The Downfall: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Thunder!" Chouteau ejaculated the following morning when he awoke,
chilled and with aching bones, under the tent, "I wouldn't mind having
a bouillon with plenty of meat in it."

At Boult-aux-Bois, where they were now encamped, the only ration
issued to the men the night before had been an extremely slender one
of potatoes; the commissariat was daily more and more distracted and
disorganized by the everlasting marches and countermarches, never
reaching the designated points of rendezvous in time to meet the
troops. As for the herds, no one had the faintest idea where they
might be upon the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in
the face.

Loubet stretched himself and plaintively replied:

"Ah, _fichtre_, yes!--No more roast goose for us now."

The squad was out of sorts and sulky. Men couldn't be expected to be
lively on an empty stomach. And then there was the rain that poured
down incessantly, and the mud in which they had to make their beds.

Observing Pache make the sign of the cross after mumbling his morning
prayer, Chouteau captiously growled:

"Ask that good God of yours, if he is good for anything, to send us
down a couple of sausages and a mug of beer apiece."

"Ah, if we only had a good big loaf of bread!" sighed Lapoulle, whose
ravenous appetite made hunger a more grievous affliction to him than
to the others.

But Lieutenant Rochas, passing by just then, made them be silent. It
was scandalous, never to think of anything but their stomachs! When
_he_ was hungry he tightened up the buckle of his trousers. Now that
things were becoming decidedly squally and the popping of rifles was
to be heard occasionally in the distance, he had recovered all his old
serene confidence: it was all plain enough, now; the Prussians were
there--well, all they had to do was, go out and lick 'em. And he gave
a significant shrug of the shoulders, standing behind Captain
Beaudoin, the _very_ young man, as he called him, with his pale face
and pursed up lips, whom the loss of his baggage had afflicted so
grievously that he had even ceased to fume and scold. A man might get
along without eating, at a pinch, but that he could not change his
linen was a circumstance productive of sorrow and anger.

Maurice awoke to a sensation of despondency and physical discomfort.
Thanks to his easy shoes the inflammation in his foot had gone down,
but the drenching he had received the day before, from the effects of
which his greatcoat seemed to weigh a ton, had left him with a
distinct and separate ache in every bone of his body. When he was sent
to the spring to get water for the coffee he took a survey of the
plain on the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated: forests rise to
the west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of
Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad,
level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional
shallow depression concealing a small cluster of cottages. Was it from
that direction that they were to expect the enemy? As he was returning
from the stream with his bucket filled with water, the father of a
family of wretched peasants hailed him from the door of his hovel, and
asked him if the soldiers were this time going to stay and defend
them. In the confusion of conflicting orders the 5th corps had already
traversed the region no less than three times. The sound of
cannonading had reached them the day before from the direction of Bar;
the Prussians could not be more than a couple of leagues away. And
when Maurice made answer to the poor folks that doubtless the 7th
corps would also be called away after a time, their tears flowed
afresh. Then they were to be abandoned to the enemy, and the soldiers
had not come there to fight, whom they saw constantly vanishing and
reappearing, always on the run?

"Those who like theirs sweet," observed Loubet, as he poured the
coffee, "have only to stick their thumb in it and wait for it to
melt."

Not a man of them smiled. It was too bad, all the same, to have to
drink their coffee without sugar; and then, too, if they only had some
biscuit! Most of them had devoured what eatables they had in their
knapsacks, to the very last crumb, to while away their time of
waiting, the day before, on the plateau of Quatre-Champs. Among them,
however, the members of the squad managed to collect a dozen potatoes,
which they shared equally.

Maurice, who began to feel a twinging sensation in his stomach,
uttered a regretful cry:

"If I had known of this I would have bought some bread at Chene."

