of Destiny. And doubtless, he could hear behind him that implacable voice that had ever urged him forward, the voice that rang out from Paris, calling: 'March, march, die like a hero on the corpses of your people, strike the whole universe with compassionate admiration, so that your son may reign!' And forward he went, slowly walking his horse. For nearly a hundred yards he thus continued advancing; and then he halted to await the fate that he had come in search of. The bullets whistled by like an equinoctial gale, and a shell burst near him covering him with earth. Yet still he remained there waiting. His charger's mane stood up, the animal was quivering all over, instinctively recoiling at thus finding itself in the presence of death which passed by every moment, unwilling, however, to touch either man or beast. And then, after that infinite period of waiting, the Emperor, realising like the resigned fatalist he was, that it was not there he should find his destiny, quietly rode back again, as though he had merely gone forward to reconnoitre the exact positions of the German batteries.

'What courage you have shown, sire! But we beg of you not to expose yourself again!'

However, with another wave of the hand he summoned the members of his staff to follow him, now sparing them no more than he had spared himself; and off he rode across the fields, over the bare ground of La Rapaille towards the position of La Moncelle. On the way a captain of the escort fell dead, and two horses were killed under their riders. The regiments of the Twelfth Corps, before which Napoleon passed, saw him appear and vanish like a spectre; not once was he saluted nor once acclaimed.

Delaherche witnessed all this, and it made him shudder, especially when he reflected that on leaving the brickworks he should again find himself in the open, exposed to all the projectiles. So he lingered there, listening to some officers who had remained behind, their horses having been previously shot under them.

'I tell you he was killed on the spot,' said one; 'a shell cut him in half.'

'No, no. I myself saw him carried off. He was merely wounded--a splinter of a shell in the hip----'

'At what time did it occur?'

'At about half-past six, an hour ago. It was in a hollow road over yonder, near La Moncelle.'

'And was he taken back to Sedan?'

'Certainly, he's there now.'

Whom could they be speaking of? All at once Delaherche realised that they must be referring to Marshal MacMahon, wounded whilst on his way to the outposts. The marshal wounded! Such was our cursed luck, as the lieutenant of Marine Infantry had said. And the manufacturer was reflecting on the consequences of this unfortunate casualty when an estafette galloped by with reins down, and shouted to a comrade whom he recognised: 'General Ducrot is commander-in-chief. The entire army is to concentrate at Illy, to retreat on Mézières!'

The next moment the estafette was already far away, entering Bazeilles under a fire of increasing intensity, and Delaherche, scared by the extraordinary tidings that had reached him in such rapid succession, and liable to find himself caught in the midst of the retreating troops, at last made up his mind to start off again, and ran all the way to Balan, whence he managed to reach Sedan without any very great difficulty. And, meantime, the estafette was still galloping through Bazeilles, seeking the commanders that he might give them their orders. And the tidings were also galloping along--Marshal MacMahon wounded, General Ducrot appointed commander-in-chief, the whole army to fall back on Illy!

'What! what are they saying?' exclaimed Weiss, already black with powder. 'Retreat on Mézières at this time of day? Why, it's madness; the army could not possibly get through!'

He was in despair, full of remorse that he himself had advised that very course the day before, and had advised it precisely to General Ducrot, who was now invested with the supreme command. Certainly, on the previous day there was no other reasonable plan to follow. The army ought to have retreated, retreated immediately by the defile of St. Albert. But at the present time the road must be intercepted by all that black swarm of Prussians that had streamed along, over yonder, towards the plain of Donchery. And, madness for madness, the only truly valiant, desperate course was to hurl the Bavarians into the Meuse, pass over them, and march once more on Carignan.

Hitching up his falling spectacles every minute with a touch of his finger-tips, Weiss explained the position of affairs to the lieutenant, who was still seated there with his limbs shattered and his back against the door. He was now looking extremely pale, however--indeed he was dying from loss of blood. 'I assure you that I'm right, lieutenant,' said Weiss. 'Tell your men to keep firm. You can see that we are victorious. Another effort and we shall fling them into the Meuse.'

The second attack of the Bavarians had, in fact, just been repulsed. The mitrailleuses had again swept the Place de l'Eglise, with such effect that the enemy's dead now lay there in heaps, which rose up here and there like barricades; and the disbanded foe, charged at the bayonet's point, was now being driven from all the lanes into the meadows, where there began a flight towards the river, that would assuredly have become a rout if the Marines, already extenuated and decimated, had been supported by fresh troops. On the other hand, the fusillade in the park of Montivilliers was coming no nearer, making it evident that the wood might be cleared of the enemy if reinforcements only came up.

'Tell your men to charge them, lieutenant!' suddenly shouted Weiss; 'at the bayonet's point!'

The lieutenant, now of a waxy whiteness, still had sufficient strength left him to murmur in a dying voice: 'You hear, my lads; at them with the bayonet!'

And those were his last words. He expired with his stubborn head still erect and his eyes open, gazing on the battle. Flies were already buzzing around and settling on Françoise's shapeless head, whilst little Auguste, lying in bed, a prey to feverish delirium, was calling and asking for something to drink in a low, supplicating voice: 'Wake up, get up, mother--I'm thirsty, I'm so thirsty.'

However, General Ducrot's orders were peremptory, and the officers had to command a retreat, lamenting that they were prevented from profiting by the advantage they had just gained. Plainly enough, the new commander, full of fears with regard to the enemy's turning movement, was disposed to sacrifice everything to a mad attempt to escape his clutches. So the Place de l'Eglise was evacuated, the troops fell back from lane to lane, and the road was soon empty. Women could be heard wailing and sobbing, and men swore and shook their fists in their anger at being thus abandoned. Many of them shut themselves in their houses, determined to defend them and die.

'Oh! I'm not going off like that!' exclaimed Weiss, quite beside himself. 'I prefer to leave my carcase here. We'll see if they'll come to smash my furniture and drink my wine.'

He had completely given himself up to his rage, to the unquenchable fury of battle. The thought of the foreigner entering his house, sitting in his chair, and drinking out of his glass made his whole body revolt, and drove away all thoughts of his accustomed life, his wife, and his business affairs, all the prudence that he usually displayed like a sensible petty bourgeois. And now he shut himself, barricaded himself, inside his house, walking up and down like a caged animal, proceeding from room to room, and making sure that every aperture was properly closed. He counted his cartridges, and found he had about forty left. Then, as he was giving a last glance over towards the Meuse to make certain that no attack was to be feared by way of the meadows, the spectacle furnished by the hills on the left bank once more arrested his attention. The position of the German batteries was clearly indicated by the puffs of smoke ascending from them; and above the formidable battery of Frénois, on the verge of a little wood on the Marfée hill, he again espied that same cluster of uniforms which he had already seen, but now looking larger than on the previous occasion, and so brilliant in the broad sunlight that, on placing his folders in front of his spectacles, he could distinguish the gold or brass of epaulettes and helmets.

'The dirty blackguards! The dirty blackguards!' he repeated, shaking his fist at the group.

It was King William of Prussia who was perched up there, on the Marfée hill, with his staff. He had already, at seven o'clock, arrived there from Vendresse, where he had slept, and there he was, well out of harm's way, with the valley of the Meuse, the whole unbounded battlefield spread out below him. The vast panorama extended from one horizon to another, and he looked down upon it from the hill as upon a gala performance from a throne reared in some gigantic court-box.

Sedan, with the geometrical lines of its fortifications bathed on the south and the west by the flooded meadows and the river, stood out in the centre against the dark background of the Ardennes Forest, which draped the horizon as with a curtain of antique greenery. Houses were already blazing at Bazeilles, where all was misty with the dust of battle. Then, on the east, from La Moncelle to Givonne, only a few regiments of the Twelfth and First French Corps could be seen, looking like lines of insects as they crossed the stubble, and now and again disappearing in a narrow valley where some hamlets were also hidden; and, farther on, the ground rose again, and pale-tinted fields could be perceived, blotched with the green mass of the Chevalier Wood. The Seventh French Corps was especially well in view on the north, with its regiments represented by numerous black specks moving hither and thither over the plateau of Floing, a broad band of dark grey soil, which descended from the little wood of La Garenne to the herbage on the river bank. Beyond were Floing, St. Menges, Fleigneux, and Illy, all the villages scattered across the surging expanse, quite a rugged region, intersected by steep escarpments. And on the left, also, was the loop of the Meuse, with its slow waters glittering like new silver in the clear sunlight, and its long languid bend forming the peninsula of Iges, and intercepting all communication with Mézières save on one point, where, between the farther bank and the impassable forest, there opened the only entrance to the defile of St. Albert.

The hundred thousand men and the five hundred guns of the French army were heaped together, brought to bay within the triangle; and when the King of Prussia turned his eyes westward he perceived another plain, that of Donchery, with bare fields spreading out towards Briancourt, Marancourt, and Vrignes-aux-Bois, an infinite expanse of grey soil dusty under the blue sky; and when he turned to the east he also beheld, confronting the confined French lines, another immense open expanse, with an abundance of villages, first Douzy and Carignan, and then, ascending northwards, Rubécourt, Pourru-aux-Bois, Francheval, and Villers-Cernay, till at last there came La Chapelle, near the Belgian frontier. And all this surrounding ground belonged to him, and as he pushed forward at his pleasure the two hundred and fifty thousand men and the eight hundred guns of his armies, he could, at one glance, survey their invading march. The Eleventh German Army Corps was, on the one hand, already advancing on St. Menges, whilst the Fifth Corps was at Vrignes-aux-Bois, and the division of Wurtembergers was waiting near Donchery; and although, on the other side, the King's view was somewhat obstructed by the trees and hills, it was yet easy for him to realise the movements that were being accomplished. He had just seen the Twelfth German Corps enter the Chevalier Wood, and he knew that the Guard must by this time have reached Villers-Cernay. And the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, and the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony on the right, formed, as it were, the two branches of the vice which were opening and ascending with irresistible force to meet over yonder; whilst on their side the two Bavarian Army Corps were rushing upon Bazeilles.

And, at King William's feet, the German batteries, disposed in an almost uninterrupted line from Remilly to Frénois, were now thundering without cessation, covering La Moncelle and Daigny with shells, and sweeping the plateaux on the north with other projectiles which passed right over the town of Sedan. As yet it was hardly more than eight in the morning, and the King was already waiting for the inevitable result of the battle, his eyes fixed on the gigantic chessboard before him, his mind busy with the movements of that human dust, the bellicose madness of those few black specks which here and there dotted the surface of smiling and eternal nature.

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II. MAURICE RECEIVES THE BAPTISM OF FIRE

At daybreak, in the thick fog enveloping the plateau of Floing, Bugler Gaude sounded the reveille with all the strength of his lungs. But the moisture with which the atmosphere was densely impregnated, so deadened the joyous call that it failed to awaken the men of the company, most of whom, lacking even the energy to pitch their tents, had rolled themselves in the canvas or stretched themselves in the mud. They were lying there, already looking like corpses with their pallid faces hardened by weariness and sleep, and to rouse them it became necessary to shake them one by one, when they sat up with the air of men just resuscitated from the grave, quite livid, and with their eyes full of terror at the thought of life.

Maurice was awakened by Jean. 'What's up? Where are we?' he stammered as he glanced in a scared way on either side, perceiving nothing but the grey sea in the depths of which he was apparently plunged, with the shadowy forms of his comrades floating around him. It was impossible to see twenty yards ahead, so that he could not take his bearings. He had not the faintest notion as to the whereabouts of Sedan. At that moment, however, the sound of a cannonade, somewhere far away, fell on his ears: 'Ah! it's for to-day--so we are going to fight. So much the better, we must make an end of it all.'

The men around him said the same: on all sides there was a gloomy satisfaction, a longing to escape from that interminable nightmare, and to come face to face with those Prussians, whom, at the outset, they had gone in search of, and then had fled from during so many weary hours. At last they would be able to fire on the foe and disburden themselves of those cartridges which they had brought from such a distance without an opportunity of burning even one of them. This time everybody realised that battle was inevitable.

However, the guns of Bazeilles were thundering more and more loudly, and Jean, who stood there listening, inquired: 'Where are they firing?'

'I fancy it's near the Meuse,' replied Maurice; 'but the deuce take me if I know where I am.'

'Listen, youngster,' now said the corporal, 'you must keep beside me to-day, for a fellow needs to know something about these affairs if he doesn't want to get injured. I've been through the mill before, and I'll keep my eyes open for both of us.'

In the meantime the squad was beginning to growl, furious at the thought that they had nothing warm to comfort their stomachs with. It was impossible to light any fires without any dry wood, and in such filthy weather too. Thus, at the very moment when the battle was about to commence, the great, imperious, paramount belly-question came to the fore once more. Perhaps they were heroes--some of them at any rate--but before and above everything else they were maws. Eating was indeed the one all-important question, and how lovingly they skimmed the pot on the days when there was some good soupe, and how angry they waxed, like children and savages, when there was a scarcity of rations!

'No grub, no fighting,' declared Chouteau; 'I'll be blowed if I risk my skin to-day!'

This big, lanky house-painter, this fine speechifier from Montmartre, this public-house theorist who marred the few reasonable ideas that he had picked up here and there, by blending them with a frightful mixture of trash and lies, was again showing himself in the colours of a revolutionist. 'Besides,' continued he, 'haven't they played the fool with us, telling us that the Prussians were dying of hunger and illness, that they hadn't even got any shirts left, and were to be met on the roads grimed with dirt and as tattered as paupers?'

This made Loubet laugh, like the gamin he was whose life had been spent amid all the hole-and-corner avocations of the Paris markets.

'But it's all rot,' continued Chouteau, 'it's we who are kicking the bucket, dying of misery, with our shoes full of holes and our clothes so ragged that anyone might be tempted to give us a copper out of charity. And then too those big victories! Ah! the humbugs, to tell us that they had taken Bismarck prisoner and knocked a whole army head over heels into a stone quarry. Ah! they have played the fool with us and no mistake.'

Pache and Lapoulle listened, clenching their fists and nodding their heads with an air of fury. Others also were enraged, for the everlasting lies of the Paris newspapers had ended by having a disastrous effect. Confidence was dead; no belief remained in anything. The minds of these big children, at the outset so fertile in extraordinary hopes, were now filled with maddening nightmares.

'Of course, and it's simple enough,' resumed Chouteau. 'It's easily understood since we've been sold--you fellows know it as well as I do.'

Every time that he heard this, Lapoulle in his childish simplicity felt quite exasperated. 'Sold, eh?' said he. 'Ah! what rogues some people are.'

'Yes, sold like Judas sold his Master,' muttered Pache, his mind always full of biblical reminiscences.

Chouteau was triumphing: 'It's simple enough,' said he, 'everyone knows the figures. MacMahon was paid three millions of francs, and the generals had a million apiece to bring us here. It was all settled in Paris last spring; and a rocket was sent up last night as a signal that all was ready, and that the others could come and take us.'

The arrant stupidity of this invention revolted Maurice. Chouteau had formerly amused him, almost won him over by his Parisian 'go;' but for some time past he had been unable to stomach this perverter, this ne'er-do-well, who railed at everything so as to disgust the others. 'Why do you tell such absurd stories?' he exclaimed; 'you know very well there's no truth in it at all.'

'No truth in it? What! it isn't true that we have been sold? It wouldn't be surprising if a toff like you happened to belong to that band of swinish traitors. If that's the case,' continued Chouteau, stepping forward in a threatening way, 'you had better say so, Mr. Gentleman, because we can settle your hash at once, without waiting for your friend Bismarck.'

