The Downfall: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Maurice was greatly surprised when the 106th, leaving the cars at
Rheims, received orders to go into camp there. So they were not to go
to Chalons, then, and unite with the army there? And when, two hours
later, his regiment had stacked muskets a league or so from the city
over in the direction of Courcelles, in the broad plain that lies
along the canal between the Aisne and Marne, his astonishment was
greater still to learn that the entire army of Chalons had been
falling back all that morning and was about to bivouac at that place.
From one extremity of the horizon to the other, as far as Saint
Thierry and Menvillette, even beyond the Laon road, the tents were
going up, and when it should be night the fires of four army-corps
would be blazing there. It was evident that the plan now was to go and
take a position under the walls of Paris and there await the
Prussians; and it was fortunate that that plan had received the
approbation of the government, for was it not the wisest thing they
could do?

Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about the camp
in search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed; discipline appeared
to have been relaxed still further, the men went and came at their own
sweet will. He found no obstacle in the way of his return to the city,
where he desired to cash a money-order for a hundred francs that his
sister Henriette had sent him. While in a cafe he heard a sergeant
telling of the disaffection that existed in the eighteen battalions of
the garde mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent back to Paris;
the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a day
passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, and since
Froeschwiller the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal MacMahon the
military salute. The cafe resounded with the sound of voices in
excited conversation; a violent dispute arose between two sedate
burghers in respect to the number of men that MacMahon would have at
his disposal. One of them made the wild assertion that there would be
three hundred thousand; the other, who seemed to be more at home upon
the subject, stated the strength of the four corps: the 12th, which
had just been made complete at the camp with great difficulty with the
assistance of provisional regiments and a division of infanterie de
marine; the 1st, which had been coming straggling in in fragments ever
since the 14th of the month and of which they were doing what they
could to perfect the organization; the 5th, defeated before it had
ever fought a battle, swept away and broken up in the general panic,
and finally, the 7th, then landing from the cars, demoralized like all
the rest and minus its 1st division, of which it had just recovered
the remains at Rheims; in all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the
outside, including the cavalry, Bonnemain's and Margueritte's
divisions. When the sergeant took a hand in the quarrel, however,
speaking of the army in terms of the utmost contempt, characterizing
it as a ruffianly rabble, with no _esprit de corps_, with nothing to
keep it together,--a pack of greenhorns with idiots to conduct them,
to the slaughter,--the two bourgeois began to be uneasy, and fearing
there might be trouble brewing, made themselves scarce.

When outside upon the street Maurice hailed a newsboy and purchased a
copy of every paper he could lay hands on, stuffing some in his
pockets and reading others as he walked along under the stately trees
that line the pleasant avenues of the old city. Where could the German
armies be? It seemed as if obscurity had suddenly swallowed them up.
Two were over Metz way, of course: the first, the one commanded by
General von Steinmetz, observing the place; the second, that of Prince
Frederick Charles, aiming to ascend the right bank of the Moselle in
order to cut Bazaine off from Paris. But the third army, that of the
Crown Prince of Prussia, the army that had been victorious at
Wissembourg and Froeschwiller and had driven our 1st and 5th corps,
where was it now, where was it to be located amid the tangled mess of
contradictory advices? Was it still in camp at Nancy, or was it true
that it had arrived before Chalons, and was that the reason why we had
abandoned our camp there in such hot haste, burning our stores,
clothing, forage, provisions, everything--property of which the value
to the nation was beyond compute? And when the different plans with
which our generals were credited came to be taken into consideration,
then there was more confusion, a fresh set of contradictory hypotheses
to be encountered. Maurice had until now been cut off in a measure
from the outside world, and now for the first time learned what had
been the course of events in Paris; the blasting effect of defeat upon
a populace that had been confident of victory, the terrible commotions
in the streets, the convoking of the Chambers, the fall of the liberal
ministry that had effected the plebiscite, the abrogation of the
Emperor's rank as General of the Army and the transfer of the supreme
command to Marshal Bazaine. The Emperor had been present at the camp
of Chalons since the 16th, and all the newspapers were filled with a
grand council that had been held on the 17th, at which Prince Napoleon
and some of the generals were present, but none of them were agreed
upon the decisions that had been arrived at outside of the resultant
facts, which were that General Trochu had been appointed governor of
Paris and Marshal MacMahon given the command of the army of Chalons,
and the inference from this was that the Emperor was to be shorn of
all his authority. Consternation, irresolution, conflicting plans that
were laid aside and replaced by fresh ones hour by hour; these were
the things that everybody felt were in the air. And ever and always
the question: Where were the German armies? Who were in the right,
those who asserted that Bazaine had no force worth mentioning in front
of him and was free to make his retreat through the towns of the north
whenever he chose to do so, or those who declared that he was already
besieged in Metz? There was a constantly recurring rumor of a series
of engagements that had raged during an entire week, from the 14th
until the 20th, but it failed to receive confirmation.