Jean listened in silence. He had had a dispute with Chouteau that
morning, who, on being ordered to go for firewood, had insolently
refused, alleging that it was not his turn. Now that everything was so
rapidly going to the dogs, insubordination among the men had increased
to such a point that those in authority no longer ventured to
reprimand them, and Jean, with his sober good sense and pacific
disposition, saw that if he would preserve his influence with his
squad he must keep the corporal in the background as far as possible.
For this reason he was hail-fellow-well-met with his men, who could
not fail to see what a treasure they had in a man of his experience,
for if those committed to his care did not always have all they wanted
to eat, they had, at all events, not suffered from hunger, as had been
the case with so many others. But he was touched by the sight of
Maurice's suffering. He saw that he was losing strength, and looked at
him anxiously, asking himself how that delicate young man would ever
manage to sustain the privations of that horrible campaign.

When Jean heard Maurice bewail the lack of bread he arose quietly,
went to his knapsack, and, returning, slipped a biscuit into the
other's hand.

"Here! don't let the others see it; I have not enough to go round."

"But what will you do?" asked the young man, deeply affected.

"Oh, don't be alarmed about me--I have two left."

It was true; he had carefully put aside three biscuits, in case there
should be a fight, knowing that men are often hungry on the
battlefield. And then, besides, he had just eaten a potato; that would
be sufficient for him. Perhaps something would turn up later on.

About ten o'clock the 7th corps made a fresh start. The marshal's
first intention had been to direct it by way of Buzancy upon Stenay,
where it would have passed the Meuse, but the Prussians, outmarching
the army of Chalons, were already in Stenay, and were even reported to
be at Buzancy. Crowded back in this manner to the northward, the 7th
corps had received orders to move to la Besace, some twelve or fifteen
miles from Boult-aux-Bois, whence, on the next day, they would proceed
to pass the Meuse at Mouzon. The start was made in a very sulky humor;
the men, with empty stomachs and bodies unrefreshed by repose,
unnerved, mentally and physically, by the experience of the past few
days, vented their dissatisfaction by growling and grumbling, while
the officers, without a spark of their usual cheerful gayety, with a
vague sense of impending disaster awaiting them at the end of their
march, taxed the dilatoriness of their chiefs, and reproached them for
not going to the assistance of the 5th corps at Buzancy, where the
sound of artillery-firing had been heard. That corps, too, was on the
retreat, making its way toward Nonart, while the 12th was even then
leaving la Besace for Mouzon and the 1st was directing its course
toward Raucourt. It was like nothing so much as the passage of a drove
of panic-stricken cattle, with the dogs worrying them and snapping at
their heels--a wild stampede toward the Meuse.

When, in the outstreaming torrent of the three divisions that striped
the plain with columns of marching men, the 106th left Boult-aux-Bois
in the rear of the cavalry and artillery, the sky was again overspread
with a pall of dull leaden clouds that further lowered the spirits of
the soldiers. Its route was along the Buzancy highway, planted on
either side with rows of magnificent poplars. When they reached
Germond, a village where there was a steaming manure-heap before every
one of the doors that lined the two sides of the straggling street,
the sobbing women came to their thresholds with their little children
in their arms, and held them out to the passing troops, as if begging
the men to take them with them. There was not a mouthful of bread to
be had in all the hamlet, nor even a potato, After that, the regiment,
instead of keeping straight on toward Buzancy, turned to the left and
made for Authe, and when the men turned their eyes across the plain
and beheld upon the hilltop Belleville, through which they had passed
the day before, the fact that they were retracing their steps was
impressed more vividly on their consciousness.

"Heavens and earth!" growled Chouteau, "do they take us for tops?"

And Loubet chimed in:

"Those cheap-John generals of ours are all at sea again! They must
think that men's legs are cheap."

The anger and disgust were general. It was not right to make men
suffer like that, just for the fun of walking them up and down the
country. They were advancing in column across the naked plain in two
files occupying the sides of the road, leaving a free central space in
which the officers could move to and fro and keep an eye on their men,
but it was not the same now as it had been in Champagne after they
left Rheims, a march of song and jollity, when they tramped along
gayly and the knapsack was like a feather to their shoulders, in the
belief that soon they would come up with the Prussians and give them a
sound drubbing; now they were dragging themselves wearily forward in
angry silence, cursing the musket that galled their shoulder and the
equipments that seemed to weigh them to the ground, their faith in
their leaders gone, and possessed by such bitterness of despair that
they only went forward as does a file of manacled galley-slaves, in
terror of the lash. The wretched army had begun to ascend its Calvary.