The others also were beginning to growl, and Jean thought it his duty to intervene: 'Keep quiet, all of you: I'll report the first one who stirs.'

But Chouteau, with a sneer, began to hoot him. He didn't care a rap for his report. He'd fight or not, just as he pleased, and they'd better not bother him, for his cartridges would do just as well for others as for the Prussians. Now that the battle was beginning, the little discipline that fear had still maintained would be swept away. What could they do to him? He meant to skedaddle as soon as he had had enough of it. And he went on talking in an insulting fashion, exciting the others against the corporal, who suffered them to die of hunger. Yes, it was Jean's fault if the squad had had nothing to eat for three days past, whereas the comrades had soupe and meat. Mr. Jean and the toff, however, had gone to feast with some wenches. Yes, indeed, others had seen their goings-on at Sedan.

'You've spent the squad's money,' shouted Chouteau at last; 'you daren't deny it, you cursed jobber!'

Matters were getting serious. Lapoulle clenched his fist, and even Pache, usually so gentle but now maddened by hunger, demanded an explanation of Jean. The only sensible one was Loubet, who began to laugh, saying that it was idiotic for Frenchmen to fall out when the Prussians were there close by. He wasn't a partisan of quarrelling either with fists or with guns, and, alluding to the few hundred francs he had received as a substitute, he added: 'Well, if they fancy my skin's worth no more than that I'll undeceive them. I'm not going to give them more than their money's worth.'

Maurice and Jean, however, exasperated by Chouteau's idiotic onslaught, replied in violent terms, and were spurning the charges levelled at them, when all at once a loud voice rang out through the fog: 'What's the row there? Who are the stupid clowns disputing like that?'

Then Lieutenant Rochas appeared to view, with his cap discoloured by the rain, his overcoat merely retaining a button here and there, and the whole of his lank, awkward person in a pitiable condition of neglect and wretchedness. And yet he had none the less assumed a victorious swagger, his moustaches bristling and his eyes flaring.

'Please, sir,' replied Jean, quite beside himself, 'it's these men who are shouting that we are sold. Yes, they say our generals have sold us.'

To the narrow mind of Rochas this idea of treachery did not appear altogether unreasonable, for it explained defeats which he did not consider admissible. 'Well, what the deuce is it to them if they have been sold?' he answered. 'What business is it of theirs? At any rate, it doesn't alter the fact that the Prussians are here now, and that we are going to give them one of those lickings that are remembered.'

Afar off, behind the dense curtain of mist, the guns of Bazeilles did not cease thundering. And impulsively thrusting out his arms, the lieutenant added, 'Ah! this time there's no mistake. We are going to drive them home again with the butt-ends of our rifles.'

To his mind the thunder of the cannonade effaced all the past: the delays and uncertainties of the march, the demoralisation of the troops, the disaster of Beaumont, and even the last agony of the forced retreat upon Sedan. Since they were about to fight, was not victory a certainty? He had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, he retained all his braggart contempt for the enemy, his absolute ignorance of the new methods of warfare, his unswerving conviction that an old soldier of the Crimea, Italy, and Algeria could not be beaten. It would be really too droll if he were to undergo that experience at his age.

A laugh suddenly parted his jaws from ear to ear. And, like the worthy fellow he was, he now did his men one of those good turns which made them like him so much despite the manner in which he occasionally rated them. 'Listen, my lads,' said he, 'instead of disputing, it's much better to drink a drop together. Yes, I'm going to stand treat, and you can drink my health.'

Thereupon, from a deep pocket of his overcoat, he produced a bottle of brandy, adding, with that triumphant air of his, that it was a present from a lady. This was not so surprising, as during the previous day he had been seen in a tavern at Floing making himself quite at home there with the servant girl on his knees. And now the soldiers laughed heartily, and held out their tin bowls, into which he gaily poured the liquor.

'You must drink to your sweethearts, my lads, if you have any, and you must drink to the glory of France. That's all I care about. Here's to jollity!'

'You're right, sir; here's to your health and everybody's!'

They all drank together, reconciled and warmed by the liquor. It was really very kind of the lieutenant to have treated them to that drop of 'short' in the early cold before they advanced on the enemy. And Maurice felt the alcohol descending into his veins, again bringing warmth and the semi-intoxication of illusion. Why should they not defeat the Prussians after all? Had not battles their surprises in reserve, sudden, unexpected transitions at which History remained astonished? Besides, that devil of a fellow, Rochas, declared that Bazaine was on his way to join them, and was expected to come up before nightfall. And he intimated that the information could be positively relied upon, for he had it from a general's aide-de-camp; and although he stretched his arm towards Belgium, to point out by what direction Bazaine was approaching, Maurice surrendered himself to one of those crises of hope without which he was unable to live. After all, perhaps the revanche was really at hand.

'Pray, sir, what are we waiting for?' he ventured to ask; 'aren't we going to march?'

Rochas made a gesture as if to say that he was without orders. Then, after a pause, he added: 'Has anyone seen the captain?'

Nobody replied. Jean remembered that during the night he had espied him slinking away in the direction of Sedan; however, a prudent soldier should never let it appear that he has seen a superior apart from the service. So he had decided to hold his tongue, when, on turning round, he perceived a shadowy form approaching beside a hedge. And, thereupon, he exclaimed: 'Here he comes!'

It was indeed Captain Beaudoin, who astonished everybody with his irreproachable get-up, contrasting in such a marked degree with the deplorable condition of the lieutenant. His uniform was nicely brushed, his boots were beautifully polished, and there was something quite coquettish, something suggestive of galanterie about his white hands, his curled moustaches, and the vague perfume of Persian lilac that he diffused around him, reminding one of a pretty woman's well-appointed dressing-room.

'Hallo!' sneered Loubet; 'so the captain has found his baggage again.'

Nobody smiled, however, for the captain was known not to be an easy customer. He was execrated by his men, whom he kept at a distance. A regular vinegar-bottle, as Rochas put it. Since the earlier defeats he had seemed quite offended, and the disaster, which everybody foresaw, appeared to him above all things improper. A Bonapartist by conviction, having had a prospect of rapid and high advancement before him, backed up as he was by several influential Parisian salons, he felt that his fortune was sinking in the mud and mire of this disastrous war. It was said that he possessed a very pretty tenor voice, to which he was already deeply indebted. Moreover, he was not without intelligence, though he knew nothing of his profession, being simply desirous of pleasing, and when necessary proving very brave, without, however, displaying any excessive zeal.

'What a fog!' he quietly remarked, feeling more at his ease now that he had found his company, which he had been looking for during the last half-hour, almost fearing that he had lost himself.

However, orders had at length arrived, and the battalion immediately advanced. Fresh clouds of mist must have been ascending from the Meuse, for the men almost had to grope their way through a kind of whitish dew, falling upon them in fine drops. And Maurice was struck by the sudden apparition of Colonel de Vineuil, who, erect on his horse, rose up before him at the corner of a road; the old officer looking very tall and very pale, motionless like a marble statue of despair, and the animal shivering in the early cold with dilated nostrils which were turned towards the cannon over yonder. And Maurice was yet more struck when, at ten paces in the rear, he espied the regimental colours carried by the sub-lieutenant on duty, and looking, amid the soft, shifting white vapour, like a trembling apparition of glory, already fading away in the atmosphere of dreamland. The gilded eagle was drenched with water, and the tricoloured silk, embroidered with the names of victories, soiled by smoke, and perforated with ancient wounds, seemed to be paling in the mist; well-nigh the only brilliant touches, amid all this obliteration, being supplied by the enamel points of the Cross of Honour, which was hanging from the tassel of the flag.

The colonel and the colours disappeared, hidden by a fresh wave of mist, and the battalion still continued advancing, as though through a mass of damp cotton-wool, and without the men having the faintest notion whither they were going. They had descended a narrow slope, and were now climbing a hollow road. Then all at once resounded the command, 'Halt!' And there they remained, their arms grounded, their knapsacks weighing down their shoulders, and with strict orders not to stir. They were probably on a plateau, but it was still quite impossible to distinguish anything twenty paces away. It was now seven o'clock; the cannonade seemed to have drawn nearer; fresh batteries, installed closer and closer to one another, were now firing from the other side of Sedan.

'Oh! as for me,' suddenly said Sergeant Sapin to Jean and Maurice, 'I shall be killed to-day.' He had not opened his mouth since the reveille. Judging by the expression of his thin face, with its large, handsome eyes, and small, contracted nose, he had been absorbed in a painful reverie.

'What an idea!' protested Jean. 'Can any of us say what will happen to us? It's all chance.'

The sergeant, however, shook his head as though absolutely convinced of what he had said. 'For my part,' he added, 'it's as good as done. Yes, I shall be killed to-day.'

Some of the men now turned round and asked him if he had dreamt it. No, he hadn't dreamt anything; only he felt it there. 'And all the same, it worries me,' said he, 'for I was going to be married as soon as I got my discharge.'

Again his eyes wavered; all his past life rose up before him. The son of a Lyons grocer in a small way of business, spoilt by his mother, who was dead, and unable to get on with his father, he had remained in the regiment disgusted with everything, but unwilling to be bought out. Then, on one occasion, whilst away on leave, he had come to an understanding with one of his cousins and had arranged to marry her. And then he had again begun to take an interest in life, and the pair of them had laid many happy plans for going into business together with the help of the small sum that the girl was to bring as a dowry. He, on his side, had received some education, and was fairly proficient in the three R's. For a year past his only thoughts had been for the future felicity he had planned.

All at once he shuddered, shook himself as though to get rid of his fixed idea, and then calmly repeated: 'Yes, it's a beastly worry; but I shall be killed to-day.'

None of the others spoke; the spell of waiting continued. They were not aware whether they were facing or turning their backs on the enemy. Vague sounds occasionally emerged from the depths of the fog--the rumbling of wheels, the tramp of a mass of men, the distant trot of horses; sounds produced by the movements of the troops which the fog was hiding, all the evolutions of the Seventh Army Corps, now taking up its line of battle. During the last minute or so, however, it had seemed as if the vapour were becoming less dense. Fragments of it arose, looking like pieces of muslin, and patches of the horizon were disclosed, still dim, however, of a gloomy blue, like that of deep water. And it was at one of these moments when the atmosphere was clearing that they saw the regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique, belonging to Margueritte's division, pass by like phantom horsemen. Erect in their saddles, with their short, light-blue jackets and their broad red sashes, the Chasseurs urged on their mounts, animals of slender build, who were half hidden beneath the cumbersome kits they carried. Behind one squadron came another, and after emerging for a moment from the haze where all was vague, they passed into it again as though melting away under the fine rain. Doubtless they had been in the way, and were being sent farther off, those in command not knowing what to do with them, as had been the case ever since the outset of the campaign. They had scarcely been employed on reconnoitring duties at all, and as soon as an engagement began they were promenaded from valley to valley, valuable, yet useless.

As Maurice looked at them he thought of Prosper. 'Hallo!' he muttered, 'perhaps he's over there.'

'Who?' asked Jean.

'That fellow from Remilly, whose brother, the Franc-tireur, we met at Oches.'

The Chasseurs had passed on, however, and then came another gallop, that of a general's staff descending the sloping road. Jean recognised Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, who was waving his arm in a furious manner. So he had at last deigned to quit the Golden Cross Hotel, and his bad humour plainly indicated how annoyed he was at having had to rise so early, after being so badly lodged and wretchedly fed. His voice could be distinctly heard, thundering out: 'Well, d---- it, the Moselle or the Meuse, at any rate the water that's there!'

However, the mist was at length rising. As at Bazeilles, there was a sudden transformation scene, a radiant spectacle gradually disclosed to view, as when the drop-curtain slowly ascends towards the flies. The sunrays were brightly streaming from the blue vault, and Maurice immediately recognised the spot where they were waiting. 'Ah!' said he to Jean, 'this is what they call the plateau of Algeria. You see that village in front of us, on the other side of the valley, that's Floing. That one, farther off, is St. Menges; and there, farther still, is Fleigneux. Then, right away, in the forest of the Ardennes--those trees on the horizon--comes the frontier.'

With his hand outstretched he continued giving his explanations. The plateau of Algeria, a strip of muddy soil, rather less than two and a half miles in length, sloped gently from the wood of La Garenne towards the Meuse, from which some meadows parted it. It was here that General Douay had disposed the Seventh Corps, in despair that he had not sufficient men to defend so long a line as that allotted to him, or to establish a solid connection with the First Corps, whose positions, perpendicular to his own, extended along the valley of the Givonne from the wood of La Garenne to Daigny.

'Ah! you see how vast it is, eh?' said Maurice, turning round, and with a wave of the hand embracing the entire horizon. From the plateau of Algeria the whole immense field of battle stretched out towards the south and the west. First there was Sedan, whose citadel could be seen rising above the housetops; then came Balan and Bazeilles, hazy with smoke; and, in the rear, the heights on the left bank of the Meuse, the Liry, Marfée and Croix-Piau hills. But the view was more particularly extensive on the west, in the direction of Donchery. The loop of the Meuse bounded the peninsula of Iges as with a light ribbon, and over there one could plainly detect the narrow Route de St. Albert, running between the bank and a steep height, which, somewhat farther on, was crowned by the little wood of Le Seugnon, a spur of the woods of La Falizette. The road to Vrignes-aux-Bois and Donchery passed over the summit of the height at a spot known as the Crossway of the Red House.

'And in that direction, you know, we could fall back on Mézières,' said Maurice. But at that very moment a first cannon shot was fired from St. Menges. Shreds of fog were still trailing in the depths, and a vague mass of men could just be espied marching along the defile of St. Albert. 'Ah! there they are!' resumed Maurice, instinctively lowering his voice, and without naming the Prussians. 'Our line of retreat is cut off!'

It was not yet eight o'clock. The cannonade, which was increasing in violence in the direction of Bazeilles, could now also be heard on the east, in the valley of the Givonne, which they were unable to see. At this moment, indeed, the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony was emerging from the Chevalier Wood and advancing upon the First Corps in front of Daigny. And now that the Eleventh Prussian Corps, marching upon Floing, was opening fire on General Douay's troops, the battle had begun on all sides, from north to south, over an expanse of several leagues.

Maurice had just realised what a deplorable blunder had been made in not withdrawing upon Mézières during the night. And although he had only a dim notion as to what might be the exact consequences of the blunder, he was instinctively apprehensive of danger, and gazed with disquietude at the neighbouring heights overlooking the plateau of Algeria. Allowing that they might not have had sufficient time to retreat on Mézières, why, at all events, had they not occupied those heights, with their backs to the frontier, so that they might, at all risks, have made their way into Belgium in the event of a defeat? Two points appeared particularly threatening, the round Hattoy hill, above Floing on the left, and the so-called Calvary of Illy, crowned by a stone cross rising between two lime trees. On the previous day General Douay had sent a regiment to occupy the Hattoy hill, but this isolated position being considered dangerous the men had fallen back at dawn. As for the Calvary of Illy, its defence had been entrusted to the left wing of the First Army Corps. All the vast bare expanse, dented with deep valleys from Sedan to the Ardennes, was there; and evidently the key of the position was at the foot of that cross and those two lime trees, whence one could sweep all the surrounding country.

Two more artillery reports were now heard. Then came the roar of several pieces fired simultaneously, and this time a puff of smoke was seen to ascend from a little hill on the left of St. Menges. 'Ah!' said Jean, 'it's our turn now.'