Maurice's legs ached with fatigue; he went and sat down upon a bench.
Around him the life of the city seemed to be going on as usual; there
were nursemaids seated in the shade of the handsome trees watching the
sports of their little charges, small property owners strolled
leisurely about the walks enjoying their daily constitutional. He had
taken up his papers again, when his eyes lighted on an article that
had escaped his notice, the "leader" in a rabid republican sheet; then
everything was made clear to him. The paper stated that at the council
of the 17th at the camp of Chalons the retreat of the army on Paris
had been fully decided on, and that General Trochu's appointment to
the command of the city had no other object than to facilitate the
Emperor's return; but those resolutions, the journal went on to say,
were rendered unavailing by the attitude of the Empress-regent and the
new ministry. It was the Empress's opinion that the Emperor's return
would certainly produce a revolution; she was reported to have said:
"He will never reach the Tuileries alive." Starting with these
premises she insisted with the utmost urgency that the army should
advance, at every risk, whatever might be the cost of human life, and
effect a junction with the army of Metz, in which course she was
supported moreover by General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had
a plan of his own for reaching Bazaine by a rapid and victorious
march. And Maurice, letting his paper fall from his hand, his eyes
bent on space, believed that he now had the key to the entire mystery;
the two conflicting plans, MacMahon's hesitation to undertake that
dangerous flank movement with the unreliable army at his command, the
impatient orders that came to him from Paris, each more tart and
imperative than its predecessor, urging him on to that mad, desperate
enterprise. Then, as the central figure in that tragic conflict, the
vision of the Emperor suddenly rose distinctly before his inner eyes,
deprived of his imperial authority, which he had committed to the
hands of the Empress-regent, stripped of his military command, which
he had conferred on Marshal Bazaine; a nullity, the vague and
unsubstantial shadow of an emperor, a nameless, cumbersome nonentity
whom no one knew what to do with, whom Paris rejected and who had
ceased to have a position in the army, for he had pledged himself to
issue no further orders.

The next morning, however, after a rainy night through which he slept
outside his tent on the bare ground, wrapped in his rubber blanket,
Maurice was cheered by the tidings that the retreat on Paris had
finally carried the day. Another council had been held during the
night, it was said, at which M. Rouher, the former vice-Emperor, had
been present; he had been sent by the Empress to accelerate the
movement toward Verdun, and it would seem that the marshal had
succeeded in convincing him of the rashness of such an undertaking.
Were there unfavorable tidings from Bazaine? no one could say for
certain. But the absence of news was itself a circumstance of evil
omen, and all among the most influential of the generals had cast
their vote for the march on Paris, for which they would be the
relieving army. And Maurice, happy in the conviction that the
retrograde movement would commence not later than the morrow, since
the orders for it were said to be already issued, thought he would
gratify a boyish longing that had been troubling him for some time
past, to give the go-by for one day to soldier's fare, to wit and eat
his breakfast off a cloth, with the accompaniment of plate, knife and
fork, carafe, and a bottle of good wine, things of which it seemed to
him that he had been deprived for months and months. He had money in
his pocket, so off he started with quickened pulse, as if going out
for a lark, to search for a place of entertainment.

It was just at the entrance of the village of Courcelles, across the
canal, that he found the breakfast for which his mouth was watering.
He had been told the day before that the Emperor had taken up his
quarters in one of the houses of the village, and having gone to
stroll there out of curiosity, now remembered to have seen at the
junction of the two roads this little inn with its arbor, the
trellises of which were loaded with big clusters of ripe, golden,
luscious grapes. There was an array of green-painted tables set out in
the shade of the luxuriant vine, while through the open door of the
vast kitchen he had caught glimpses of the antique clock, the colored
prints pasted on the walls, and the comfortable landlady watching the
revolving spit. It was cheerful, smiling, hospitable; a regular type
of the good old-fashioned French hostelry.

A pretty, white-necked waitress came up and asked him with a great
display of flashing teeth:

"Will monsieur have breakfast?"

"Of course I will! Give me some eggs, a cutlet, and cheese. And a
bottle of white wine!"

She turned to go; he called her back. "Tell me, is it not in one of
those houses that the Emperor has his quarters?"

"There, monsieur, in that one right before you. Only you can't see it,
for it is concealed by the high wall with the overhanging trees."

He loosed his belt so as to be more at ease in his capote, and
entering the arbor, chose his table, on which the sunlight, finding
its way here and there through the green canopy above, danced in
little golden spangles. And constantly his thoughts kept returning to
that high wall behind which was the Emperor. A most mysterious house
it was, indeed, shrinking from the public gaze, even its slated roof
invisible. Its entrance was on the other side, upon the village
street, a narrow winding street between dead-walls, without a shop,
without even a window to enliven it. The small garden in the rear,
among the sparse dwellings that environed it, was like an island of
dense verdure. And across the road he noticed a spacious courtyard,
surrounded by sheds and stables, crowded with a countless train of
carriages and baggage-wagons, among which men and horses, coming and
going, kept up an unceasing bustle.

"Are those all for the service of the Emperor?" he inquired, meaning
to say something humorous to the girl, who was laying a snow-white
cloth upon the table.