Maurice, however, within the last few minutes had made a discovery
that interested him greatly. To their left was a range of hills that
rose one above another as they receded from the road, and from the
skirt of a little wood, far up on the mountain-side, he had seen a
horseman emerge. Then another appeared, and then still another. There
they stood, all three of them, without sign of life, apparently no
larger than a man's hand and looking like delicately fashioned toys.
He thought they were probably part of a detachment of our hussars out
on a reconnoissance, when all at once he was surprised to behold
little points of light flashing from their shoulders, doubtless the
reflection of the sunlight from epaulets of brass.

"Look there!" he said, nudging Jean, who was marching at his side.
"Uhlans!"

The corporal stared with all his eyes. "They, uhlans!"

They were indeed uhlans, the first Prussians that the 106th had set
eyes on. They had been in the field nearly six weeks now, and in all
that time not only had they never smelt powder, but had never even
seen an enemy. The news spread through the ranks, and every head was
turned to look at them. Not such bad-looking fellows, those uhlans,
after all.

"One of them looks like a jolly little fat fellow," Loubet remarked.

But presently an entire squadron came out and showed itself on a
plateau to the left of the little wood, and at sight of the
threatening demonstration the column halted. An officer came riding up
with orders, and the 106th moved off a little and took position on the
bank of a small stream behind a clump of trees. The artillery had come
hurrying back from the front on a gallop and taken possession of a
low, rounded hill. For near two hours they remained there thus in line
of battle without the occurrence of anything further; the body of
hostile cavalry remained motionless in the distance, and finally,
concluding that they were only wasting time that was valuable, the
officers set the column moving again.

"Ah well," Jean murmured regretfully, "we are not booked for it this
time."

Maurice, too, had felt his finger-tips tingling with the desire to
have just one shot. He kept harping on the theme of the mistake they
had made the day before in not going to the support of the 5th corps.
If the Prussians had not made their attack yet, it must be because
their infantry had not got up in sufficient strength, whence it was
evident that their display of cavalry in the distance was made with no
other end than to harass us and check the advance of our corps. We had
again fallen into the trap set for us, and thenceforth the regiment
was constantly greeted with the sight of uhlans popping up on its left
flank wherever the ground was favorable for them, tracking it like
sleuthhounds, disappearing behind a farmhouse only to reappear at the
corner of a wood.

It eventually produced a disheartening effect on the troops to see
that cordon closing in on them in the distance and enveloping them as
in the meshes of some gigantic, invisible net. Even Pache and Lapoulle
had an opinion on the subject.

"It is beginning to be tiresome!" they said. "It would be a comfort to
send them our compliments in the shape of a musket-ball!"

But they kept toiling wearily onward on their tired feet, that seemed
to them as if they were of lead. In the distress and suffering of that
day's march there was ever present to all the undefined sensation of
the proximity of the enemy, drawing in on them from every quarter,
just as we are conscious of the coming storm before we have seen a
cloud on the horizon. Instructions were given the rear-guard to use
severe measures, if necessary, to keep the column well closed up; but
there was not much straggling, aware as everyone was that the
Prussians were close in our rear, and ready to snap up every
unfortunate that they could lay hands on. Their infantry was coming up
with the rapidity of the whirlwind, making its twenty-five miles a
day, while the French regiments, in their demoralized condition,
seemed in comparison to be marking time.

At Authe the weather cleared, and Maurice, taking his bearings by the
position of the sun, noticed that instead of bearing off toward Chene,
which lay three good leagues from where they were, they had turned and
were moving directly eastward. It was two o'clock; the men, after
shivering in the rain for two days, were now suffering from the
intense heat. The road ascended, with long sweeping curves, through a
region of utter desolation: not a house, not a living being, the only
relief to the dreariness of the waste lands an occasional little
somber wood; and the oppressive silence communicated itself to the
men, who toiled onward with drooping heads, bathed in perspiration. At
last Saint-Pierremont appeared before them, a few empty houses on a
small elevation. They did not pass through the village. Maurice
observed that here they made a sudden wheel to the left, resuming
their northern course, toward la Besace. He now understood the route
that had been adopted in their attempt to reach Mouzon ahead of the
Prussians; but would they succeed, with such weary, demoralized
troops? At Saint-Pierremont the three uhlans had shown themselves
again, at a turn in the road leading to Buzancy, and just as the
rear-guard was leaving the village a battery was unmasked and a few
shells came tumbling among them, without doing any injury, however. No
response was attempted, and the march was continued with constantly
increasing effort.