Nothing was seen of any projectile, however. The men, still standing there stock-still, with their arms grounded, had no other pastime than that of contemplating the fine order of the Second Division, drawn up in front of Floing, and with its left wing thrown forward in the direction of the Meuse, to meet any attack on that side. The Third Division was deploying on the east as far as the wood of La Garenne, below Illy; whilst the first, cut up at Beaumont, was in the rear, forming a second line. The Engineers had been engaged all night in the preparation of defensive works, and were still digging shelter-trenches and raising breast-works, when the Prussians began firing.

A fusillade broke out in the lower part of Floing, but soon ceased, and just then Captain Beaudoin's company received orders to fall back a distance of some three hundred yards. The men had just reached a large square field of cabbages, when the captain curtly commanded them to lie down. They had to obey, although the order was by no means a pleasant one. The abundant dew had quite soaked the cabbages, on whose thick leaves of a greenish gold there lingered large drops of as brilliant and as pure a water as diamonds. 'Sight at four hundred yards!' called the captain.

Maurice thereupon rested the barrel of his chassepot on a cabbage in front of him. Lying there, on the soil, he could no longer see anything save a confused stretch of ground streaked here and there with greenery, and nudging Jean, who was on his right hand, he asked him what they were doing in that field. Jean, experienced in such matters, pointed out to him a battery which was being established on a hillock near at hand. Plainly enough they had been placed there to support that battery. Thereupon Maurice, inquisitive as to whether Honoré was at the battery in question, scrambled to his feet; but the reserve artillery was in the rear, beyond a clump of trees.

'Thunder!' shouted Rochas, 'lie down at once!'

Before Maurice had again stretched himself on his stomach a shell passed by, hissing, and from that moment there was no pause in the arrival of the projectiles. The correct range, however, was but slowly found; the first shells fell far beyond the French battery, which also opened fire, whilst others, which sank into the soft soil, did not explode, so that for some time there was any number of jokes about the clumsiness of those sauerkraut-eating gunners.

'Why, their artillery fire is a mere flash in the pan!' said Loubet.

Then Chouteau indulged in a disgusting joke, and Lieutenant Rochas joined in with the remark, 'There! I told you those fools couldn't even point a gun!'

One shell, however, burst some ten paces away, covering the company with mould, and although Loubet called to his comrades in a bantering way to get their brushes out of their knapsacks, Chouteau, who was turning quite pale, held his peace. He had never been under fire before, neither had Pache nor Lapoulle, nor, indeed, any man of the squad excepting Jean. Their eyes blinked and grew dim, whilst their voices became shrill and faint as though they had a difficulty in speaking. Maurice, who still retained some measure of self-possession, endeavoured to analyse his sensations: he was not yet frightened, for he did not think he was in danger, and all that he experienced was a slight uneasiness in the epigastrium, whilst his head gradually emptied, so that he could not connect his ideas. All the same, however, his hopefulness had been increasing like growing intoxication ever since he had observed with so much wonderment the capital order of the troops. He had reached a state when he no longer had any doubt of victory, provided they could only charge the enemy with cold steel.

'Hallo!' he muttered; 'what a lot of flies there are.' Thrice already he had heard a buzzing sound.

Jean could not help laughing. 'No,' said he; 'they are bullets.'

Other light buzzing sounds swept by, and now all the men of the squad turned their heads, greatly interested. It was an irresistible impulse, and one after another they lifted up their necks, unable to keep still.

'I say,' said Loubet to Lapoulle, by way of amusing himself with the simpleton, 'whenever you see a bullet coming you've only got to put a finger in front of your nose--like that--it cuts the air apart, and the bullet passes on the right or the left.'

'But I don't see them coming,' said Lapoulle, whereupon everybody roared.

'Oh my! he doesn't see them! Keep your lamps open, you fool! Why, there comes one--and there's another. Didn't you see that one? It was a green bullet.'

And thereupon Lapoulle opened his eyes as wide as he could, and kept one finger uplifted in front of his nose, whilst Pache, touching the scapular he wore, wished he were able to extend it like a breastplate over his chest.

Rochas, who had remained standing, exclaimed all at once in his bantering way: 'You're not forbidden to salute the shells, my lads, bub never mind about the bullets, there are too many of them.'

At that moment a splinter of a shell shattered the head of a soldier in the front rank. He was not even able to cry out: there was a spurt of blood and brain-matter--that was all.

'Poor devil!' quietly said Sergeant Sapin, who was very calm and very pale; 'whose turn next?'

But they could no longer hear one another; and it was indeed especially the frightful uproar that distressed Maurice. The battery near by was firing without a pause, with a continuous roar which shook the ground; and the mitrailleuses, rending the air asunder, were even more insufferable. How long were they going to lie among those cabbages? There was still nothing to be seen; nothing was known. It was impossible to form the slightest idea of the battle; was it even a real battle, a great one? All that Maurice could distinguish above the smooth line of the fields before him was the round, wooded summit of the Hattoy hill, far away and still deserted. Not a Prussian was to be seen on the horizon. Only some puffs of smoke arose, wafted for a moment in the sunlight. Then, as he turned his head, he was greatly astonished on perceiving in the depths of a sequestered valley, sheltered by rugged slopes, a peasant who was calmly pursuing his avocation--guiding a plough drawn by a big white horse. Why should the man lose a day? Corn would not cease growing, the human race would not cease living, because a few thousand men happened to be fighting.

Consumed by impatience, Maurice rose to his feet, and at a glance he again saw the batteries of St. Menges, which were cannonading them, crowned with tawny smoke; and he also again beheld the road from St. Albert now blocked with Prussians, the indistinct swarming of an invading horde. Jean, however, swiftly caught hold of his legs and dragged him to the ground. 'Are you mad?' said the corporal; 'you'll be potted.'

On his side Rochas began to swear: 'Lie down at once! What the deuce does the fellow mean, trying to get killed when he hasn't been ordered to do so?'

'But you're not lying down, sir,' said Maurice.

'Oh! in my case it's different; it's necessary that I should know what's passing.'

Captain Beaudoin also remained bravely erect. But he did not open his mouth to speak to his men, to whom nothing attached him; and it seemed as if he were unable to keep still, for again and again did he tramp from one end of the field to the other.

And meantime the waiting continued, nothing came. Maurice was suffocating beneath his knapsack, which, in his horizontal position, so wearisome after a time, was weighing heavily on his back and chest. The men had been particularly cautioned that they were not to rid themselves of their knapsacks until the last extremity.

'I say, are we going to spend the whole day here?' Maurice ended by asking Jean.

'Perhaps so. At Solferino, I remember, we spent five hours lying in a carrot-field with our noses on the ground.' And then, like the practical fellow he was, Jean added: 'But what are you complaining of? We are not badly off. There'll always be time enough for us to expose ourselves. Everyone has his turn, you know. If we all got ourselves killed at the beginning there would be no one left for the finish.'

'Ah!' suddenly interrupted Maurice, 'look at that smoke on the Hattoy hill. They've captured it; they'll be leading us a nice dance now.'

For a moment the sight he beheld supplied some food for his anxious curiosity, into which the first quiver of fear was stealing. He could not take his eyes off the round summit of that hill, the only acclivity that he could perceive, above the fleeting line of fields, level with his eye. It was, however, much too far away for him to distinguish the gunners of the batteries that had just been established there by the Prussians, and, indeed, he only saw the puffs of smoke rising at each fresh discharge above a plantation, which probably concealed the guns.

As Maurice had instinctively divined, the capture of this position, the defence of which General Douay had been compelled to renounce, was a very serious matter. The Hattoy hill commanded the surrounding plateaux, and when the German batteries installed there opened fire on the Second Division of the Seventh Corps, they speedily decimated it. The enemy's practice was now much improved, and the French battery, near which Beaudoin's company was lying down, had a couple of gunners killed in rapid succession. A splinter at the same time wounded a quartermaster-corporal of the company, whose left heel was carried clean away, and who began shrieking with pain as though he had suddenly gone mad.

'Shut up, you brute!' shouted Rochas. 'Is there any sense in making such a row over a flea-bite?'

Suddenly calmed, the wounded man became silent, and sank into a senseless immobility, with his foot in his hand.

And, meanwhile, the formidable artillery duel, growing more and more serious, steadily went on over the heads of the prostrate regiments, across the hot, mournful stretch of country where no one was to be seen in the fierce sunlight. There seemed to be nothing but this thunder, this destructive blizzard rushing backwards and forwards athwart the deserted expanse. And hours and hours were to elapse before it ceased. But the superiority of the German artillery was already becoming manifest; nearly all of their percussion shells exploded at tremendous distances, whereas the French shells, on the fuse system, did not travel nearly so far, and more frequently than otherwise burst in the air before reaching their destinations. And, meantime, for Captain Beaudoin's men there was no resource but that of trying to make themselves as small as possible in the furrows in which they were lying, close-pressed to the soil. They were not even able to ease themselves, intoxicate themselves, shake off their thoughts by firing a few shots. For whom could they fire at, since there was still nobody to be seen along the blank horizon?

'Aren't we going to fire?' Maurice kept on repeating, quite beside himself. 'I'd give five francs to see one of those Prussians appear. It's exasperating to be fired at like that without being able to reply.'

'Don't be in a hurry, the time may come,' replied Jean, quietly.

However, the gallop of horses on their left made them turn their heads, and they recognised General Douay, who, followed by his staff, had ridden up to ascertain how his troops were behaving under the terrible fire from the Hattoy hill. He seemed satisfied, and was giving a few orders, when General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, in his turn, debouched from a hollow road. 'Carpet-general' though he was, he trotted along with careless indifference amidst all the projectiles, obstinately clinging to his Algerian practices, and having failed to profit by any of the lessons of the war. He was gesticulating after the fashion of Rochas, and shouting: 'I'm waiting for them. We'll see how it will be when we get to close quarters by-and-by.' Then, catching sight of General Douay, he rode up to him: 'Is it true, general, that the marshal's wounded?'

'Yes, it is, unfortunately. I received a line from Ducrot just now, telling me that the marshal had selected him to take command of the army.'

'Ah! so it's Ducrot! And what are the orders?'

The commander of the Seventh Corps made a gesture of despair. He had realised, already on the previous day, that the army was lost if it remained at Sedan, and he had urged again and again, but vainly, that the positions of St. Menges and Illy ought to be occupied in view of insuring a means of retreating upon Mézières.

'Ducrot reverts to our plan,' he said, in answer to Bourgain-Desfeuilles. 'The entire army is to concentrate on the plateau of Illy.' And then he repeated his gesture as though to say that it was too late!

The roar of the cannon drowned many of his words; still the sense of them reached Maurice's ears distinctly enough, and he was quite scared. What! Marshal MacMahon was wounded, General Ducrot commanded in his stead, the entire army was to retreat to the north of Sedan, and the poor devils of soldiers who were getting themselves killed were in utter ignorance of all these important matters! And they were playing this fearful game at the mercy of a chance accident, dependent on the fancies of a fresh leader! He divined the confusion, the final disarray into which the army was falling, without a commander, without a plan, dragged first one way and then another, whilst the Germans never deviated, but went straight towards their goal with the precision of machinery.

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles was already riding away when he was imperatively recalled by his superior, who had just received another message, brought to him by a Hussar, covered with dust.

'General! general!' shouted Douay, whose voice, in his surprise and emotion, thundered so loudly that it resounded above all the roar of the artillery. 'General, it is no longer Ducrot who commands, but Wimpffen! Yes, he arrived yesterday, at the very moment of the Beaumont rout, to take De Failly's place at the head of the Fifth Corps--and he writes me that he has a letter from the Minister of War placing him at the head of the army in the event of any vacancy in the command--and the orders to retreat are cancelled, we are to regain and defend our original positions.'

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles was listening with dilated eyes. 'Thunder!' he exclaimed at last, 'we ought to know what we are to do--though for my own part I don't care a rap!'

Then away he galloped, really indifferent as to the issue of the affair, having merely viewed the war at the outset as a means of rapidly attaining to divisional rank, and now simply desiring that this stupid campaign should be brought to an end as soon as possible, since it gave so little satisfaction to everybody.

And now the men of Beaudoin's company burst into a derisive laugh. Maurice said nothing, but he shared the opinion of Chouteau and Loubet, who began to jeer and joke, pouring forth their contempt. Right wheel, left wheel, go as you're told. Nice commanders they had, and no mistake; commanders who agreed so well together, and who didn't want all the blanket to themselves--oh! no, of course not! When men had such generals as those, wasn't it best to go off to bed? Three commanders-in-chief in the space of a couple of hours, three fine fellows who didn't know what ought to be done, and each of whom gave different orders! Really, it was enough to make you feel exasperated, enough to demoralise a saint! And then those fatal charges of treason cropped up afresh--Ducrot and Wimpffen were like MacMahon, they wanted to earn Bismarck's three millions!

General Douay had halted at some little distance in advance of his staff, and there he remained quite alone, gazing at the Prussian positions, and absorbed in a reverie of infinite sadness. For a long time he continued scanning the Hattoy hill, the shells from which were falling close around him. Then, after turning towards the plateau of Illy, he summoned an officer to carry an order to a brigade of the Fifth Corps, which he had obtained from General de Wimpffen the day before, and which connected him with Ducrot's left wing. And he was distinctly heard to remark: 'If the Prussians should obtain possession of the Calvary we could not hold out here for an hour; we should be thrown back on Sedan.'

Thereupon he went off, disappearing with his escort at a bend of the hollow road, whilst the enemy's fire increased in intensity. Very possibly he had been remarked.

And now the shells, which hitherto had simply been coming from the front, began raining on the left flank as well. The fire of the batteries at Frénois, and of another battery established on the peninsula of Iges, was crossing that from the Hattoy hill. And the projectiles fairly swept the plateau of Algeria. The men, occupied in watching what was going on in front, now had this flank fire to alarm them, and, exposed to two dangers, were at a loss how to escape from either. In rapid succession three men were killed, whilst two who were wounded shrieked aloud.

And it was now that Sergeant Sapin met the death he expected. He had turned round, and, when it was too late to avoid the shell, he saw it coming. 'Ah! there it is,' he simply said. There was a look, not of terror, but of profound sadness on his little pale face, in his large handsome eyes. His belly was ripped open, and he began to moan: 'Oh! don't leave me here! take me to the ambulance I beg of you--take me away.'

Rochas wished to silence him, and in his brutal fashion was about to tell him that when a man was mortally wounded he had no business to put a couple of comrades to unnecessary trouble. Suddenly, however, the grim lieutenant was stirred by pity, and exclaimed: 'Wait a moment, my poor fellow, till the bearers come for you.'

But the wretched man continued moaning, and began to weep, distracted that the longed-for happiness should be fleeing away with the flow of his blood. 'Take me away,' he begged, 'take me away.'

Thereupon Captain Beaudoin, whose excited nerves were doubtless exasperated by this plaint, called for a couple of men to carry the sergeant to a little wood near by, where there was a field ambulance. Anticipating their comrades, Chouteau and Loubet at once bounded to their feet and took up the sergeant, one holding him under his armpits and the other by his feet. Then off they carried him at a run. On the way, however, they felt him stiffening, expiring in a last convulsion.

'I say,' said Loubet, 'he's dead. Let's drop him.'

But Chouteau refused to do so, exclaiming in a fury: 'Just you run on, you lazybones. Do you think I'm such a fool as to drop him here for the captain to call us back?'