"Yes, for the Emperor himself, and no one else!" she pleasantly
replied, glad of a chance to show her white teeth once more; and then
she went on to enumerate the suite from information that she had
probably received from the stablemen, who had been coming to the inn
to drink since the preceding day; there were the staff, comprising
twenty-five officers, the sixty cent-gardes and the half-troop of
guides for escort duty, the six gendarmes of the provost-guard; then
the household, seventy-three persons in all, chamberlains, attendants
for the table and the bedroom, cooks and scullions; then four
saddle-horses and two carriages for the Emperor's personal use, ten
horses for the equerries, eight for the grooms and outriders, not
mentioning forty-seven post-horses; then a _char a banc_ and twelve
baggage wagons, two of which, appropriated to the cooks, had
particularly excited her admiration by reason of the number and
variety of the utensils they contained, all in the most splendid
order.

"Oh, sir, you never saw such stew-pans! they shone like silver. And
all sorts of dishes, and jars and jugs, and lots of things of which it
would puzzle me to tell the use! And a cellar of wine, claret,
burgundy, and champagne--yes! enough to supply a wedding feast."

The unusual luxury of the snowy table-cloth and the white wine
sparkling in his glass sharpened Maurice's appetite; he devoured his
two poached eggs with a zest that made him fear he was developing
epicurean tastes. When he turned to the left and looked out through
the entrance of the leafy arbor he had before him the spacious plain,
covered with long rows of tents: a busy, populous city that had risen
like an exhalation from the stubble-fields between Rheims city and the
canal. A few clumps of stunted trees, three wind-mills lifting their
skeleton arms in the air, were all there was to relieve the monotony
of the gray waste, but above the huddled roofs of Rheims, lost in the
sea of foliage of the tall chestnut-trees, the huge bulk of the
cathedral with its slender spires was profiled against the blue sky,
looming colossal, notwithstanding the distance, beside the modest
houses. Memories of school and boyhood's days came over him, the tasks
he had learned and recited: all about the _sacre_ of our kings, the
_sainte ampoule_, Clovis, Jeanne d'Arc, all the long list of glories
of old France.

Then Maurice's thoughts reverted again to that unassuming bourgeoise
house, so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial occupant; and
directing his eyes upon the high, yellow wall he was surprised to
read, scrawled there in great, awkward letters, the legend: _Vive
Napoleon!_ among the meaningless obscenities traced by schoolboys.
Winter's storms and summer's sun had half effaced the lettering;
evidently the inscription was very ancient. How strange, to see upon
that wall that old heroic battle-cry, which probably had been placed
there in honor of the uncle, not of the nephew! It brought all his
childhood back to him, and Maurice was again a boy, scarcely out of
his mother's arms, down there in distant Chene-Populeux, listening to
the stories of his grandfather, a veteran of the Grand Army. His
mother was dead, his father, in the inglorious days that followed the
collapse of the empire, had been compelled to accept a humble position
as collector, and there the grandfather lived, with nothing to support
him save his scanty pension, in the poor home of the small public
functionary, his sole comfort to fight his battles o'er again for the
benefit of his two little twin grandchildren, the boy and the girl, a
pair of golden-haired youngsters to whom he was in some sense a
mother. He would place Maurice on his right knee and Henriette on his
left, and then for hours on end the narrative would run on in Homeric
strain.

But small attention was paid to dates; his story was of the dire shock
of conflicting nations, and was not to be hampered by the minute
exactitude of the historian. Successively or together English,
Austrians, Prussians, Russians appeared upon the scene, according to
the then prevailing condition of the ever-changing alliances, and it
was not always an easy matter to tell why one nation received a
beating in preference to another, but beaten they all were in the end,
inevitably beaten from the very commencement, in a whirlwind of genius
and heroic daring that swept great armies like chaff from off the
earth. There was Marengo, the classic battle of the plain, with the
consummate generalship of its broad plan and the faultless retreat of
the battalions by squares, silent and impassive under the enemy's
terrible fire; the battle, famous in story, lost at three o'clock and
won at six, where the eight hundred grenadiers of the Consular Guard
withstood the onset of the entire Austrian cavalry, where Desaix
arrived to change impending defeat to glorious victory and die. There
was Austerlitz, with its sun of glory shining forth from amid the
wintry sky, Austerlitz, commencing with the capture of the plateau of
Pratzen and ending with the frightful catastrophe on the frozen lake,
where an entire Russian corps, men, guns, horses, went crashing
through the ice, while Napoleon, who in his divine omniscience had
foreseen it all, of course, directed his artillery to play upon the
struggling mass. There was Jena, where so many of Prussia's bravest
found a grave; at first the red flames of musketry flashing through
the October mists, and Ney's impatience, near spoiling all until
Augereau comes wheeling into line and saves him; the fierce charge
that tore the enemy's center in twain, and finally panic, the headlong
rout of their boasted cavalry, whom our hussars mow down like ripened
grain, strewing the romantic glen with a harvest of men and horses.
And Eylau, cruel Eylau, bloodiest battle of them all, where the maimed
corpses cumbered the earth in piles; Eylau, whose new-fallen snow was
stained with blood, the burial-place of heroes; Eylau, in whose name
reverberates still the thunder of the charge of Murat's eighty
squadrons, piercing the Russian lines in every direction, heaping the
ground so thick with dead that Napoleon himself could not refrain from
tears. Then Friedland, the trap into which the Russians again allowed
themselves to be decoyed like a flock of brainless sparrows, the
masterpiece of the Emperor's consummate strategy; our left held back
as in a leash, motionless, without a sign of life, while Ney was
carrying the city, street by street, and destroying the bridges, then
the left hurled like a thunderbolt on the enemy's right, driving it
into the river and annihilating it in that _cul-de-sac_; the slaughter
so great that at ten o'clock at night the bloody work was not
completed, most wonderful of all the successes of the great imperial
epic. And Wagram, where it was the aim of the Austrians to cut us off
from the Danube; they keep strengthening their left in order to
overwhelm Massena, who is wounded and issues his orders from an open
carriage, and Napoleon, like a malicious Titan, lets them go on
unchecked; then all at once a hundred guns vomit their terrible fire
upon their weakened center, driving it backward more than a league,
and their left, terror-stricken to find itself unsupported, gives way
before the again victorious Massena, sweeping away before it the
remainder of the army, as when a broken dike lets loose its torrents
upon the fields. And finally the Moskowa, where the bright sun of
Austerlitz shone for the last time; where the contending hosts were
mingled in confused _melee_ amid deeds of the most desperate daring:
mamelons carried under an unceasing fire of musketry, redoubts stormed
with the naked steel, every inch of ground fought over again and
again; such determined resistance on the part of the Russian Guards
that our final victory was only assured by Murat's mad charges, the
concentrated fire of our three hundred pieces of artillery, and the
valor of Ney, who was the hero of that most obstinate of conflicts.
And be the battle what it might, ever our flags floated proudly on the
evening air, and as the bivouac fires were lighted on the conquered
field out rang the old battle-cry: _Vive Napoleon!_ France, carrying
her invincible Eagles from end to end of Europe, seemed everywhere at
home, having but to raise her finger to make her will respected by the
nations, mistress of a world that in vain conspired to crush her and
upon which she set her foot.