From Saint-Pierremont to la Besace the distance is three good leagues,
and when Maurice imparted that information to Jean the latter made a
gesture of discouragement: the men would never be able to accomplish
it; they showed it by their shortness of breath, by their haggard
faces. The road continued to ascend, between gently sloping hills on
either side that were gradually drawing closer together. The condition
of the men necessitated a halt, but the only effect of their brief
repose was to increase the stiffness of their benumbed limbs, and when
the order was given to march the state of affairs was worse than it
had been before; the regiments made no progress, men were everywhere
falling in the ranks. Jean, noticing Maurice's pallid face and glassy
eyes, infringed on what was his usual custom and conversed,
endeavoring by his volubility to divert the other's attention and keep
him awake as he moved automatically forward, unconscious of his
actions.

"Your sister lives in Sedan, you say; perhaps we shall be there before
long."

"What, at Sedan? Never! You must be crazy; it don't lie in our way."

"Is your sister young?"

"Just my age; you know I told you we are twins."

"Is she like you?"

"Yes, she is fair-haired, too; and oh! such pretty curling hair! She
is a mite of a woman, with a little thin face, not one of your noisy,
flashy hoydens, ah, no!--Dear Henriette!"

"You love her very dearly!"

"Yes, yes--"

There was silence between them after that, and Jean, glancing at
Maurice, saw that his eyes were closing and he was about to fall.

"Hallo there, old fellow! Come, confound it all, brace up! Let me take
your gun a moment; that will give you a chance to rest. They can't
have the cruelty to make us march any further to-day! we shall leave
half our men by the roadside."

At that moment he caught sight of Osches lying straight ahead of them,
its few poor hovels climbing in straggling fashion up the hillside,
and the yellow church, embowered in trees, looking down on them from
its perch upon the summit.

"There's where we shall rest, for certain."

He had guessed aright; General Douay saw the exhausted condition of
the troops, and was convinced that it would be useless to attempt to
reach la Besace that day. What particularly influenced his
determination, however, was the arrival of the train, that ill-starred
train that had been trailing in his rear since they left Rheims, and
of which the nine long miles of vehicles and animals had so terribly
impeded his movements. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs to
direct it straight on Saint-Pierremont, and it was not until Osches
that the teams came up with the corps, in such a state of exhaustion
that the horses refused to stir. It was now five o'clock; the general,
not liking the prospect of attempting the pass of Stonne at that late
hour, determined to take the responsibility of abridging the task
assigned them by the marshal. The corps was halted and proceeded to
encamp; the train below in the meadows, guarded by a division, while
the artillery took position on the hills to the rear, and the brigade
detailed to act as rear-guard on the morrow rested on a height
facing Saint-Pierremont. The other division, which included
Bourgain-Desfeuilles' brigade, bivouacked on a wide plateau, bordered
by an oak wood, behind the church. There was such confusion in
locating the bodies of troops that it was dark before the 106th could
move into its position at the edge of the wood.

"_Zut_!" said Chouteau in a furious rage, "no eating for me; I want to
sleep!"

And that was the cry of all; they were overcome with fatigue. Many of
them lacked strength and courage to erect their tents, but dropping
where they stood, at once fell fast asleep on the bare ground. In
order to eat, moreover, rations would have been necessary, and the
commissary wagons, which were waiting for the 7th corps to come to
them at la Besace, could not well be at Osches at the same time. In
the universal relaxation of order and system even the customary
corporal's call was omitted: it was everyone for himself. There were
to be no more issues of rations from that time forth; the soldiers
were to subsist on the provisions they were supposed to carry in their
knapsacks, and that evening the sacks were empty; few indeed were
those who could muster a crust of bread or some crumbs of the
abundance in which they had been living at Vouziers of late. There was
coffee, and those who were not too tired made and drank it without
sugar.