Accordingly they went on their way with the corpse until they reached the little wood, where they flung it at the foot of a tree. Then they went off, and were not seen again until the evening.

The firing was now becoming more and more violent, the battery which the company was supporting having been reinforced by a couple of guns; and, in the increasing uproar, fear, mad fear, at last took possession of Maurice. At the outset he had been free from the cold perspiration that was now issuing from every pore of his skin, from the painful weakness that at present he felt in the pit of his stomach, the well-nigh irresistible inclination that he experienced to rise up and rush away shrieking. And doubtless all this was but the result of reflection, as often happens with delicate, nervous natures. Jean, however, was watching him, and as soon as he detected this crisis of cowardice by the troubled wavering of his eyes, he caught hold of him with his strong hand, and roughly prevented him from stirring. And, in a fatherly way, he whispered insulting words in his ear, trying to make him feel ashamed of himself, for he knew that insults, and at times even kicks, are needed to restore some men's courage. Others also were shivering. Pache had his eyes full of tears, and gave vent to a gentle, involuntary plaint, like the wailing of a little child, which he was altogether unable to restrain. And Lapoulle's vitals were so stirred that he was taken quite ill. Several other men were similarly distressed, and the scene which ensued led to much hooting and jeering, the effect of which was to restore everybody's courage.

'You wretched coward!' Jean repeated to Maurice, 'mind you don't behave like them--I'll punch your head if you don't behave properly.'

He was in this manner warming the young fellow's heart, when all at once, at some four hundred yards in front of them, they perceived a dozen men in dark uniforms emerging from a little wood. At last, then, there were the Prussians--easily recognisable by their spiked helmets--the first Prussians they had seen within range of their chassepots since the outset of the campaign. Other squads followed the first one, and in front of them one could see the little clouds of dust thrown up by the shells. Everything was very small, yet delicately precise; the Prussians looked like so many little tin soldiers set out in good order. However, as the shells from the French batteries rained upon them in increasing numbers, they soon fell back again, disappearing behind the trees.

But Captain Beaudoin's men had seen them, and fancied they could see them still. The chassepots had gone off of their own accord. Maurice was the first to fire. Jean, Pache, Lapoulle, all the others followed his example. There had been no command to fire; in fact, the captain wished to stop it, and only gave way on Rochas making a gesture implying that it was absolutely necessary the men should thus ease their feelings. So at last they were firing, employing those cartridges which they had been carrying in their pouches for more than a month past, without an opportunity of burning a single one of them. Maurice, especially, was quite enlivened. Thus occupied, he forgot his fright. The detonations drove away his thoughts. Meantime, the verge of the wood remained desolate. Not a leaf was stirring there, not a Prussian had reappeared, yet the men continued firing at the motionless trees.

Then, all at once, having raised his head, Maurice was surprised to see Colonel de Vineuil on his big horse, only a few paces away; both man and beast looking as impassive as though they were of stone. With his face to the foe, the colonel remained there, whilst the bullets rained around him. The entire regiment must now have fallen back to this point, other companies were lying down in neighbouring fields, and the fusillade was spreading right along the line. And, slightly in the rear, Maurice also saw the colours, borne aloft by the strong arm of the sub-lieutenant, who carried them. But they were no longer the phantom colours which the morning fog had obscured. The gilded eagle was shining radiantly under the fierce sunbeams, and vividly glared the silk of the three colours, despite all the glorious wear and tear of bygone battles. Against the bright blue sky, amid the wind of the cannonade, the flag was waving like a flag of victory.

And now that they were fighting, why should not victory be theirs? With desperate, maddened rage, Maurice and his comrades continued burning their cartridges, shooting at the distant wood, where twigs and branches were slowly and silently raining upon the ground.

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III. INSIDE SEDAN: NAPOLEON'S MIDNIGHT AGONY--TWO WOMEN

Henriette was unable to sleep that night. She was worried by the thought that her husband was at Bazeilles so near the German lines. In vain did she repeat to herself the promise he had made her to return at the first sign of danger; and in vain at each moment did she pause in her work to listen, fancying she could hear him coming. Towards ten o'clock, when it was time for her to go to bed, she opened the window, and remained there, looking out, with her elbow resting on the sill.

The night was very dark, and down below she could scarcely distinguish the pavement of the Rue des Voyards, a narrow, gloomy passage hemmed in by old houses. The only light was a smoky, star-like lamp some distance away, in the direction of the college. And from the depths beneath there ascended a cellar-like, saltpetrous smell, the occasional caterwauling of some angry tom, the heavy footfall of some soldier who had lost his way. Moreover, unaccustomed noises resounded through Sedan behind her, sudden gallops, continuous rumblings, which sped along like threats of death. She listened, with her heart beating loudly, but still and ever she failed to recognise the steps of her husband coming round the corner.

Hours went by, and she became anxious concerning the distant glimmers which she could espy along the country side, beyond the ramparts. It was so dark that she had to picture the situation of the various localities. That huge pale sheet down below was evidently the water covering the flooded meadows. But what was that fire which she had seen flare up and then die away, over yonder, doubtless on the Marfée hill? And there were other fires flaming all along the hills, at Pont-Maugis, Noyers, and Frénois, mysterious fires vacillating above an innumerable multitude, swarming there in the darkness. But it was especially the extraordinary sounds which she heard that made her start and tremble--the tramping of a people on the march, the panting of horses, the clang of arms, quite a chevachie passing along afar off, in the depths of that dim inferno. Suddenly the booming of a cannon resounded, one formidable, frightful report, followed by perfect silence. It froze all the blood in her veins. What could it be? A signal, no doubt--a signal that some movement had succeeded, an announcement that they were ready over yonder, and that the sun might now rise when he pleased.

At about two in the morning Henriette, still dressed, threw herself upon her bed, neglecting even to close the window. She was quite overcome with fatigue and anxiety. What could be the matter with her, that she should now be shivering with fever like that--she, as a rule, so calm, with so light a step that one heard her no more than if she had not existed? She slept painfully, numbed as it were, but with a persistent consciousness of the catastrophe that weighed so heavily in the black atmosphere. All at once, in the midst of her uneasy slumber, the voice of the cannon was heard again; dull, distant reports resounded; and now the firing went on regularly, stubbornly, without cessation. She sat up on her bed shuddering. Where was she? She no longer recognised, no longer even saw the room, which seemed to be full of dense smoke. Then all at once she understood that the mist rising from the neighbouring river must have entered through the open window. Outside, the guns were now sounding more frequently. She sprang off the bed and hastened to the window to listen.

Four o'clock was striking from one of the steeples of Sedan. The morning twilight was breaking, dim, undecided in the dun-coloured mist. It was impossible to see anything; she could no longer distinguish even the college buildings a few yards away. Where were they firing, good heavens? Her first thought was for her brother, Maurice, for the reports were so deadened by the fog that they seemed to her to come from the north, right over the town. Then, however, it appeared certain that the firing was in front of her, and she trembled for her husband. Yes, the firing was undoubtedly at Bazeilles. For a few moments, however, she felt reassured, for it seemed to her, every now and then, as though the reports were, after all, coming from her right. Perhaps they were fighting at Donchery, where the bridge, as she was aware, had not been blown up. And now the most frightful perplexity took possession of her--were they firing from Donchery or from Bazeilles? It was impossible for her to tell, there was such a continuous buzzing in her ears. At last her anguish of mind became so acute that she felt unable to remain waiting there any longer. She quivered with an unrestrainable desire to know the truth at once, and throwing a shawl over her shoulders she went out in search of information.

She hesitated for a moment as she reached the Rue des Voyards down below, for the town still seemed so black in the opaque fog that enveloped it. The morning twilight had not yet reached the damp pavement between the smoky old house-fronts. The only persons she perceived as she went along the Rue au Beurre were two drunken Turcos with a girl, inside a low tavern where a candle was flickering. She had to turn into the Rue Maqua to find some animation--soldiers whose shadows glided furtively along the footways: cowards, possibly, in search of a hiding place; together with a big cuirassier who had lost himself, and who knocked at each door he came to, searching for his captain; and there was also a stream of civilians, perspiring with fear at the idea that they had so long delayed their departure, and packing themselves closely in carts, to see if there were still time to get to Bouillon in Belgium, whither half of Sedan had been emigrating for two days past.

Henriette was instinctively bound for the Sub-Prefecture, where she felt certain she would gain some information; and, to avoid being accosted, the idea occurred to her of cutting through the side streets. But she was unable to pass along the Rue du Four and the Rue des Laboureurs: they were blocked with cannon, endless rows of guns, caissons, and ammunition waggons, which had been huddled together there the day before, and seemed to have been forgotten. There was not even a sentry mounting guard over them; and the sight of all that gloomy, unutilised artillery, slumbering in abandonment in the depths of those deserted by-ways, chilled Henriette's heart. She now had to retrace her steps by way of the Place du Collège towards the high street, where, outside the Hôtel de l'Europe, she saw some orderlies holding horses, and waiting for a party of field officers, whose voices resounded loudly in the brightly illuminated dining-room. People were still more plentiful on the Place du Rivage and the Place Turenne, where groups of anxious townsfolk, women and children, were mingled with scared, disbanded soldiers, going hither and thither; and she saw a general rush swearing out of the Golden Cross Hotel and gallop off in a rage at the risk of knocking everybody down. For a moment she seemed to think of entering the town-hall; however she ultimately turned into the Rue du Pont-de-Meuse to reach the Sub-Prefecture.

And never before in her eyes had Sedan presented such a tragic aspect as that which it now wore in the dim, dirty morning twilight, full of fog. The houses seemed to be dead; many of them were empty, abandoned a couple of days since; and others, where fear-fraught insomnia could be divined, remained hermetically closed. With all those streets still half deserted, peopled merely with anxious shadows, traversed by abrupt departures in the midst of all the laggard soldiers who had been roaming about since the previous day, it was a morning to make one fairly shiver. The light would gradually increase, and by-and-by the town would be crowded, submerged by the impending disaster; but as yet it was only half-past five, and so far one could barely hear the cannonade, its booming being deadened by the lofty black houses.

Henriette was acquainted with the daughter of the door-portress at the Sub-Prefecture. Rose was the girl's name; she was a pretty, delicate-looking, little blonde, and worked at Delaherche's factory. When Henriette stepped into the lodge the mother was not there, but Rose greeted her with her accustomed amiability. 'Oh, my dear lady, we can no longer keep on our legs,' said she; 'mother has had to go and lie down a little. Just fancy, what with all the comings and goings, we have had to remain on foot all night!'

And without waiting for any questions she rattled on and on, feverishly excited by the many extraordinary things that she had seen since the day before. 'The marshal has slept well,' she said. 'But that poor Emperor! No, you can't imagine how dreadfully he suffers! Last night I went up to help give out some linen, and just as I was passing through a room next to the dressing-room I heard some moaning--oh! such dreadful moaning, as though somebody was dying. It made me tremble all over; and it froze my heart when I learned it was the Emperor. It appears he has a dreadful illness which makes him cry out like that. He restrains himself when anybody's there, but as soon as he's alone it masters him, and he calls out and complains--it's enough to make your hair stand on end.'

'Do you know where they are fighting this morning?' interrupted Henriette.

Rose dismissed the question, however, with an impatient wave of the hand. 'So you understand,' said she, 'I wanted to know how he was, and I went up four or five times during the night and listened, with my ear to the partition--and each time that I went I heard him moaning and complaining, and he didn't cease, he didn't close his eyes for a moment all night long, I'm sure of it. How terrible, isn't it, to suffer like that with all the worry he has? For everything's in confusion, a regular scramble. They all seem to have lost their senses! The doors do nothing but bang, fresh people are always coming. Some of them fly in a rage, and others cry. The house is quite topsy-turvy; everything's being pillaged. I assure you I saw some officers drinking out of the bottles last night, and some of them even went to bed in their big boots. And after all it's the Emperor who's the best of the lot, and who takes up the least room in the little corner where he hides himself to moan.'

Then, as Henriette repeated her question, Rose replied: 'Where they are fighting? It's at Bazeilles--they've been fighting there since daybreak! A soldier on horseback came to tell the marshal, and he at once went to the Emperor to let him know. The marshal has already been gone some ten minutes or so, and I think the Emperor's going to join him, for they are dressing him upstairs. I was up there just now, and I caught sight of his valet combing and curling him, and doing all sorts of things to his face.'

Henriette, however, now had the information she desired, and therefore turned to go: 'Many thanks, Rose, I'm in a hurry,' she said; whereupon the young girl, complaisantly accompanying her as far as the street, replied: 'Oh, I'm quite at your service, Madame Weiss. I know that one can tell you everything.'

Henriette quickly returned to her home in the Rue des Voyards. She felt convinced that she would now find her husband there; and, reflecting that he would be alarmed by her absence, she hastened her steps. She raised her head as she drew near to the house, almost fancying that she could see him leaning out of the window, watching for her. But no, there was nobody at the window, which was still wide open. And when she had climbed the stairs, and given a glance into each of the three rooms, she stopped short thunderstruck, her heart filled with anguish at only finding there that same icy fog, deadening the incessant commotion of the cannonade. They were still firing over yonder, and, for a moment, she returned to the window. The morning mist still reared its impenetrable veil, but now that she was informed she immediately realised that the struggle was going on at Bazeilles; she could distinguish the crackling of the mitrailleuses, and the crashing volleys of the French batteries, replying to the distant volleys of the German ones. It seemed, too, as though the detonations were coming nearer; the battle was, every minute, growing more and more violent.

Why did not Weiss return? He had promised so positively that he would come back at the first attack. Henriette's disquietude was increasing; she pictured obstacles: the road might be cut, perhaps the shells already rendered a retreat too dangerous. And perhaps, too, an irreparable misfortune had happened. But she dismissed that thought, sustained by hope which urged her to action. For a moment she thought of going to Bazeilles, of starting to meet her husband. Then she hesitated, for they might cross one another on the way, and what would become of her if she should miss him? And how alarmed he would be if he came home and did not find her there! On the other hand, however, bold as it was to think of going to Bazeilles at such a moment, it seemed to her a natural course to follow--the proper course, indeed, for an active woman like herself, who did whatever was requisite in her household affairs without asking for instructions. And besides, wherever her husband was, she ought to be there too; that was the long and short of it.

All at once, however, possessed by a fresh idea, she left the window, saying:

'And Monsieur Delaherche--I must see.'

It had just occurred to her that the manufacturer also had spent the night at Bazeilles, and that if he had returned he would be able to give her some news of her husband. She swiftly went downstairs again, and this time, instead of passing out by way of the Rue des Voyards, she crossed the narrow yard of the house, and followed the passage leading to the large factory buildings, whose monumental façade overlooked the Rue Maqua. As she reached the old central garden, now paved with stones, and retaining only a lawn girt round with superb trees, gigantic elms of the last century, she was greatly surprised at sight of a sentry mounting guard in front of the closed doors of a coach-house. Then she suddenly remembered why he was there. She had learnt the day before that the treasury chest of the Seventh Army Corps had been deposited there, and she experienced a singular feeling at thought of all that gold, millions of francs, so it was said, hidden away in that coach-house, whilst they were already killing one another over yonder.