Maurice was contentedly finishing his cutlet, cheered not so much by
the wine that sparkled in his glass as by the glorious memories that
were teeming in his brain, when his glance encountered two ragged,
dust-stained soldiers, less like soldiers than weary tramps just off
the road; they were asking the attendant for information as to the
position of the regiments that were encamped along the canal. He
hailed them.

"Hallo there, comrades, this way! You are 7th corps men, aren't you?"

"Right you are, sir; 1st division--at least I am, more by token that I
was at Froeschwiller, where it was warm enough, I can tell you. The
comrade, here, belongs in the 1st corps; he was at Wissembourg,
another beastly hole."

They told their story, how they had been swept away in the general
panic, had crawled into a ditch half-dead with fatigue and hunger,
each of them slightly wounded, and since then had been dragging
themselves along in the rear of the army, compelled to lie over in
towns when the fever-fits came on, until at last they had reached the
camp and were on the lookout to find their regiments.

Maurice, who had a piece of Gruyere before him, noticed the hungry
eyes fixed on his plate.

"Hi there, mademoiselle! bring some more cheese, will you--and bread
and wine. You will join me, won't you, comrades? It is my treat.
Here's to your good health!"

They drew their chairs up to the table, only too delighted with the
invitation. Their entertainer watched them as they attacked the food,
and a thrill of pity ran through him as he beheld their sorry plight,
dirty, ragged, arms gone, their sole attire a pair of red trousers and
the capote, kept in place by bits of twine and so patched and pieced
with shreds of vari-colored cloth that one would have taken them for
men who had been looting some battle-field and were wearing the spoil
they had gathered there.

"Ah! _foutre_, yes!" continued the taller of the two as he plied his
jaws, "it was no laughing matter there! You ought to have seen it,
--tell him how it was, Coutard."

And the little man told his story with many gestures, describing
figures on the air with his bread.

"I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest of them were making
soup. Just try and picture to yourself a miserable hole, a regular
trap, all surrounded by dense woods that gave those Prussian pigs a
chance to crawl up to us before we ever suspected they were there. So,
then, about seven o'clock the shells begin to come tumbling about our
ears. _Nom de Dieu!_ but it was lively work! we jumped for our
shooting-irons, and up to eleven o'clock it looked as if we were going
to polish 'em off in fine style. But you must know that there were
only five thousand of us, and the beggars kept coming, coming as if
there was no end to them. I was posted on a little hill, behind a
bush, and I could see them debouching in front, to right, to left,
like rows of black ants swarming from their hill, and when you thought
there were none left there were always plenty more. There's no use
mincing matters, we all thought that our leaders must be first-class
nincompoops to thrust us into such a hornet's nest, with no support at
hand, and leave us to be crushed there without coming to our
assistance. And then our General, Douay,[*] poor devil! neither a fool
nor a coward, that man,--a bullet comes along and lays him on his
back. That ended it; no one left to command us! No matter, though, we
kept on fighting all the same; but they were too many for us, we had
to fall back at last. We held the railway station for a long time, and
then we fought behind a wall, and the uproar was enough to wake the
dead. And then, when the city was taken, I don't exactly remember how
it came about, but we were upon a mountain, the Geissberg, I think
they call it, and there we intrenched ourselves in a sort of castle,
and how we did give it to the pigs! they jumped about the rocks like
kids, and it was fun to pick 'em off and see 'em tumble on their nose.
But what would you have? they kept coming, coming, all the time, ten
men to our one, and all the artillery they could wish for. Courage is
a very good thing in its place, but sometimes it gets a man into
difficulties, and so, at last, when it got too hot to stand it any
longer, we cut and run. But regarded as nincompoops, our officers were
a decided success; don't you think so, Picot?"