When Jean thought to make a division of his wealth by eating one of
his biscuits himself and giving the other to Maurice, he discovered
that the latter was sound asleep. He thought at first he would awake
him, but changed his mind and stoically replaced the biscuits in his
sack, concealing them with as much caution as if they had been bags of
gold; he could get along with coffee, like the rest of the boys. He
had insisted on having the tent put up, and they were all stretched on
the ground beneath its shelter when Loubet returned from a foraging
expedition, bringing in some carrots that he had found in a
neighboring field. As there was no fire to cook them by they munched
them raw, but the vegetables only served to aggravate their hunger,
and they made Pache ill.

"No, no; let him sleep," said Jean to Chouteau, who was shaking
Maurice to wake him and give him his share.

"Ah," Lapoulle broke in, "we shall be at Angouleme to-morrow, and then
we'll have some bread. I had a cousin in the army once, who was
stationed at Angouleme. Nice garrison, that."

They all looked surprised, and Chouteau exclaimed:

"Angouleme--what are you talking about! Just listen to the bloody
fool, saying he is at Angouleme!"

It was impossible to extract any explanation from Lapoulle. He had
insisted that morning that the uhlans that they sighted were some of
Bazaine's troops.

Then darkness descended on the camp, black as ink, silent as death.
Notwithstanding the coolness of the night air the men had not been
permitted to make fires; the Prussians were known to be only a few
miles away, and it would not do to put them on the alert; orders even
were transmitted in a hushed voice. The officers had notified their
men before retiring that the start would be made at about four in the
morning, in order that they might have all the rest possible, and all
had hastened to turn in and were sleeping greedily, forgetful of their
troubles. Above the scattered camps the deep respiration of all those
slumbering crowds, rising upon the stillness of the night, was like
the long-drawn breathing of old Mother Earth.

Suddenly a shot rang out in the darkness and aroused the sleepers. It
was about three o'clock, and the obscurity was profound. Immediately
everyone was on foot, the alarm spread through the camp; it was
supposed the Prussians were attacking. It was only Loubet who, unable
to sleep longer, had taken it in his head to make a foray into the
oak-wood, which he thought gave promise of rabbits: what a jolly good
lark it would be if he could bring in a pair of nice rabbits for the
comrades' breakfast! But as he was looking about for a favorable place
in which to conceal himself, he heard the sound of voices and the

snapping of dry branches under heavy footsteps; men were coming toward
him; he took alarm and discharged his piece, believing the Prussians
were at hand. Maurice, Jean, and others came running up in haste, when
a hoarse voice made itself heard:

"For God's sake, don't shoot!"

And there at the edge of the wood stood a tall, lanky man, whose
thick, bristling beard they could just distinguish in the darkness. He
wore a gray blouse, confined at the waist by a red belt, and carried a
musket slung by a strap over his shoulder. He hurriedly explained that
he was French, a sergeant of francs-tireurs, and had come with two of
his men from the wood of Dieulet, bringing important information for
the general.

"Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!" he shouted, turning his head, "hallo!
you infernal poltroons, come here!"

The men were evidently badly scared, but they came forward. Ducat,
short and fat, with a pale face and scanty hair; Cabasse short and
lean, with a black face and a long nose not much thicker than a
knife-blade.

Meantime Maurice had stepped up and taken a closer look at the
sergeant; he finally asked him:

"Tell me, are you not Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly?"

And when the man hesitatingly answered in the affirmative Maurice
recoiled a step or two, for this Sambuc had the reputation of being a
particularly hard case, the worthy son of a family of woodcutters who
had all gone to the bad, the drunken father being found one night
lying by the roadside with his throat cut, the mother and daughter,
who lived by begging and stealing, having disappeared, most likely, in
the seclusion of some penitentiary. He, Guillaume, did a little in the
poaching and smuggling lines, and only one of that litter of wolves'
whelps had grown up to be an honest man, and that was Prosper, the
hussar, who had gone to work on a farm before he was conscripted,
because he hated the life of the forest.

"I saw your brother at Vouziers," Maurice continued; "he is well."