However, at the moment when she was beginning to ascend the servant's staircase, on her way to Gilberte's room, she met with a fresh surprise, indeed so unforeseen an encounter that she hastily stepped down the three stairs which she had already climbed, doubting whether she would still dare to go and knock at the door above. A soldier, a captain, had just tripped past her as lightly as a fleeting apparition, and yet she had had sufficient time to recognise him, having met him at Gilberte's house at Charleville in the days when she--Gilberte--was still Madame Maginot. Henriette took a few steps across the courtyard, and looked up at the two lofty bedroom windows, the shutters of which were still closed. Then, having come to a decision, she climbed the stairs.

A friend since childhood, quite intimate with Gilberte, she occasionally went to chat with her of a morning; and she intended, on reaching the first landing, to knock, as was her wont, at the dressing-room door. But she found that it had been left ajar, and she merely had to push it open and cross the dressing-room to reach the bedchamber, an extremely lofty apartment, from the ceiling of which descended flowing curtains of red velvet, enveloping a large bedstead. All was quiet in this room, the atmosphere of which was saturated with a vague perfume of lilac; there was merely a sound of calm breathing, and even that was so faint as to be scarcely audible.

'Gilberte!' called Henriette, gently. In the dim light that filtered through the red curtains drawn before the windows she could see her friend's pretty round head, which had slipped from off the pillow and was resting on one of her bare arms, whilst all around streamed her beautiful black hair, which had become uncoiled. 'Gilberte!'

The young woman moved, stretched herself, but did not at first open her eyes. All at once, however, raising her head and recognising Henriette, she exclaimed: 'Why, is it you? What o'clock is it?'

When she learnt that six was striking she felt uncomfortable, and in order to hide it began jesting, asking whether that were a proper time to come and awaken people. Then, at the first question respecting her husband, she exclaimed: 'But he hasn't come home. I hardly expect he will be here before nine o'clock. Why should he come back so early?'

And as she still continued smiling in her sleepy torpor, Henriette had to insist: 'But I tell you that they have been fighting at Bazeilles since daybreak, and as I am very anxious about my husband----'

'Oh! my dear,' exclaimed Gilberte, 'there is no occasion for anxiety. My husband is so prudent that he would have been here long ago had there been the slightest danger. As long as you don't see him you may be quite easy.'

Henriette was impressed by this remark. Delaherche was certainly not the man to expose himself unnecessarily. And, thereupon, feeling reassured, she approached the windows, drew back the curtains, and threw the shutters open. The ruddy light from the sky where the sun was now beginning to show itself, gilding the fog, streamed into the room. One of the windows remained slightly open, and now in this large, warm chamber, so close and suffocating a moment previously, the cannon could be distinctly heard.

Sitting up, with one elbow buried in the pillow, Gilberte gazed at the sky with her pretty, expressionless eyes. Her chemise had slipped from one of her shoulders, and her skin looked beautifully pink and delicate under her scattered locks of black hair. 'And so they are fighting,' she murmured. 'Fighting so early! How ridiculous it is to fight!'

Henriette, however, had just espied a pair of gloves, military gloves, lying forgotten upon a side table, and at this significant discovery she could not restrain a start. Then Gilberte flushed a deep crimson, and drawing her friend to the side of the bed, in a confused, coaxing way, she hid her face against her shoulder. 'I felt you must know it, that you must have seen him,' she murmured; 'you must not judge me too severely, darling. I have known him so long. You remember, at Charleville, I confessed to you----.' And then, lowering her voice, she continued, with a touch of emotion through which there stole, however, something like a little laugh: 'You do not know how he spoke to me when I met him again yesterday. And, only think, he has to fight this morning, and perhaps he will be killed. What could I do?' She had simply wished that he might be happy before he went to risk his life for his country on the battlefield. And such was her bird-like giddiness, that it was this which somehow made her smile, despite all her confusion. 'Do you condemn me?' she asked.

Henriette had listened to her with a grave expression on her face. Such things surprised her; she could not understand them. Doubtless she herself was different. Her heart was with her husband and her brother over yonder, where the bullets were raining. How was it possible to slumber peacefully, or think of passion, and smile and jest when loved ones were in peril?

'But your husband, my dear, and that young fellow too; does it not stir your heart not to be with them?' she said. 'Think of it; they may be brought back to you, dead, at any moment.'

With a wave of her beautiful bare arm Gilberte swiftly drove the frightful vision away. 'Good heavens! what's that you say? How cruel of you to spoil my morning for me like that. No, no, I won't think of it; it is too dreadful.'

Then even Henriette could not help smiling. She remembered their childhood, when Gilberte had been sent for the benefit of her health to a farm near Le Chêne Populeux; her father, Commander de Vineuil--Director of Customs at Charleville since his retirement from the army in consequence of his wounds--having felt the more anxious about her when he had found her coughing, as he was haunted by the remembrance of his young wife, carried off by phthisis a short time previously. Gilberte was then only nine years old, but she was already a turbulent coquette, fond of juvenile theatricals, invariably wishing to play the part of the queen, draped in all the scraps of finery she could find, and carefully preserving the silver paper wrapped round her chocolate in order to make crowns and bracelets of it. And she had remained much the same when in her twentieth year she had become the wife of M. Maginot of Mézières, an inspector of the State forests. Mézières, which is cramped up within its ramparts, was not to her liking; she infinitely preferred the open, fête-enlivened life of Charleville, and continued residing there. Her father was no longer alive and she enjoyed complete liberty, her husband being such a perfect cipher that she in nowise troubled herself about him. Provincial malignity had bestowed many lovers upon her at that time, but although, by reason of her father's old connections and her relationship to Colonel de Vineuil, she lived amid a perfect stream of uniforms, she had really had but one weakness, and that for Captain Beaudoin. She was not of a perverse nature; she was simply giddy, fond of pleasure, and, if she had erred, it certainly seemed to be because of the irresistible need she experienced to be beautiful and gay.

'It was very wrong of you,' said Henriette, at last, with a grave look.

She might have said more, but Gilberte with one of her pretty caressing gestures closed her mouth. And there they remained, neither speaking any further, but linked in an affectionate embrace albeit so dissimilar from one another. They could hear the beating of each other's hearts, and might have realised how different was their language--the one the heart of a woman who gave herself up to mirth, who wasted and frittered away her life; the other a heart that was bound up in one unique devotion, full of the great, mute heroism of a strong and lofty soul.

'It's true; they are fighting,' Gilberte at last exclaimed. 'I must make haste and dress.'

The detonations seemed to have been growing louder since silence had reigned in the room. Gilberte sprang out of bed, and, unwilling to summon her maid, asked Henriette to help her. She put on a dress and a pair of boots, so that she might be ready either to receive or to go out, and she was hastily dressing her hair--indeed, had almost finished doing so--when there came a knock at the door, and, on recognising the voice of old Madame Delaherche, she ran to open it. 'Certainly, mother dear, you can come in,' she said, and with her usual thoughtlessness she ushered her mother-in-law into the room, forgetting that the gloves were still lying on the side-table.

In vain did Henriette dart forward to take and throw them behind an arm-chair. They must have been seen by the old lady, for she stopped short as if she were stifling, as though unable to catch her breath. But at last, after glancing around the room, she said: 'So Madame Weiss came up to wake you. Were you able to sleep, then?'

She had evidently not come for the mere purpose of talking in that strain. Ah! that unfortunate second marriage which her son had insisted upon, despite all her remonstrances, which he had contracted after twenty years of frigid matrimony with a skinny, sulky wife! During all that time he had been so sensible and reasonable, and then, all at once, at fifty years of age, he had been carried away by quite a youthful desire for that pretty widow, so frivolous and gay. She, the mother, had vowed that she would watch over the present, and now here was the past coming back again! But ought she to speak out? Her presence in the house nowadays was like a silent blame, and she almost always remained in her own room occupied with her devotions. This time, however, the wrong was so serious that she resolved to warn her son.

'You know that Jules has not come back?' said Gilberte.

The old lady nodded. Since the beginning of the cannonade she had felt anxious, and had been watching for her son's return. She was, however, a brave mother. And now she remembered for what reason she had come upstairs. 'Your uncle, the colonel,' she said to her daughter-in-law, 'has sent us Major Bouroche with a note in pencil, asking if we will allow an ambulance to be installed here. He knows that we have plenty of room in the factory, and I have already placed the drying room and the courtyard at the gentlemen's disposal. Only, you ought to come down.'

'Oh! at once, at once!' said Henriette, stepping forward, 'we will help.'

Gilberte herself gave signs of emotion, and became quite enraptured with the idea of playing the nurse, which to her was a novel part. She barely took time to fasten a strip of lace over her hair, and the three women thereupon went down.

Scarcely had they reached the spacious porch, when, the gate being open, they saw that a crowd had assembled in the street. A low vehicle was slowly approaching, a kind of tilted cart drawn by one horse, which a lieutenant of Zouaves was leading. They at once thought that a wounded man was being brought to them.

'Yes, yes, it's here; come in!'

But they learned that they were mistaken. The wounded man lying in the cart was Marshal MacMahon, whose left hip had been half carried away by a splinter of a shell, and who, after a first dressing at a gardener's little house, was now being taken to the Sub-Prefecture. His head was bare, he was half undressed, and the gold embroidery of his uniform was soiled with dust and blood. He did not speak, but he had raised his head and was glancing vaguely around him. On perceiving the three women who stood there painfully impressed, their hands clasped at sight of the great misfortune that was passing--the whole army struck in the person of its commander at the very first shells fired by the foe--he made a slight inclination of the head, smiling feebly in a paternal way. Some of the bystanders respectfully uncovered, whilst others bustled about, relating that General Ducrot had just been appointed commander-in-chief. It was now half-past seven o'clock.

'And the Emperor?' asked Henriette of a bookseller who was standing at his door near by.

'He passed about an hour ago. I followed him, and saw him go off by the Balan gate. There's a report that a cannon ball has carried off his head.'

At this, however, a grocer over the way became quite indignant. 'It's all a pack of lies,' said he. 'Only brave men come to any harm.'

The cart conveying the marshal was now drawing near to the Place du Collège, where it became lost to view amid a swelling crowd, through which the most extraordinary rumours from the battlefield were already circulating. The fog was at last dispersing, and the streets were filling with sunlight.

'Now, ladies, it isn't outside, but here that you are wanted,' a gruff voice suddenly called from the courtyard.

They all three went in again, and found themselves in presence of Major Bouroche, who had already flung his uniform in a corner and donned a large white apron. Above all this whiteness, as yet unspotted, that huge head of his, covered with coarse bristling hair, that lion-like countenance was glowing with haste and energy. And so terrible did he seem to them, that they at once became his slaves, obedient to his beck and call, and bustling about to satisfy him.

'We have nothing,' said he; 'give me some linen. Try and find me some more mattresses. Show my men where the pump is.' And thereupon they ran hither and thither, and multiplied themselves as though they were his servants.

It was a capital idea to select the factory for an ambulance. Merely in the drying room, a vast hall with large windows, there was ample space to make up a hundred beds, and an adjoining shed would suit remarkably well as an operating room. A long table had just been placed in it; the pump was only a few steps off, and the men who were but slightly wounded could wait on the lawn near by. And, moreover, it was all so very pleasant with those beautiful old elms, which spread such delightful shade around.

Bouroche had preferred to establish his quarters inside Sedan immediately; for he foresaw the massacre, the fearful onslaught which would eventually throw the troops into the town. He had therefore contented himself with leaving a couple of field ambulances with the Seventh Corps in the rear of Floing; and the injured men, after having their wounds summarily dressed there, were to be sent on to him. All the bearer-squads had remained with the troops for the purpose of picking up the wounded on the field, and the entire transport matériel--stretchers, waggons, vans--was with them. And, on the other hand, excepting a couple of assistant surgeons, whom he had left in charge of the field-ambulances, Bouroche had brought with him to the factory his entire medical staff, two second-class surgeons, and three under-assistant surgeons, who would no doubt suffice for the operations that might have to be performed. He also had with him three apothecaries and a dozen infirmary attendants.

However, he did not cease fuming, for he could never do anything otherwise than in a passionate way: 'What the deuce are you up to? Just place those mattresses closer together! We'll lay some straw in that corner if necessary!' he shouted.

The cannon was growling, and he knew very well that work--waggon-loads of mangled, bleeding flesh--would be arriving at the factory in a few moments; so with violent haste he got everything ready in the large hall which as yet was empty. Then, other preparations had to be made under the shed, the pharmaceutical and dressing chests were opened and set out on a plank, with packets of lint, rollers, compresses, linen-cloths, and fracture bandages; whilst on another plank, beside a large pot of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, the cases of bright steel instruments were spread out--the probes, forceps, catlings, scissors, saws, quite an arsenal of everything pointed and cutting, everything that searches, opens, gashes, slices, and lops off. There was, however, a lack of basins.

'You must have some pans or pails, or earthenware pots,' said Bouroche; 'give us whatever you like. Of course we are not going to smear ourselves with blood up to our eyes. And some sponges, too; try and get me some sponges.'

Old Madame Delaherche went off at once, and returned with three servant girls carrying all the pans she could find. Gilberte, standing meanwhile before the instrument cases, signed to Henriette to approach, and, with a faint shudder, showed her the terrific arsenal. And then they remained standing there in silence, holding each other by the hand, their grasp pregnant with all the vague terror and anxious pity that agitated them.

'Ah! my dear, just think of having a leg or an arm cut off!'

'Poor fellows!'

Bouroche had just placed a mattress on the long table in the shed, and was covering it with some oilcloth, when the stamping of horses was heard under the porch. It was the first ambulance waggon entering the courtyard. The ten men, seated face to face in the vehicle, were, however, only slightly wounded: a few who were injured in the head had their foreheads bandaged, whilst each of the others had an arm in a sling. They alighted with a little assistance, and the inspection at once began.

Whilst Henriette was gently helping a young fellow, with a bullet in his shoulder, to take off his capote, an operation which drew from him many cries of pain, she noticed the number of his regiment on his collar. 'Why, you belong to the 106th,' said she; 'are you in Captain Beaudoin's company?'

No, he was in Captain Ravaud's, he replied; but all the same he knew Corporal Jean Macquart, and he felt certain that the latter's squad had not yet taken part in the fighting. This information, vague as it was, sufficed to make the young woman quite cheerful: her brother was alive and she would feel altogether at her ease as soon as she had kissed her husband, whose arrival she was still every minute expecting.

At this moment, however, as she raised her head she was thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing in a group a few paces off, engaged in recounting all the terrible dangers through which he had just passed on his way back from Bazeilles. How did he happen to be there? She had not seen him come in.

'Isn't my husband with you?' she asked.

Delaherche, however, whom his mother and wife were complaisantly questioning, was in no hurry to answer her. 'Wait a bit,' said he, and returning to his narrative he continued: 'I was nearly killed a score of times between Bazeilles and Balan. There was a perfect hurricane of bullets and shells. And I met the Emperor--oh! he was very brave--and then I ran from Balan here----'

'My husband?' asked Henriette, shaking his arm.

'Weiss? Why, he stopped there.'

'Stopped there!'

'Yes; he picked up a dead soldier's chassepot, and he's fighting!'

'Fighting, how's that?'

'Oh! he was quite mad! He wouldn't come, though I asked him over and over again to do so, and at last, of course, I left him----'

Henriette was gazing at Delaherche with fixed, dilated eyes. A pause ensued, during which she quietly made up her mind. 'Then I'm going there,' she said.

Going there, indeed! But it was impossible, senseless. And again did Delaherche talk of the bullets and shells that were sweeping the road. Gilberte, too, again took hold of her hands, this time to detain her; whilst old Madame Delaherche did all she could to show her how blindly rash her project was. But with that unpretending, gentle air of hers, she repeated: 'It is of no use talking to me; I am going.'