[*] This was Abel Douay--not to be confounded with his brother,
Felix, who commanded the 7th corps.-TR.

There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a glass of the
white wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Of course," said he. "It was just the same at Froeschwiller; the
general who would give battle under such circumstances is a fit
subject for a lunatic asylum. That's what my captain said, and he's a
little man who knows what he is talking about. The truth of the matter
is that no one knew anything; we were only forty thousand strong, and
we were surprised by a whole army of those pigs. And no one was
expecting to fight that day; battle was joined by degrees, one portion
after another of our troops became engaged, against the wishes of our
commanders, as it seems. Of course, I didn't see the whole of the
affair, but what I do know is that the dance lasted by fits and starts
all day long; a body would think it was ended; not a bit of it! away
would go the music more furiously than ever. The commencement was at
Woerth, a pretty little village with a funny clock-tower that looks
like a big stove, owing to the earthenware tiles they have stuck all
over it. I'll be hanged if I know why we let go our hold of it that
morning, for we broke all our teeth and nails trying to get it back
again in the afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my children, if I were
to tell you of the slaughter there, the throats that were cut and the
brains knocked out, you would refuse to believe me! The next place
where we had trouble was around a village with the jaw-breaking name
of Elsasshausen. We got a peppering from a lot of guns that banged
away at us at their ease from the top of a blasted hill that we had
also abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever been able to tell.
And there it was that with these very eyes of mine I saw the famous
charge of the cuirassiers. Ah, how gallantly they rode to their death,
poor fellows! A shame it was, I say, to let men and horses charge over
ground like that, covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And
on top of it all, _nom de Dieu!_ what good could they accomplish? But
it was very _chic_ all the same; it was a beautiful sight to see. The
next thing for us to do, shouldn't you suppose so? was to go and sit
down somewhere and try to get our wind again. They had set fire to the
village and it was burning like tinder, and the whole gang of
Bavarian, Wurtemburgian and Prussian pigs, more than a hundred and
twenty thousand of them there were, as we found out afterward, had got
around into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest
for us then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a
livelier tune than ever around Froeschwiller. For there's no use
talking, fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead but he is a brave man;
you ought to have seen him on his big horse, with the shells bursting
all about him! The best thing to do would have been to give leg-bail
at the beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to
fight an army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was
bound to see the thing through to the end. And see it through he did!
why, I tell you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer
human beings; they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For
near two hours the gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however,
we had to knuckle under in the end. And to think that after it was all
over they should come and tell us that we had whipped the Bavarians
over on our left! By the piper that played before Moses, if we had
only had a hundred and twenty thousand men, if _we_ had had guns, and
leaders with a little pluck!"

Loud and angry were the denunciations of Coutard and Picot in their
ragged, dusty uniforms as they cut themselves huge slices of bread and
bolted bits of cheese, evoking their bitter memories there in the
shade of the pretty trellis, where the sun played hide and seek among
the purple and gold of the clusters of ripening grapes. They had come
now to the horrible flight that succeeded the defeat; the broken,
demoralized, famishing regiments flying through the fields, the
highroads blocked with men, horses, wagons, guns, in inextricable
confusion; all the wreck and ruin of a beaten army that pressed on,
on, on, with the chill breath of panic on their backs. As they had not
had wit enough to fall back while there was time and take post among
the passes of the Vosges, where ten thousand men would have sufficed
to hold in check a hundred thousand, they should at least have blown
up the bridges and destroyed the tunnels; but the generals had lost
their heads, and both sides were so dazed, each was so ignorant of the
other's movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to
ascertain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off toward
Luneville, while the Crown Prince of Prussia was looking for him in
the direction of the Vosges. On the 7th the remnant of the 1st corps
passed through Saverne, like a swollen stream that carries away upon
its muddy bosom all with which it comes in contact. On the 8th, at
Sarrebourg, the 5th corps came tumbling in upon the 1st, like one mad
mountain torrent pouring its waters into another. The 5th was also
flying, defeated without having fought a battle, sweeping away with it
its commander, poor General de Failly, almost crazy with the thought
that to his inactivity was imputed the responsibility of the defeat,
when the fault all rested in the Marshal's having failed to send him
orders. The mad flight continued on the 9th and 10th, a stampede in
which no one turned to look behind him. On the 11th, in order to turn
Nancy, which a mistaken rumor had reported to be occupied by the
enemy, they made their way in a pouring rainstorm to Bayon; the 12th
they camped at Haroue, the 13th at Vicherey, and on the 14th were at
Neufchateau, where at last they struck the railroad, and for three
days the work went on of loading the weary men into the cars that were
to take them to Chalons. Twenty-four hours after the last train rolled
out of the station the Prussians entered the town. "Ah, the cursed
luck!" said Picot in conclusion; "how we had to ply our legs! And we
who should by rights have been in hospital!"

Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own and his
comrade's glass. "Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, and are running
yet. Bah! it is the best thing for us, after all, since it gives us a
chance to drink the health of those who were not knocked over."

Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of Froeschwiller,
following so close on the heels of the idiotic surprise at
Wissembourg, was the lightning flash whose baleful light disclosed to
him the entire naked, terrible truth. We were taken unprepared; we had
neither guns, nor men, nor generals, while our despised foe was an
innumerable host, provided with all modern appliances and faultless in
discipline and leadership. The three German armies had burst apart the
weak line of our seven corps, scattered between Metz and Strasbourg,
like three powerful wedges. We were doomed to fight our battle out
unaided; nothing could be hoped for now from Austria and Italy, for
all the Emperor's plans were disconcerted by the tardiness of our
operations and the incapacity of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to
be working against us, heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed
accidents in our path and favoring the secret plan of the Prussians,
which was to divide our armies, throwing one portion back on Metz,
where it would be cut off from France, while they, having first
destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on Paris. It was as
plain now as a problem in mathematics that our defeat would be owing
to causes that were patent to everyone; it was bravery without
intelligent guidance pitted against numbers and cold science. Men
might discuss the question as they would in after days; happen what
might, defeat was certain in spite of everything, as certain and
inexorable as the laws of nature that rule our planet.

In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice's eyes suddenly lighted
on the legend scrawled on the wall before him--_Vive Napoleon!_ and a
sensation of intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a
red hot iron. Could it be true, then, that France, whose victories
were the theme of song and story everywhere, the great nation whose
drums had sounded throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had
been thrown in the dust at the first onset by an insignificant race,
despised of everyone? Fifty years had sufficed to compass it; the
world had changed, and defeat most fearful had overtaken those who had
been deemed invincible. He remembered the words that had been uttered
by Weiss his brother-in-law, during that evening of anxiety when they
were at Mulhausen. Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had
penetrated the hidden causes that had long been slowly sapping our
strength, had felt the freshening gale of youth and progress under the
impulse of which Germany was being wafted onward to prosperity and
power. Was not the old warlike age dying and a new one coming to the
front? Woe to that one among the nations which halted in its onward
march! the victory is to those who are with the advance-guard, to
those who are clear of head and strong of body, to the most powerful.

But just then there came from the smoke-blackened kitchen, where the
walls were bright with the colored prints of Epinal, a sound of voices
and the squalling of a girl who submits, not unwillingly, to be
tousled. It was Lieutenant Rochas, availing himself of his privilege
as a conquering hero, to catch and kiss the pretty waitress. He came
out into the arbor, where he ordered a cup of coffee to be served him,
and as he had heard the concluding words of Picot's narrative,
proceeded to take a hand in the conversation:

"Bah! my children, those things that you are speaking of don't amount
to anything. It is only the beginning of the dance; you will see the
fun commence in earnest presently. _Pardi_! up to the present time
they have been five to our one, but things are going to take a change
now; just put that in your pipe and smoke it. We are three hundred
thousand strong here, and every move we make, which nobody can see
through, is made with the intention of bringing the Prussians down on
us, while Bazaine, who has got his eye on them, will take them in
their rear. And then we'll smash 'em, _crac_! just as I smash this
fly!"

Bringing his hands together with a sounding clap he caught and crushed
a fly on the wing, and he laughed loud and cheerily, believing with
all his simple soul in the feasibility of a plan that seemed so
simple, steadfast in his faith in the invincibility of French courage.
He good-naturedly informed the two soldiers of the exact position of
their regiments, then lit a cigar and seated himself contentedly
before his _demitasse_.

"The pleasure was all mine, comrades!" Maurice replied to Coutard and
Picot, who, as they were leaving, thanked him for the cheese and wine.

He had also called for a cup of coffee and sat watching the
Lieutenant, whose hopefulness had communicated itself to him, a little
surprised, however, to hear him enumerate their strength at three
hundred thousand men, when it was not more than a hundred thousand,
and at his happy-go-lucky way of crushing the Prussians between the
two armies of Chalons and Metz. But then he, too, felt such need of
some comforting illusion! Why should he not continue to hope when all
those glorious memories of the past that he had evoked were still
ringing in his ears? The old inn was so bright and cheerful, with its
trellis hung with the purple grapes of France, ripening in the golden
sunlight! And again his confidence gained a momentary ascendancy over
the gloomy despair that the late events had engendered in him.

Maurice's eyes had rested for a moment on an officer of chasseurs
d'Afrique who, with his orderly, had disappeared at a sharp trot
around the corner of the silent house where the Emperor was quartered,
and when the orderly came back alone and stopped with his two horses
before the inn door he gave utterance to an exclamation of surprise:

"Prosper! Why, I supposed you were at Metz!"

It was a young man of Remilly, a simple farm-laborer, whom he had
known as a boy in the days when he used to go and spend his vacations
with his uncle Fouchard. He had been drawn, and when the war broke out
had been three years in Africa; he cut quite a dashing figure in his
sky-blue jacket, his wide red trousers with blue stripes and red
woolen belt, with his sun-dried face and strong, sinewy limbs that
indicated great strength and activity.

"Hallo! it's Monsieur Maurice! I'm glad to see you!"