Sambuc made no reply. To end the situation he said:

"Take me to the general. Tell him that the francs-tireurs of the wood
of Dieulet have something important to say to him."

On the way back to the camp Maurice reflected on those free companies
that had excited such great expectations at the time of their
formation, and had since been the object of such bitter denunciation
throughout the country. Their professed purpose was to wage a sort of
guerilla warfare, lying in ambush behind hedges, harassing the enemy,
picking off his sentinels, holding the woods, from which not a
Prussian was to emerge alive; while the truth of the matter was that
they had made themselves the terror of the peasantry, whom they
failed utterly to protect and whose fields they devastated. Every
ne'er-do-well who hated the restraints of the regular service made
haste to join their ranks, well pleased with the chance that exempted
him from discipline and enabled him to lead the life of a tramp,
tippling in pothouses and sleeping by the roadside at his own sweet
will. Some of the companies were recruited from the very worst
material imaginable.

"Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!" Sambuc was constantly repeating,
turning to his henchmen at every step he took, "Come along, will you,
you snails!"

Maurice was as little charmed with the two men as with their leader.
Cabasse, the little lean fellow, was a native of Toulon, had served as
waiter in a cafe at Marseilles, had failed at Sedan as a broker in
southern produce, and finally had brought up in a police-court, where
it came near going hard with him, in connection with a robbery of
which the details were suppressed. Ducat, the little fat man, quondam
_huissier_ at Blainville, where he had been forced to sell out his
business on account of a malodorous woman scrape, had recently been
brought face to face with the court of assizes for an indiscretion of
a similar nature at Raucourt, where he was accountant in a factory.
The latter quoted Latin in his conversation, while the other could
scarcely read, but the two were well mated, as unprepossessing a pair
as one could expect to meet in a summer's day.

The camp was already astir; Jean and Maurice took the francs-tireurs
to Captain Beaudoin, who conducted them to the quarters of Colonel
Vineuil. The colonel attempted to question them, but Sambuc,
intrenching himself in his dignity, refused to speak to anyone except
the general. Now Bourgain-Desfeuilles had taken up his quarters that
night with the cure of Osches, and just then appeared, rubbing his
eyes, in the doorway of the parsonage; he was in a horribly bad humor
at his slumbers having been thus prematurely cut short, and the
prospect that he saw before him of another day of famine and fatigue;
hence his reception of the men who were brought before him was not
exactly lamblike. Who were they? Whence did they come? What did they
want? Ah, some of those francs-tireurs gentlemen--eh! Same thing as
skulkers and riff-raff!

"General," Sambuc replied, without allowing himself to be
disconcerted, "we and our comrades are stationed in the woods of
Dieulet--"

"The woods of Dieulet--where's that?"

"Between Stenay and Mouzon, General."

"What do I know of your Stenay and Mouzon? Do you expect me to be
familiar with all these strange names?"

The colonel was distressed by his chief's display of ignorance; he
hastily interfered to remind him that Stenay and Mouzon were on the
Meuse, and that, as the Germans had occupied the former of those
towns, the army was about to attempt the passage of the river at the
other, which was situated more to the northward.

"So you see, General," Sambuc continued, "we've come to tell you that
the woods of Dieulet are alive with Prussians. There was an engagement
yesterday as the 5th corps was leaving Bois-les-Dames, somewhere about
Nonart--"

"What, yesterday? There was fighting yesterday?"

"Yes, General, the 5th corps was engaged as it was falling back; it
must have been at Beaumont last night. So, while some of us hurried
off to report to it the movements of the enemy, we thought it best to
come and let you know how matters stood, so that you might go to its
assistance, for it will certainly have sixty thousand men to deal with
in the morning."

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles gave a contemptuous shrug of his
shoulders.

"Sixty thousand men! Why the devil don't you call it a hundred
thousand at once? You were dreaming, young man; your fright has made
you see double. It is impossible there should be sixty thousand
Germans so near us without our knowing it."

And so he went on. It was to no purpose that Sambuc appealed to Ducat
and Cabasse to confirm his statement.