And she became obstinate, and would take no advice, accept nothing but the strip of black lace that covered Gilberte's head. Hoping that he might still convince her of her folly, Delaherche ended by declaring that he would accompany her at least as far as the Balan gate. However, he had just caught sight of the sentry who, amid all the confusion occasioned by the establishment of the ambulance, had not ceased marching slowly up and down in front of the coach-house, where the treasure chest of the Seventh Corps was deposited; and suddenly remembering it, and feeling anxious for its safety, Delaherche went to glance at the coach-house door by way of making sure that the millions were still there. Henriette, meanwhile, turned towards the porch.

'Wait for me!' exclaimed the manufacturer. 'Upon my word you are every bit as mad as your husband!'

It so happened that another ambulance cart was just then arriving, and they had to step aside to let it pass. It was a smaller vehicle than the first, on two wheels only, and contained a couple of men both severely wounded and lying on sacking. The first, who was taken out with every kind of precaution, appeared to be one mass of bleeding flesh; one of his hands was shattered, and his side had been ripped open by a splinter of a shell. The other had his right leg crushed. He was immediately laid up on the oilcloth, covering the mattress on the long table, and Bouroche began to perform his first operation, whilst his assistants and the attendants hurried hither and thither. Meanwhile, old Madame Delaherche and Gilberte sat on the lawn, busily rolling linen bands.

Delaherche overtook Henriette just outside. 'Now surely, my dear Madame Weiss,' said he, 'you are not going to do anything so rash--how can you possibly join Weiss over there? Besides, he can't be there now, he must have come away; no doubt he's returning through the fields. I assure you you cannot possibly get to Bazeilles.'

She did not listen to him, however; she hastened her steps and turned into the Rue du Ménil to reach the Balan gate. It was nearly nine o'clock, and nothing in the aspect of Sedan now suggested that black shivering of a few hours previously, that lonesome, groping awakening amid the dense fog. At present an oppressive sun clearly outlined the shadows cast by the houses, and the paved streets were obstructed by an anxious crowd through which estafettes were continually galloping. The townsfolk clustered more particularly around the few unarmed soldiers who had already come in from the battle, some of them slightly wounded, others shouting and gesticulating, in an extraordinary state of nervous excitement. And yet the town would almost have worn its everyday aspect had it not been for the closed shops, the lifeless house-fronts, where not a shutter was opened; and had it not been also for the cannonade, that incessant cannonade, that shook every stone, the roadways, the walls, and even the slates of the house-roofs.

A most unpleasant conflict was going on in the mind of Delaherche. On the one hand was his duty as a brave man, which required that he should not leave Henriette; on the other, his terror at the thought of going back to Bazeilles, through the shells. All at once, just as they were reaching the Balan gate, they were separated by a stream of mounted officers, returning from the fight. There was quite a crush of townsfolk near this gate, waiting for news; and in vain did Delaherche run hither and thither, looking for the young woman; she was gone, she must have already passed the rampart, and was doubtless hurrying along the road. He did not allow his zeal to take him any farther, but suddenly caught himself exclaiming: 'Ah! well, so much the worse; it's too stupid!'

And then he began strolling through Sedan, like an inquisitive bourgeois bent on missing none of the sights, though to tell the truth he was now labouring under increasing disquietude. What would be the end of it all? Would not the town suffer a great deal if the army were beaten? Such were the questions he put to himself; but the answers remained obscure, being almost wholly dependent on the course that events might take. Nevertheless, he began to feel very anxious about his factory, his house property in the Rue Maqua, whence, by the way, he had been careful to remove all his securities, burying them in a safe place. At last he repaired to the town-hall, where, finding the municipal council assembled en permanence, he lingered a long while, without, however, learning anything fresh, except that the battle was progressing unfavourably. The army no longer knew whom to obey--drawn back as it had been by General Ducrot during the two hours when he had exercised the chief command, and suddenly thrown forward again by General de Wimpffen, who had succeeded him; and these incomprehensible veerings, these positions which had to be reconquered after being abandoned, the utter absence of any plan, any energetic direction, all combined to precipitate the disaster.

Delaherche next went as far as the Sub-Prefecture to ascertain whether the Emperor had returned. But here they could only give him news of Marshal MacMahon, who, having had his wound, which was of but little gravity, dressed by a surgeon, was now lying quietly in bed. At about eleven o'clock, however, whilst Delaherche was again roaming the streets, he was stopped for a moment in the Grande Rue, just in front of the Hôtel de l'Europe, by a cortège of dusty horsemen, who were slowly walking their dejected steeds. And at the head of the party he recognised the Emperor, who was now returning to his quarters after spending four hours on the battlefield. Decidedly, death had not been willing to take him. The perspiration caused by the anguish of that long ride through the defeat, had made the paint trickle from his cheeks, and softened the wax of his moustaches, which were now drooping low, whilst his cadaverous countenance expressed the painful stupor of mortal agony. An officer, who alighted at the hotel, began to explain to a cluster of townsfolk that they had ridden all along the little valley from La Moncelle to Givonne, among the troops of the First Corps, whom the Saxons had thrown back on to the right bank of the stream; and they had returned by way of the hollow road of the Fond-de-Givonne, which was already so obstructed that had the Emperor desired to proceed once more to the front, he could only have done so with very great difficulty. Besides, what would have been the good of it?

Whilst Delaherche was listening to these particulars a violent explosion shook the entire neighbourhood. A shell had just carried away a chimney in the Rue Ste.-Barbe near the Keep. There was quite a sauve-qui-peut, and women were heard shrieking. For his own part he had drawn close to a wall, when all at once another detonation shattered the window panes of a neighbouring house. Matters were becoming terrible if the enemy were bombarding Sedan, and he hastened as fast as he could to the Rue Maqua, seized with so pressing a desire to ascertain the truth that, without pausing for a moment, he darted up the stairs to a terrace on the roof, whence he could overlook the town and its environs.

He almost immediately felt somewhat reassured. The fight was being waged over the housetops. The German batteries of La Marfée and Frénois were sweeping the plateau of Algeria beyond the town. For a moment Delaherche even became quite interested in watching the flight of the shells, the long curved sweep of light smoke which they left above Sedan, like a slender track of grey feathers scattered by invisible birds. At first it seemed to him evident that the few shells which had damaged some of the roofs around him were simply stray projectiles. The town was not as yet being bombarded. On a more careful inspection, however, it occurred to him that these shells must have been aimed in reply to the infrequent shots fired by the guns of Sedan itself. He then turned round and began to examine the citadel on the northern side--a formidable, complicated mass of fortifications, huge pieces of blackened wall, green patches of glacis, a swarming of geometrical bastions, prominent among which were the threatening angles of three gigantic horn-works, Les Ecossais, Le Grand Jardin, and La Rochette; whilst on the west, like a Cyclopean prolongation of the defences, came the fort of Nassau, followed by that of the Palatinate, above the suburb of Le Ménil. This survey left him a melancholy impression, however. All these works were enormous, yet how child-like! Of what possible use were they nowadays, when artillery could so easily send projectiles flying from one horizon to the other? Moreover, they were not armed, they had neither the guns, nor the ammunition, nor the men that were needed to turn them to account. Barely three weeks had elapsed since the Governor had begun to organise a national guard, formed of volunteer citizens, for the purpose of working the few guns that were in a serviceable condition. It thus happened that three cannon were firing from the Palatinate fort, and perhaps half a dozen from the Paris gate. As, however, the ammunition was limited to seven or eight charges per gun, it was necessary to husband it, so that a shot was only fired every half-hour or so, and then simply for honour's sake; for the projectiles did not carry the required distance, but fell in the meadows just in front, for which reason the enemy's disdainful batteries merely replied at long intervals, and as though out of charity.

It was those batteries of the foe that interested Delaherche. His keen eyes were exploring the slopes of the Marfée hill, when he suddenly remembered that he had a telescope which, by way of amusement, he had in former times often pointed on the environs from that very terrace. He fetched it and set it in position, and whilst he was taking his bearings, slowly moving the instrument so that the fields, trees, and houses passed in turn before him, his eyes fell on the same cluster of uniforms, grouped at the corner of a pine wood, above the great battery of Frénois, that Weiss had faintly espied from Bazeilles. Delaherche, however, thanks to the magnifying power of his telescope could have counted the officers of this staff, so plainly did he see them. Some were reclining on the grass, others stood up, grouped together, and in advance of them was one man, all by himself, lean and slim, in a uniform free from all showiness, but whom he instinctively divined to be the master. It was, indeed, the King of Prussia, barely half an inch high, like one of those diminutive tin soldiers that children play with. Delaherche only became quite certain of it later on; still, from that moment he scarcely took his eyes off that tiny little fellow whose face, the size of a pin's head, appeared simply like a pale spot under the vast blue heavens.

It was not yet noon; the King was verifying the mathematical, inexorable march of his armies since nine o'clock. They were ever pressing onward and onward, following the routes traced out for them, completing the circle, and raising, step by step, around Sedan their wall of men and iron. That on the left, which had proceeded by way of the level plain of Donchery, was still debouching from the defile of St. Albert, passing beyond St. Menges, and beginning to reach Fleigneux; and in the rear of his Eleventh Corps, hotly grappling with General Douay's troops, the King could distinctly see the stealthy advance of his Fifth Corps, which, under cover of the woods, was making for the Calvary of Illy. And meantime batteries were being added to batteries, the line of thundering guns was incessantly being prolonged, and the entire horizon was gradually becoming one belt of flames. The army on the right hand henceforth occupied the whole valley of the Givonne; the Twelfth German Corps had seized La Moncelle, and the Guard had just passed through Daigny, and was already ascending the banks of the stream, also marching upon the Calvary of Illy, after compelling General Ducrot to fall back behind the wood of La Garenne. One more effort and the Crown Princes of Prussia and Saxony would join hands over yonder, amid those bare fields on the very verge of the forest of the Ardennes. South of Sedan one could no longer perceive Bazeilles; it had disappeared in the smoke of the burning houses, in the dun-coloured dust of a furious struggle.

And the King was tranquilly looking on, waiting as he had waited since the early morning. One, two, perhaps three hours must still elapse: it was merely a question of time, one wheel was impelling another, the pounding machine was at work, and would complete its task. The battlefield was now contracting under the infinite expanse of sunny sky; all the furious mêlée of black specks was tumbling and settling closer and closer around Sedan. In the town some window panes were aglow; it seemed as though a house were burning on the left, near the Faubourg de la Cassine. Far around, however, in the once more deserted fields, towards Donchery and towards Carignan, there was a warm, luminous peacefulness that stretched in the powerful noontide glow over the clear waters of the Meuse, over the trees so pleased with life, the large fertile expanses of arable land, and the broad emerald meadows.

The King, in a few words, had just asked for some information. He wished to know every move that was made, hold in his hand, as it were, the human dust that he commanded on that colossal chessboard. On his right a flight of swallows, frightened by the cannonade, rose whirling, ascended to a great height, and vanished southward.

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IV. A WOMAN'S HEROISM--THE HORRORS OF BAZEILLES

Henriette was at first able to walk rapidly along the road leading to Balan. It was barely more than nine o'clock, and for some distance the broad paved highway, edged with houses and gardens, was still free; though towards the village it was becoming more and more obstructed by the flight of the inhabitants and the movements of the troops. At each fresh stream of the crowd that she encountered, she pressed close against the walls, or glided hither and thither, invariably contriving to pass on, no matter what obstacles there might be. And slight of figure as she was, unobtrusive, too, in her dark dress, with her beautiful fair hair and her little pale face half-hidden by Gilberte's black lace fichu, she escaped the notice of those she met; and nothing was able to stay her light and silent steps.

At Balan, however, she found the road barred by a regiment of Marine Infantry--a compact mass of men who were waiting for orders, under the shelter of some large trees which hid them from the enemy. She rose on tip-toe, but the column was of such length that she could not even see the end of it. Nevertheless, she tried to slip by, seeking to make herself even smaller than she was. Elbows pushed her back, however; the butt-ends of guns digged her in the sides, and when she had taken a score of steps, loud shouts and protests rose up around her. A captain turned his head and angrily demanded: 'Here! woman, are you mad? Where are you going?'

'I am going to Bazeilles.'

'What! to Bazeilles?'

A general roar of laughter ensued. The men pointed her out to one another, and jested. The captain, whom her answer had also enlivened, exclaimed: 'Well, if you are going to Bazeilles you ought to take us with you, little one! We were there just now, and I hope we are going to return there. But I warn you that it's warm.'

'I am going to Bazeilles to join my husband,' declared Henriette in a gentle voice, her pale blue eyes retaining their expression of quiet decision.

At this the men ceased laughing; and an old sergeant extricated her from the ranks and compelled her to retrace her steps. 'You can see very well, my poor child,' said he, 'that it is impossible for you to pass. It isn't a woman's place to be at Bazeilles just now. You'll find your husband again later on. Come, be reasonable!'

She had to give way, and step back to the rear of the column; and there she remained standing, at each minute rising upon tip-toe to look along the road; for she was stubbornly bent upon resuming her journey as soon as this became possible. From the talk around her she derived some knowledge of the situation. Several officers were bitterly complaining of the orders to retreat which had caused them to abandon Bazeilles at a quarter-past eight that morning, when General Ducrot on succeeding the marshal had resolved to concentrate the entire army upon the plateau of Illy. The worst was that the First Corps in surrendering the valley of the Givonne to the Germans, had fallen back too soon, so that the Twelfth Corps, already hotly attacked in front, had also been overlapped on the left. And, now that General de Wimpffen had succeeded General Ducrot, the original plan was again in the ascendant, and orders were coming to reconquer Bazeilles at any cost, and to throw the Bavarians into the Meuse. Was it not really idiotic, however, that they should have had to abandon this position, and now have to reconquer it when it was in possession of the enemy? They were quite willing to give their lives, but not for the mere fun of doing so.

All at once there was a great rush of men and horses, and General de Wimpffen galloped up, erect in his stirrups, his face aglow and his voice greatly excited as he shouted: 'We cannot fall back, my lads; it would be the end of everything. If we must retreat we will retire on Carignan and not on Mézières. But we will win! You beat them this morning, and you will beat them again!'

Then away he galloped, going off by a road that ascended towards La Moncelle; and the rumour spread that he had just had a violent discussion with General Ducrot, during which each had upheld his own plan and attacked the other's; one declaring that a retreat on Mézières had been an impossibility since the night before, whilst the other predicted that if they did not now retire to the plateau of Illy the entire army would be surrounded before evening. And they also accused one another of knowing neither the district nor the real state of the troops. The worst was, that both of them were in the right.

For a moment or so, pressing as was Henriette's desire to go forward, her attention had been diverted from her purpose. She had just recognised some fugitives from Bazeilles stranded by the roadside--a family of poor weavers, the husband, the wife and their three girls, the eldest of whom was only nine years old. They were so overcome, so utterly distracted by weariness and despair, that they had been able to go no farther, but had sunk down against a wall. 'Ah! my dear lady,' said the woman to Henriette, 'we have nothing left. Our house, you know, was on the Place de l'Eglise. A shell set it on fire, and I don't know how the children and we two didn't leave our lives there.'