He took things very easily, however, conducting the steaming horses to
the stable, and to his own, more particularly, giving a paternal
attention. It was no doubt his affection for the noble animal,
contracted when he was a boy and rode him to the plow, that had made
him select the cavalry arm of the service.

"We've just come in from Monthois, more than ten leagues at a
stretch," he said when he came back, "and Poulet will be wanting his
breakfast."

Poulet was the horse. He declined to eat anything himself; would only
accept a cup of coffee. He had to wait for his officer, who had to
wait for the Emperor; he might be five minutes, and then again he
might be two hours, so his officer had told him to put the horses in
the stable. And as Maurice, whose curiosity was aroused, showed some
disposition to pump him, his face became as vacant as a blank page.

"Can't say. An errand of some sort--papers to be delivered."

But Rochas looked at the chasseur with an eye of tenderness, for the
uniform awakened old memories of Africa.

"Eh! my lad, where were you stationed out there?"

"At Medeah, Lieutenant."

Ah, Medeah! And drawing their chairs closer together they started a
conversation, regardless of difference in rank. The life of the desert
had become a second nature, for Prosper, where the trumpet was
continually calling them to arms, where a large portion of their time
was spent on horseback, riding out to battle as they would to the
chase, to some grand battue of Arabs. There was just one soup-basin
for every six men, or tribe, as it was called, and each tribe was a
family by itself, one of its members attending to the cooking, another
washing their linen, the others pitching the tent, caring for the
horses, and cleaning the arms. By day they scoured the country beneath
a sun like a ball of blazing copper, loaded down with the burden of
their arms and utensils; at night they built great fires to drive away
the mosquitoes and sat around them, singing the songs of France. Often
it happened that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set with
stars, they had to rise and restore peace among their four-footed
friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had set to biting and
kicking one another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and snorting
furiously. Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed
their only, luxury, which they ground by the primitive appliances of a
carbine-butt and a porringer, and afterward strained through a red
woolen sash. But their life was not one of unalloyed enjoyment; there
were dark days, also, when they were far from the abodes of civilized
man with the enemy before them. No more fires, then; no singing, no
good times. There were times when hunger, thirst and want of sleep
caused them horrible suffering, but no matter; they loved that daring,
adventurous life, that war of skirmishes, so propitious for the
display of personal bravery and as interesting as a fairy tale,
enlivened by the _razzias_, which were only public plundering on a
larger scale, and by marauding, or the private peculations of the
chicken-thieves, which afforded many an amusing story that made even
the generals laugh.

"Ah!" said Prosper, with a more serious face, "it's different here;
the fighting is done in quite another way."

And in reply to a question asked by Maurice, he told the story of
their landing at Toulon and the long and wearisome march to Luneville.
It was there that they first received news of Wissembourg and
Froeschwiller. After that his account was less clear, for he got the
names of towns mixed, Nancy and Saint-Mihiel, Saint-Mihiel and Metz.
There must have been heavy fighting on the 14th, for the sky was all
on fire, but all he saw of it was four uhlans behind a hedge. On the
16th there was another engagement; they could hear the artillery going
as early as six o'clock in the morning, and he had been told that on
the 18th they started the dance again, more lively than ever. But the
chasseurs were not in it that time, for at Gravelotte on the 16th, as
they were standing drawn up along a road waiting to wheel into column,
the Emperor, who passed that way in a victoria, took them to act as
his escort to Verdun. And a pretty little jaunt it was, twenty-six
miles at a hard gallop, with the fear of being cut off by the
Prussians at any moment!

"And what of Bazaine?" asked Rochas.

"Bazaine? they say that he is mightily well pleased that the Emperor
lets him alone."

But the Lieutenant wanted to know if Bazaine was coming to join them,
whereon Prosper made a gesture expressive of uncertainty; what did any
one know? Ever since the 16th their time had been spent in marching
and countermarching in the rain, out on reconnoissance and grand-guard
duty, and they had not seen a sign of an enemy. Now they were part of
the army of Chalons. His regiment, together with two regiments of
chasseurs de France and one of hussars, formed one of the divisions of
the cavalry of reserve, the first division, commanded by General
Margueritte, of whom he spoke with most enthusiastic warmth.

"Ah, the _bougre_! the enemy will catch a Tartar in him! But what's
the good talking? the only use they can find for us is to send us
pottering about in the mud."

There was silence for a moment, then Maurice gave some brief news of
Remilly and uncle Fouchard, and Prosper expressed his regret that he
could not go and shake hands with Honore, the quartermaster-sergeant,
whose battery was stationed more than a league away, on the other side
of the Laon road. But the chasseur pricked up his ears at hearing the
whinnying of a horse and rose and went out to make sure that Poulet
was not in want of anything. It was the hour sacred to coffee and
_pousse-cafe_, and it was not long before the little hostelry was full
to overflowing with officers and men of every arm of the service.
There was not a vacant table, and the bright uniforms shone
resplendent against the green background of leaves checkered with
spots of sunshine. Major Bouroche had just come in and taken a seat
beside Rochas, when Jean presented himself with an order.

"Lieutenant, the captain desires me to say that he wishes to see you
at three o'clock on company business."