"We saw the guns," the Provencal declared; "and those chaps must be
crazy to take them through the forest, where the rains of the past few
days have left the roads in such a state that they sink in the mud up
to the hubs."

"They have someone to guide them, for certain," said the ex-bailiff.

Since leaving Vouziers the general had stoutly refused to attach any
further credit to reports of the junction of the two German armies
which, as he said, they had been trying to stuff down his throat. He
did not even consider it worth his while to send the francs-tireurs
before his corps commander, to whom the partisans supposed, all along,
that they were talking; if they should attempt to listen to all the
yarns that were brought them by tramps and peasants, they would have
their hands full and be driven from pillar to post without ever
advancing a step. He directed the three men to remain with the column,
however, since they were acquainted with the country.

"They are good fellows, all the same," Jean said to Maurice, as they
were returning to fold the tent, "to have tramped three leagues across
lots to let us know."

The young man agreed with him and commended their action, knowing as
he did the country, and deeply alarmed to hear that the Prussians were
in Dieulet forest and moving on Sommanthe and Beaumont. He had flung
himself down by the roadside, exhausted before the march had
commenced, with a sorrowing heart and an empty stomach, at the dawning
of that day which he felt was to be so disastrous for them all.
Distressed to see him looking so pale, the corporal affectionately
asked him:

"Are you feeling so badly still? What is it? Does your foot pain you?"

Maurice shook his head. His foot had ceased to trouble him, thanks to
the big shoes.

"Then you are hungry." And Jean, seeing that he did not answer, took
from his knapsack one of the two remaining biscuits, and with a
falsehood for which he may be forgiven: "Here, take it; I kept your
share for you. I ate mine a while ago."

Day was breaking when the 7th corps marched out of Osches en route for
Mouzon by way of la Besace, where they should have bivouacked. The
train, cause of so many woes, had been sent on ahead, guarded by the
first division, and if its own wagons, well horsed as for the most
part they were, got over the ground at a satisfactory pace, the
requisitioned vehicles, most of them empty, delayed the troops and
produced sad confusion among the hills of the defile of Stonne. After
leaving the hamlet of la Berliere the road rises more sharply between
wooded hills on either side. Finally, about eight o'clock, the two
remaining divisions got under way, when Marshal MacMahon came
galloping up, vexed to find there those troops that he supposed had
left la Besace that morning, with only a short march between them and
Mouzon; his comment to General Douay on the subject was expressed in
warm language. It was determined that the first division and the train
should be allowed to proceed on their way to Mouzon, but that the two
other divisions, that they might not be further retarded by this
cumbrous advance-guard, should move by the way of Raucourt and
Autrecourt so as to pass the Meuse at Villers. The movement to the
north was dictated by the marshal's intense anxiety to place the river
between his army and the enemy; cost what it might, they must be on
the right bank that night. The rear-guard had not yet left Osches when
a Prussian battery, recommencing the performance of the previous day,
began to play on them from a distant eminence, over in the direction
of Saint-Pierremont. They made the mistake of firing a few shots in
reply; then the last of the troops filed out of the town.

Until nearly eleven o'clock the 106th slowly pursued its way along the
road which zigzags through the pass of Stonne between high hills. On
the left hand the precipitous summits rear their heads, devoid of
vegetation, while to the right the gentler slopes are clad with woods
down to the roadside. The sun had come out again, and the heat was
intense down in the inclosed valley, where an oppressive solitude
prevailed. After leaving la Berliere, which lies at the foot of a
lofty and desolate mountain surmounted by a Calvary, there is not a
house to be seen, not a human being, not an animal grazing in the
meadows. And the men, the day before so faint with hunger, so spent
with fatigue, who since that time had had no food to restore, no
slumber, to speak of, to refresh them, were now dragging themselves
listlessly along, disheartened, filled with sullen anger.

Soon after that, just as the men had been halted for a short rest
along the roadside, the roar of artillery was heard away at their
right; judging from the distinctness of the detonations the firing
could not be more than two leagues distant. Upon the troops, weary
with waiting, tired of retreating, the effect was magical; in the
twinkling of an eye everyone was on his feet, eager, in a quiver of
excitement, no longer mindful of his hunger and fatigue: why did they
not advance? They preferred to fight, to die, rather than keep on
flying thus, no one knew why or whither.