At this remembrance the three little girls again began sobbing and shrieking, whilst the mother, with the gestures of one deranged, gave a few particulars of their disaster: 'I saw the loom burn like a faggot of dry wood,' said she; 'the bed, the furniture flamed up faster than straw--and there was the clock too; yes, the clock which I didn't even have time to carry away with me.'

'Thunder!' swore the man, with his eyes full of big tear-drops, 'what on earth will become of us?'

To tranquillise them, Henriette replied in a voice that quivered slightly: 'At all events, you are together; neither of you has come to any harm, and you have your little girls with you too. You must not complain.'

Then she began to question them, anxious to know what was taking place at Bazeilles, whether they had seen her husband there, and what had been the condition of her house at the time they came away. In their shivering fright, however, they gave contradictory answers. No, they had not seen Monsieur Weiss. But at this, one of the little girls declared that she had seen him; he was lying on the footway, said she, with a big hole in his head. Her father thereupon gave her a smack to teach her not to tell such stories, for a story it was, undoubtedly. As for the house, that must have been standing when they came away; in fact, they now remembered noticing, as they passed it, that the door and the windows were all carefully closed, as if nobody were there. Besides, at that time, the Bavarians were only in possession of the Place de l'Eglise, and they had to conquer the village, street by street, house by house. Since then, however, they must have made no little progress, and at the present time, no doubt, all Bazeilles was on fire.[27] And the wretched couple continued talking of all these things with fumbling gestures of fear, evoking the whole frightful vision of flaming roofs, flowing blood, and corpses strewing the ground.

'And my husband?' repeated Henriette.

They no longer answered her, however; they were sobbing, with their hands before their eyes. And she remained there consumed by atrocious anxiety, but erect and without weakening, merely a faint quiver causing her lips to tremble. What ought she to believe? In vain did she repeat that the child must have been mistaken; still and ever she seemed to see her husband lying across the road with a bullet in his head. Then, too, she was disquieted on thinking of the house where, so it seemed, every shutter was closed. Why was that? Was he no longer there? All at once a conviction that he was dead froze her heart to the core. Perhaps, though, he was only wounded, and at this thought her urgent longing to go there and be with him seized hold of her once more, and so imperiously that she would again have tried to make her way through the ranks of the soldiers had not the bugles at that moment sounded the advance.

Many of the young fellows gathered together here had come from Toulon, Rochefort, or Brest, barely drilled, without ever having fired a shot in their lives, and yet they had been fighting since the morning as bravely and as stoutly as veterans. They, who had marched so badly from Rheims to Mouzon, weighed down by the unwonted task, were proving themselves the best disciplined, the most fraternally united of all the troops--linked together in presence of the enemy by a solid bond of duty and abnegation. The bugles had merely to sound and they were returning to the fight, marching once more to the attack despite all the anger that swelled their veins. Thrice had they been promised the support of a division which did not come, and they felt that they were being abandoned, sacrificed. To send them back to Bazeilles, like this, after making them evacuate the village, was equivalent indeed to asking each one of them for his life. And they all knew it, and they all gave their lives without a thought of revolting. The ranks closed up, and they advanced beyond the trees that screened them, to find themselves once more among the bullets and the shells.

Henriette gave a deep sigh of relief. So at last they were marching! She followed, hoping to reach Bazeilles in company with the troops, and quite prepared to run, should they, on their side, do so. But they had already halted again. The enemy's projectiles were now fairly raining around them, and to reoccupy Bazeilles each yard of the road had to be conquered, the lanes, houses, and gardens recaptured both on the right and on the left. The men in the first ranks had opened fire, and they now only advanced by fits and starts, long minutes being consumed in overcoming the slightest obstacles. And Henriette soon realised that she would never get there if she continued remaining in the rear waiting for victory. So she made up her mind, and threw herself between two hedges on the right hand, taking a path that descended towards the meadows.

Her project now was to get to Bazeilles by way of those vast pasture-lands skirting the Meuse. But she had no very distinct idea how she should manage this, and all at once she found her way barred by a little sea of still water. It was the inundation, the defensive lake formed by flooding the low ground, which she had altogether forgotten. For a moment she thought of retracing her steps; then, skirting the edge of the water, at the risk of leaving her shoes in the mud, she continued on her way through the drenched grass, in which she sank up to her ankles. This was practicable for a hundred yards or so; but she was then confronted by a garden wall. The ground descended at this spot, and the water washing the wall was quite six feet in depth. So it was impossible to pass that way. She clenched her little fists, and had to put forth all her strength to bear up against this crushing disappointment and refrain from bursting into tears. However, when the first shock was over, she skirted the inclosure and found a lane running along between some scattered houses. And she now thought herself saved, for she was acquainted with that labyrinth, those bits of tangled paths whose skein, perplexing though it was, ended at last at the village.

So far there had been no shells to impede her progress, but all at once, with her blood curdling and her face very pale, she stopped short amid the deafening thunderclap of a frightful explosion, the blast of which enveloped her. A projectile had just burst a few yards ahead. She looked round and examined the heights on the left bank of the river, where the smoke of the German batteries was ascending to the sky; then realising whence the shell had come, she once more started off, with her eyes fixed upon the horizon, watching for the projectiles so as to avoid them. Despite the mad temerity of her journey she retained great sang-froid, all the brave tranquillity that her little housewife's soul was capable of showing. Her desire was to escape death, to find her husband, and bring him away that they might yet live together and be happy. The shells were now falling without a pause, and she glided along close to the walls, threw herself behind border-stones, and took advantage of every nook that afforded the slightest shelter. But at last there came an open space, a stretch of broken-up road which was already covered with splinters; and she was waiting at the corner of a shed, when all at once, level with the ground, she espied a child's inquisitive face peeping out of a hole. It was a little boy some ten years old, barefooted, and wearing simply a shirt and a pair of tattered trousers--some ragamuffin of the roads whom the battle was greatly amusing. His narrow black eyes were sparkling with delight, and at each detonation he gleefully exclaimed: 'Oh! how funny they are! Don't move, there's another one coming! Boum! Didn't that one make a row? Don't move! Don't move!' And, for his own part, he would dive into his hole, reappear raising his wren-like head, and then dive again each time a projectile fell.[28]

Henriette now remarked that the shells were coming from the Liry hill, and that the batteries of Pont-Maugis and Noyers were firing only on Balan. She could distinctly perceive the smoke of each discharge, and almost immediately afterwards she heard the hissing of the shell, followed by the detonation. A short pause must have occurred in the firing, for at last she could only see some light vapour which was slowly dispersing.

'They must be drinking a glass,' said the youngster; 'make haste, give me your hand; we'll get off.'

He took her hand and forced her to follow him, and bending low they both galloped, side by side, across the open space. At its farther extremity, as they were throwing themselves for shelter behind a rick, they glanced round and saw another shell arrive, which fell right upon the shed, at the very spot where they had been waiting a moment before. The crash was frightful, the shed itself fell in a heap to the ground.

At this spectacle the urchin danced with senseless delight, considering it extremely funny. 'Bravo! there's a smash! All the same, it was time we crossed!'

And now Henriette, for a second time, came upon impassable obstacles--garden walls with never a lane between them. Her little companion, however, kept on laughing, and declared that it was easy enough to pass if one chose to do so. Climbing on to the coping of a wall he assisted her over, and they jumped down into a kitchen garden among beds of beans and peas. There were walls all round, and in order to get out again they had to pass through a gardener's low house. Whistling and swinging his arms, the lad went on ahead, showing no surprise at anything he saw. He opened a door, found himself in a room, and made his way into another one, where an old woman, probably the only living creature who had remained in the place, was standing near a table with a look of stupor. She gazed at these two strangers who were thus passing through her house; but she did not say a word to them, nor did they speak to her. Once out of the house they found themselves in a lane which for a moment they were able to follow. Then, however, came other obstacles, and for half a mile or more, according to the chances of the road they contrived to make for themselves, it was frequently necessary to climb over walls or creep through gaps in hedges, and pass out by cart-shed doors, or ground-floor windows, by way of taking a short cut. They could hear dogs howling, and once they were almost knocked down by a cow, which was fleeing at a mad gallop. However, they must have been getting nigh, for a smell of fire was wafted to them, and large stretches of ruddy smoke were every minute veiling the sun, like light, wavy fragments of crape.

All at once, however, the urchin stopped, and, confronting Henriette, inquired: 'I say, Madame, pray where are you going like that?'

'You can see very well. I'm going to Bazeilles.'

He whistled and burst into a shrill laugh, like a scapegrace playing the truant from school, and having a fine time of it: 'To Bazeilles! Oh! that's not my direction. I'm going another way. Good day.'

And thereupon he turned on his heels and went off as he had come, and she never knew where he had sprung from or whither he went. She had found him in a hole, and she lost sight of him round a corner, and never set eyes upon him again.

Henriette experienced a singular sensation of fear when she once more found herself alone. No doubt that puny child had scarcely been of any protection, but his chatter had diverted her thoughts. And now she, who was naturally so brave, had begun to tremble. The shells were no longer falling, the Germans had ceased firing on Bazeilles, no doubt for fear of killing their own men, who were masters of the village. But for a few minutes already she had heard the whistling of bullets, that blue-bottle kind of buzzing which she had been told about, and recognised. So confused were all the noises of the rageful fight afar off, so violent was the universal clamour, that she could not distinguish the crackling of the fusillade. All at once, whilst she was turning the corner of a house, a dull thud resounding near her ear abruptly arrested her steps. A bullet had chipped some plaster from the corner of the house-front, and she turned very pale. Then, before she had time to ask herself if she would have sufficient courage to persevere, it seemed to her as though she were struck on the forehead by a blow from a hammer, and she fell on both knees, half stunned. A second bullet, in ricochetting, had grazed her forehead just above the left eyebrow, badly bruising it, and carrying away a strip of skin. And when she withdrew her hands which she had raised to her forehead, she found them red with blood. Beneath her fingers, however, she had felt her skull intact, quite firm; and to encourage herself she repeated aloud: 'It is nothing, it is nothing. Come, I am surely not frightened; no, I am not frightened.'

And 'twas true; she picked herself up, and henceforth walked on among the bullets with the indifference of one detached from herself, who has ceased to reason and gives her life. And she no longer even sought to protect herself, but went straight before her with her head erect, hastening her steps only because of her desire to reach her destination. The projectiles were falling and flattening around her, and she narrowly missed being killed a score of times without apparently being aware of it. Her lightsome haste, her silent feminine activeness seemed to assist her as it were, to render her so slight and so agile amid the peril that she escaped it. At last she had arrived at Bazeilles, and she at once cut across a field of lucern to reach the high road which passes through the village. Just as she was turning into it, on her right hand, a couple of hundred paces away, she recognised her house, which was burning, the flames not showing in the brilliant sunlight, but the roof already half fallen in, and the windows vomiting big whirling coils of black smoke. Then a gallop carried her along; she ran breathlessly.

At eight o'clock, Weiss had found himself shut up there, separated from the retreating troops. Immediately afterwards it had become impossible for him to return to Sedan, for the Bavarians, streaming forth from the park of Montivilliers, intercepted the road. He was alone, with his gun and his remaining cartridges, when he suddenly espied at his door a small detachment of soldiers, who, parted from their comrades, had remained behind like himself, and were seeking some place of shelter where they might, at any rate, sell their lives dearly. He hastily went down to open the door, and the house henceforth had a garrison: a captain, a corporal, and eight men, all of them beside themselves, quite maddened, and resolved upon no surrender.

'What! are you one of us, Laurent?' exclaimed Weiss, surprised to see among the soldiers a young man in blue linen trousers and jacket, who carried a chassepot which he had picked up beside some corpse.

Laurent, a tall, thin fellow, thirty years of age, was a journeyman gardener of the neighbourhood. He had lately lost his mother and his wife, both carried away by the same malignant fever. 'Why shouldn't I be one of you?' he answered. 'I've only my carcase left, and I can very well give it. Besides, it amuses me, you know, for I'm not a bad shot, and it would be good sport to bring down one of those brutes each time I fire.'

Meanwhile, the captain and the corporal had already begun to inspect the house. Nothing could be done on the ground floor, so they contented themselves with pushing a quantity of furniture before the door and the windows, with the view of barricading them as stoutly as possible. Then they organised the defence in the three little rooms on the first floor and the garret up above; approving, by the way, of the preparations that Weiss had already made, the mattresses placed against the shutters, and the loopholes devised in the latter between the transverse laths. Whilst the captain was venturing to peep out to examine the surroundings, he heard a child calling and crying. 'Who's that?' he asked.

Then Weiss, in his mind's eye, again espied poor little Auguste in the adjacent dyeworks, his face purple with fever as he lay between his white sheets asking for something to drink, and calling for his mother, who could never more answer him; for she was lying across the tiled threshold with her head smashed to pieces. And as this vision rose up before him he made a sorrowful gesture, and replied: 'It's a poor little fellow whose mother has been killed by a shell, and who is crying there, next door.'

'Thunder!' muttered Laurent. 'What a price we shall have to make them pay for it all!'

As yet only some stray bullets had struck the house-front. Weiss and the captain, accompanied by the gardener and two soldiers, had gone up to the garret, whence they could keep watch over the road. They could see it obliquely as far as the Place de l'Eglise, which was now in the possession of the Bavarians, who only continued advancing, however, with great difficulty and extreme caution. A handful of soldiers, at the corner of a lane, kept them at bay during nearly a quarter of an hour, with so galling a fire that there was soon quite a heap of slain. Then, at the other corner, there was a house which they had to secure possession of before proceeding any farther. At one moment, as the smoke blew off, a woman could be espied firing with a gun from one of the windows. It was the house of a baker; some other soldiers had been forgotten there, mingled with the occupants; and when the place was at last captured by the foe, loud shouts resounded, and a frightful scramble whirled to the wall over the way--a rush, amid which the woman's skirt and a man's jacket and bristling white hair suddenly appeared to view. Then came the sound of platoon firing, and blood spurted to the coping of the wall. The Germans were inflexible; every person, not belonging to the belligerent forces, who was captured with arms in his hand, was shot down there and then, as having placed himself beyond the pale of the law of nations. And their wrath was rising in presence of the furious resistance offered by the village. The frightful losses they had sustained during nearly five hours' combat urged them on to atrocious reprisals. The gutters were running red with blood, corpses were barring the streets, and some crossways were like charnel-houses, whence the rattle of death could be heard ascending to the sky. And they were seen to throw lighted straw into each house they carried by force. Some of them ran about with torches, others smeared the walls with petroleum, and soon entire streets were on fire--Bazeilles blazed.

At last, in the central part of the village there only remained Weiss's house, with its closed shutters, that retained the threatening appearance of a citadel resolved upon no surrender.

'Attention! here they come,' exclaimed the captain.

A volley from the garret and the first-floor stretched on the ground three of the Bavarians who were stealthily advancing close to the walls. The others thereupon fell back, placing themselves in ambush at the corners of the road, and the siege of the house began, such a shower of bullets pelting the front that one might have thought there was a hailstorm. For nearly ten minutes this fusillade went on without cessation, denting the plaster without doing much damage. One of the two soldiers, whom the captain had taken with him into the garret, imprudently showed himself, however, at a dormer window, and was instantly killed by a bullet, which struck him full in the forehead.

'Curse it! that's one less!' growled the captain. 'Be cautious, we are not numerous enough to get ourselves killed for the fun of the thing.' He himself had taken a chassepot, and was firing from behind a shutter.