Rochas signified by a nod of the head that he had heard, and Jean did
not go away at once, but stood smiling at Maurice, who was lighting a
cigarette. Ever since the occurrence in the railway car there had been
a sort of tacit truce between the two men; they seemed to be
reciprocally studying each other, with an increasing interest and
attraction. But just then Prosper came back, a little out of temper.

"I mean to have something to eat unless my officer comes out of that
shanty pretty quick. The Emperor is just as likely as not to stay away
until dark, confound it all."

"Tell me," said Maurice, his curiosity again getting the better of
him, "isn't it possible that the news you are bringing may be from
Bazaine?"

"Perhaps so. There was a good deal of talk about him down there at
Monthois."

At that moment there was a stir outside in the street, and Jean, who
was standing by one of the doors of the arbor, turned and said:

"The Emperor!"

Immediately everyone was on his feet. Along the broad, white road,
with its rows of poplars on either side, came a troop of cent-gardes,
spick and span in their brilliant uniforms, their cuirasses blazing in
the sunlight, and immediately behind them rode the Emperor,
accompanied by his staff, in a wide open space, followed by a second
troop of cent-gardes.

There was a general uncovering of heads, and here and there a hurrah
was heard; and the Emperor raised his head as he passed; his face
looked drawn, the eyes were dim and watery. He had the dazed
appearance of one suddenly aroused from slumber, smiled faintly at
sight of the cheerful inn, and saluted. From behind them Maurice and
Jean distinctly heard old Bouroche growl, having first surveyed the
sovereign with his practiced eye:

"There's no mistake about it, that man is in a bad way." Then he
succinctly completed his diagnosis: "His jig is up!"

Jean shook his head and thought in his limited, common sense way: "It
is a confounded shame to let a man like that have command of the army!"
And ten minutes later, when Maurice, comforted by his good breakfast,
shook hands with Prosper and strolled away to smoke more cigarettes,
he carried with him the picture of the Emperor, seated on his
easy-gaited horse, so pale, so gentle, the man of thought, the
dreamer, wanting in energy when the moment for action came. He was
reputed to be good-hearted, capable, swayed by generous and noble
thoughts, a silent man of strong and tenacious will; he was very
brave, too, scorning danger with the scorn of the fatalist for whom
destiny has no fears; but in critical moments a fatal lethargy seemed
to overcome him; he appeared to become paralyzed in presence of
results, and powerless thereafter to struggle against Fortune should
she prove adverse. And Maurice asked himself if his were not a special
physiological condition, aggravated by suffering; if the indecision
and increasing incapacity that the Emperor had displayed ever since
the opening of the campaign were not to be attributed to his manifest
illness. That would explain everything: a minute bit of foreign
substance in a man's system, and empires totter.

The camp that evening was all astir with activity; officers were
bustling about with orders and arranging for the start the following
morning at five o'clock. Maurice experienced a shock of surprise and
alarm to learn that once again all their plans were changed, that they
were not to fall back on Paris, but proceed to Verdun and effect a
junction with Bazaine. There was a report that dispatches had come in
during the day from the marshal announcing that he was retreating, and
the young man's thoughts reverted to the officer of chasseurs and his
rapid ride from Monthois; perhaps he had been the bearer of a copy of
the dispatch. So, then, the opinions of the Empress-regent and the
Council of Ministers had prevailed with the vacillating MacMahon, in
their dread to see the Emperor return to Paris and their inflexible
determination to push the army forward in one supreme attempt to save
the dynasty; and the poor Emperor, that wretched man for whom there
was no place in all his vast empire, was to be bundled to and fro
among the baggage of his army like some worthless, worn-out piece of
furniture, condemned to the irony of dragging behind him in his suite
his imperial household, cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver
stew-pans and cases of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle,
embroidered with the Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of
the highways of his retreat.

At midnight Maurice was not asleep; he was feverishly wakeful, and his
gloomy reflections kept him tossing and tumbling on his pallet. He
finally arose and went outside, where he found comfort and refreshment
in the cool night air. The sky was overspread with clouds, the
darkness was intense; along the front of the line the expiring
watch-fires gleamed with a red and sullen light at distant intervals,
and in the deathlike, boding silence could be heard the long-drawn
breathing of the hundred thousand men who slumbered there. Then
Maurice became more tranquil, and there descended on him a sentiment
of brotherhood, full of compassionate kindness for all those
slumbering fellow-creatures, of whom thousands would soon be sleeping
the sleep of death. Brave fellows! True, many of them were thieves and
drunkards, but think of what they had suffered and the excuse there
was for them in the universal demoralization! The glorious veterans of
Solferino and Sebastopol were but a handful, incorporated in the ranks
of the newly raised troops, too few in number to make their example
felt. The four corps that had been got together and equipped so
hurriedly, devoid of every element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope,
the expiatory band that their rulers were sending to the sacrifice in
the endeavor to avert the wrath of destiny. They would bear their
cross to the bitter end, atoning with their life's blood for the
faults of others, glorious amid disaster and defeat.

And then it was that Maurice, there in the darkness that was instinct
with life, became conscious that a great duty lay before him. He
ceased to beguile himself with the illusive prospect of great
victories to be gained; the march to Verdun was a march to death, and
he so accepted it, since it was their lot to die, with brave and
cheerful resignation.

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