Laurent, the gardener, particularly excited his admiration. On his knees, as though he were stalking game, with the barrel of his gun resting in a narrow loophole, the young fellow only fired when he was sure of bringing down his man, and he himself predicted the result of each shot before it took effect. 'That little blue officer over there,' said he, 'in the heart. That other one, the skinny chap, farther off, between the eyes. That fat fellow with the carroty beard--I can't stand him--in the stomach.'

And the man he named invariably fell, struck in the very spot he had mentioned; and he quietly continued firing, without the least haste, having plenty of work before him, as he said, and requiring, indeed, more time than he could command, to pick them all off in that fashion.

'Ah! if I could only see,' Weiss kept on repeating, in a furious voice. He had just broken his spectacles, and was in despair at this untimely accident. Certainly, he still had his eye-glasses, but with the perspiration that was streaming down his face he was unable to fix them firmly on his nose; and in a feverish state, with his hands trembling, he frequently fired quite at random. Increasing passion was now sweeping away all that remained of his accustomed calmness.

'Don't be in such a hurry; it does no good,' remarked Laurent. 'There! see that one who no longer has his helmet, at the corner by the grocer's. Aim at him carefully. Why! that's first rate; you have broken his leg! See how he's floundering about in his blood.'

Weiss, who was rather pale, looked at the man, and muttered, 'Finish him off.'

'Waste a bullet? Not if I know it! Far better bring down another one.'

The attacking party had observed the galling fire directed upon them from the garret windows. Not one of their men could advance without being hit, and accordingly they brought up some fresh troops, who received orders to riddle the roof with bullets. The garret then became altogether untenable. The slates were transpierced as easily as though they had been mere sheets of paper; and, with a buzzing like that of bees, the projectiles flew into the attic here, there, and everywhere. At each moment the defenders were in danger of being killed.

'Let's go down,' said the captain. 'We can still hold out on the first floor.' As he was stepping towards the ladder, however, a bullet struck him in the groin and he fell: 'Too late! Curse it!' he muttered.

With the help of the remaining soldier, Weiss and Laurent insisted upon carrying him down, although he told them not to waste time in attending on him. His account was settled, he remarked, and he might just as well kick the bucket up there as down below. However, when they had laid him on a bed, in a room on the first floor, he became desirous of still directing the defence.

'Fire into the lot of them--don't trouble about anything else. They are too prudent to risk coming forward as long as your fire doesn't slacken.'

And, indeed, the siege of the little house continued as though it were to last for ever. A score of times it seemed upon the point of being carried by the tempest of lead that assailed it; but through the hurricane and the smoke it again and again appeared to view, still standing, dented, perforated, and lacerated, but none the less vomiting bullets from every aperture. Exasperated at losing so many men, at being kept so long at bay by such a paltry shanty, the assailants were fairly howling with rage, but they continued firing from a distance, lacking the courage to rush forward and burst open the door and windows below.

'Look out!' suddenly exclaimed the corporal; 'a shutter is falling.'

The violence of the bullets had, indeed, torn one of the shutters from its hinges. Weiss, however, darted forward, pushing a wardrobe against the window, and Laurent, in ambush behind it, was able to continue firing. One of the soldiers, whose jaw had been shattered, was lying at his feet losing a great quantity of blood. Another, hit by a bullet in the throat, rolled over to the wall, beside which he lay with a convulsive shudder shaking him from head to foot, whilst from his parted lips escaped an endless rattle. Without counting the captain, who--lying on the bedstead with his back resting against the head of it--was already too weak to speak, but still gave some orders by signs--there were at present only eight of them left. And now the three rooms on the first floor were, like the garret, becoming untenable, for the mattresses had been reduced to shreds, and no longer kept out the projectiles; at each moment bits of plaster fell from the walls and the ceiling, corners were chipped off the articles of furniture, whilst the wardrobe was being slit and rent as though with a hatchet. Worst of all, however, ammunition was failing.

'What a pity!' growled Laurent; 'it's been going on so well.'

'Wait a bit!' replied Weiss, as an idea flashed through his mind.

He had just remembered the dead soldier lying in the garret upstairs, and he went up to search the body and take the cartridges that must be upon it. He found that a large piece of the roof had now fallen in, and he could see the blue sky, a bright sunshiny expanse, at sight of which he was very much astonished. To avoid being killed he dragged himself over the floor on his knees, and when he had secured the cartridges, some thirty or thereabouts, he made all haste and bounded down again.

Whilst he was dividing these new supplies with the gardener, however, one of the soldiers gave a shriek and fell on his knees. There were now only seven, and a moment afterwards there were only six of them left, for the corporal was hit in the left eye by a bullet, which blew out his brains.

From that moment Weiss was no longer conscious of anything. He and the five others continued firing like madmen, consuming the remaining cartridges without a thought even of the possibility of surrendering. The tiled floors of the three little rooms were now littered with remnants of furniture. Corpses blocked the doorways, and in one corner a wounded man was giving vent to a frightful, continuous moan. Wherever they stepped blood stuck to the soles of their shoes; and some of it, after coursing through the rooms, was even trickling down the staircase. Moreover, it was no longer possible to breathe up there; the atmosphere was dense and hot with powder-smoke, a pungent, nauseating dust plunging them into almost complete obscurity, which was streaked, however, by a ruddy flame each time a shot was fired.

'Thunder!' exclaimed Weiss; 'why, they are bringing cannon!'

It was true. Despairing of reducing the handful of madmen, who thus delayed their advance, the Bavarians were now placing a gun in position at the corner of the Place de l'Eglise. And the honour thus shown them, that artillery pointed at them from over yonder, made the besieged furiously mirthful. They jeered contemptuously: Ah! those dirty cowards with their cannon! Laurent, meanwhile, was still on his knees, carefully aiming at the gunners and bringing a man down at each shot he fired, so that for a time the gun could not be worked; in fact, five or six minutes elapsed before the first discharge. And even then, the gun being pointed too high, merely a strip of the roof was carried away.

But the end was at hand. In vain did they search the dead; there was not a cartridge left! Haggard and exhausted, the six men fumbled here and there, seeking for something which they might fling from the windows to crush the enemy. One of them, on showing himself at a window, vociferating and brandishing his fists, was riddled by a volley of lead, and then only five of them were left. What could they do? Go down--try to escape by way of the garden and the meadows? But at that moment there was a loud uproar below, and men streamed furiously up the stairs. The Bavarians had at last crept round the house, broken open the back door, and invaded the ground floor. A terrible mêlée ensued in the little rooms, among the corpses and the shattered furniture. The chest of one of the French soldiers was transpierced by a bayonet thrust, and the two others were taken prisoners, whilst the captain, who had just vented his last gasp, lay there with his mouth open and his arm still raised, as though to give an order.

However, a German officer, a stout, fair man, armed with a revolver, and whose bloodshot eyes seemed to be starting from his head, had caught sight of Weiss and Laurent, the one in his black coat and the other in his blue linen jacket, and savagely asked them in French: 'Who are you? What the ---- are you doing here?'

Then, seeing that they were black with powder, he realised the truth, and stammering with fury, heaped insults upon them in German. He had already raised his weapon to blow their brains out, when the soldiers he commanded rushed forward, caught hold of the two civilians and pushed them before them down the stairs. The two men were carried along by the human wave which flung them upon the road, where they rolled over as far as the opposite wall, amid such vociferous shouts that the voices of the officers could be no longer heard. Then, during two or three minutes which elapsed whilst the stout fair officer was endeavouring to clear a space, in view of proceeding with their execution, they were able to pick themselves up and look about them.

Other houses were now blazing--all Bazeilles was becoming a furnace. Flames were beginning to stream through the lofty windows of the church. Some soldiers were driving an old lady out of her house after compelling her to give them some matches that they might set her bed and her curtains on fire. What with all the lighted wisps of straw flung here and there, and all the petroleum poured upon the walls, the conflagrations were spreading from street to street. It was warfare as waged by savages--savages infuriated by the duration of the struggle, and avenging their dead, their heaps of dead over whom they had to march. Bands of men were yelling amid the smoke and the sparks, amid all the fearful uproar compounded of dying groans and shrieks, falling walls, and discharges of musketry. They could scarcely see one another; large clouds of livid dust, impregnated with an insufferable stench of fat and blood, as though laden indeed with all the abominations of the massacre, flew up, obscuring the sun. And they were still killing, still destroying in every corner; the human beast was let loose, all the idiotic anger, all the furious madness of man preying upon man.

And, at last, in front of him, Weiss could see his own house burning. Soldiers had hurried up with torches, and others were feeding the flames with the remnants of the furniture. The ground floor speedily blazed, and the smoke poured forth from all the gaping wounds of the roof and the front. The adjacent dyeworks, too, were already catching fire; and--oh, the pity of it!--little Auguste, lying in bed, delirious with fever, could still be heard calling for his mother, whose skirts were beginning to burn as her corpse, with its head pounded to pieces, lay there across the threshold.

'Mother, I'm so thirsty; mother, give me some water.'

But the flames roared, the plaint ceased, and then nothing could be distinguished save the deafening hurrahs of the conquerors!

All at once, however, above every noise, above all the shouting, there arose a terrible cry. It was Henriette arriving--Henriette, who had just espied her husband standing with his back to a wall, in front of a platoon which was loading its weapons.

She sprang upon his neck: 'My God! what is it? They are not going to kill you!'

Weiss gazed at her in stupefaction. 'Twas she, his wife whom he had so long desired, whom he had adored with such idolising tenderness. And with a shudder he awoke, distracted, to the awful reality. Why had he tarried there firing upon the foe instead of returning to her, as he had sworn to do? His lost happiness flashed before his dizzy eyes; they were to be torn asunder, parted for evermore. Then he was struck by the sight of the blood upon her forehead, and in a mechanical voice he stammered, 'Are you wounded? It was madness for you to come----'

With a wild gesture, however, she interrupted him. 'Oh! me; it's nothing, a mere scratch--but you, why are they keeping you? I won't have them shoot you!'

The officer who was struggling in the middle of the obstructed road, trying to clear a space so that the platoon might fall back a few paces, turned round on hearing the sound of voices; and when he perceived the woman hanging on the neck of one of the prisoners, he again savagely shouted in French: 'No, no--no humbug, please! Where have you come from? What do you want?'

'I want my husband.'

'Your husband, that man there? He has been condemned; justice must be done.'

'I want my husband.'

'Come, be reasonable--move aside, we don't wish to do you any harm.'

'I want my husband.'

Renouncing his attempts at persuasion, the officer was about to give orders that she should be torn from the prisoner's arms, when Laurent, hitherto silent and impassive, ventured to intervene: 'I say, captain, it was I who knocked so many of your men over, and it's right enough that you should shoot me. Besides, I've nobody to think of, neither mother, nor wife, nor child--but this gentleman's married--why not let him go, and settle my affair?'

'What's that tomfoolery!' yelled the captain, quite beside himself; 'are you making fun of me? Here! a man here to take this woman away.'

He had to repeat the order in German, whereupon a soldier stepped forward, a short, broad-chested Bavarian, whose enormous head was bushy with carroty beard and hair, amidst which one could only distinguish a broad square-shaped nose, and a pair of big blue eyes. He was a frightful object, stained all over with blood, looking like some bear from a mountain cavern--one of those hairy monsters, red with the blood of the prey whose bones they have just been crunching.

'I want my husband; kill me with my husband!' repeated Henriette, in a heartrending cry.

But, dealing himself heavy blows on the chest with his clenched fist, the officer declared that he was not a murderer, and that if there were some who slaughtered the innocent, he at all events was not one of them. She had not been condemned, and he would cut off his hand rather than touch a hair of her head.

Then, as the soldier was approaching her, Henriette distractedly coiled her limbs round Weiss: 'Oh! I beseech you, dear, keep me, let me die with you.'

Weiss was shedding big tears, and without answering was trying to unloosen the unhappy woman's convulsive grasp upon his shoulder and his loins.

'Do you no longer care for me,' she pleaded, 'that you wish to die without me? Keep me here; it will tire them out, and they will shoot us both.'

He had now succeeded in detaching one of her little hands, and was pressing it to his mouth, covering it with kisses, whilst still striving to loosen the grasp of the other one.

'No, no! Keep me,' she cried, 'I want to die.'

At last, however, after infinite trouble, he held both her hands in his own. And, hitherto silent, having purposely refrained from answering her, he now said but three words: 'Farewell, dear wife!'

He himself had thrown her into the arms of the Bavarian who carried her away. She struggled and shrieked, whilst the soldier, doubtless for the purpose of calming her, gave vent to a stream of gruff words. With a violent effort she had managed to disengage her head, and she saw everything.

In less than three seconds it was over. Weiss, whose glasses had slipped down while he was parting from his wife, had hastily set them on his nose again, as though he wished to look death full in the face. He stepped back and leant against the wall, with his arms crossed; and this stout peaceable fellow, in his coat torn to shreds, had a wildly excited face, aglow with all the beauty of courage. Near him was Laurent, who had contented himself with shoving his hands into his pockets. The cruel scene, the abominableness of those savages who shot men down before the very eyes of their wives, seemed to fill him with indignation. He drew himself up, scanned the firing party, and in a contemptuous tone spat forth the words: 'You filthy pigs!'

But the officer had raised his sword, and the two men fell like logs, the gardener with his face on the ground, the book-keeper on his flank, alongside the wall. The latter, before expiring, experienced a final convulsion, his eyelids blinked, his mouth writhed. Then the officer stepped up to him, and stirred him with his foot, desirous of making sure that he was quite dead.

Henriette had seen everything: those dying eyes seeking for her, that frightful quiver of the death-pangs, that big boot pushing the corpse aside. She did not cry out, but she silently, furiously bit at what was near her mouth; and it was a hand that her teeth caught hold of. The Bavarian roared, the pain was so atrocious. He threw her down, almost felling her. Their faces met, and never was she able to forget that red hair and beard splashed with blood, and those blue eyes dilated and swimming with fury.

Later on, Henriette could not clearly remember what had happened after her husband's death. She, herself, had had but one desire, to return to his corpse, take it, and watch over it. However, as happens in nightmares, all sorts of obstacles rose up before her, staying her course at every step. Again had a brisk fusillade broken out, and there was a great stir among the German troops who occupied Bazeilles. The French Marine Infantry was, at last, again reaching the village, and the engagement began afresh with so much violence that the young woman was thrown into a lane on the left, among a crazed, terrified flock of villagers. There could be no doubt, however, as to the issue of the struggle; it was too late to reconquer the abandoned positions. During another half-hour the men of the Marine Infantry fought with the utmost desperation, sacrificing their lives in a superb, furious transport; but at each moment the foe received reinforcements which streamed forth from all sides, the meadows, the roads, and the park of Montivilliers. Nothing could now have dislodged them from that village, which they had secured at such fearful cost, where several thousands of their men were lying dead amid blood and flames. Destruction was now completing its work, the place had become but a charnel-house of scattered limbs and smoking ruins. Slaughtered, annihilated, Bazeilles was dwindling into ashes.

For a last time did Henriette espy in the distance her little house, the floors of which were falling into a vortex of fiery flakes. And ever, alongside the wall facing the house, could she see her husband's corpse. But another human stream caught her in its flow, the bugles sounded the retreat, and she was carried away, how she knew not, among the troops as they gradually fell back. And then she became as it were a thing, a mere rolling waif borne onward amid the confused tramping of a multitude that was streaming along the highway. And she was conscious of nothing further, till at last she found herself at Balan, in the house of some strangers, where she sat sobbing in a kitchen, with her head resting upon a table.

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