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, accompanied by Colonel de Vineuil, had
climbed a hill on the right to reconnoiter the country. They were
visible up there in a little clearing between two belts of wood,
scanning the surrounding hills with their field-glasses, when all at
once they dispatched an aide-de-camp to the column, with instructions
to send up to them the francs-tireurs if they were still there. A few
men, Jean and Maurice among them, accompanied the latter, in case
there should be need of messengers.

"A beastly country this, with its everlasting hills and woods!" the
general shouted, as soon as he caught sight of Sambuc. "You hear the
music--where is it? where is the fighting going on?"

Sambuc, with Ducat and Cabasse close at his heels, listened a moment
before he answered, casting his eye over the wide horizon, and
Maurice, standing beside him and gazing out over the panorama of
valley and forest that lay beneath him, was struck with admiration. It
was like a boundless sea, whose gigantic waves had been arrested by
some mighty force. In the foreground the somber verdure of the woods
made splashes of sober color on the yellow of the fields, while in the
brilliant sunlight the distant hills were bathed in purplish vapors.
And while nothing was to be seen, not even the tiniest smoke-wreath
floating on the cloudless sky, the cannon were thundering away in the
distance, like the muttering of a rising storm.

"Here is Sommanthe, to the right," Sambuc said at last, pointing to a
high hill crowned by a wood. "Yoncq lies off yonder to the left. The
fighting is at Beaumont, General."

"Either at Varniforet or Beaumont," Ducat observed.

The general muttered below his breath: "Beaumont, Beaumont--a man can
never tell where he is in this d----d country." Then raising his
voice: "And how far may this Beaumont be from here?"

"A little more than six miles, if you take the road from Chene to
Stenay, which runs up the valley yonder."

There was no cessation of the firing, which seemed to be advancing
from west to east with a continuous succession of reports like peals
of thunder. Sambuc added:

"_Bigre_! it's getting warm. It is just what I expected; you know what
I told you this morning, General; it is certainly the batteries that
we saw in the wood of Dieulet. By this time the whole army that came
up through Buzancy and Beauclair is at work mauling the 5th corps."

There was silence among them, while the battle raging in the distance
growled more furiously than ever, and Maurice had to set tight his
teeth to keep himself from speaking his mind aloud. Why did they not
hasten whither the guns were calling them, without such waste of
words? He had never known what it was to be excited thus; every
discharge found an echo in his bosom and inspired him with a fierce
longing to be present at the conflict, to put an end to it. Were they
to pass by that battle, so near almost that they could stretch forth
their arm and touch it with their hand, and never expend a cartridge?
It must be to decide a wager that some one had made, that since the
beginning of the campaign they were dragged about the country thus,
always flying before the enemy! At Vouziers they had heard the
musketry of the rear-guard, at Osches the German guns had played a
moment on their retreating backs; and now they were to run for it
again, they were not to be allowed to advance at double-quick to the
succor of comrades in distress! Maurice looked at Jean, who was also
very pale, his eyes shining with a bright, feverish light. Every heart
leaped in every bosom at the loud summons of the artillery.

While they were waiting a general, attended by his staff, was seen
ascending the narrow path that wound up the hill. It was Douay, their
corps-commander, who came hastening up, with anxiety depicted on his
countenance, and when he had questioned the francs-tireurs he gave
utterance to an exclamation of despair. But what could he have done,
even had he learned their tidings that morning? The marshal's orders
were explicit: they must be across the Meuse that night, cost what it
might. And then again, how was he to collect his scattered troops,
strung out along the road to Raucourt, and direct then on Beaumont?
Could they arrive in time to be of use? The 5th corps must be in full
retreat on Mouzon by that time, as was indicated by the sound of the
firing, which was receding more and more to the eastward, as a deadly
hurricane moves off after having accomplished its disastrous work.
With a fierce gesture, expressive of his sense of impotency, General
Douay outstretched his arms toward the wide horizon of hill and dale,
of woods and fields, and the order went forth to proceed with the
march to Raucourt.

Ah, what a march was that through that dismal pass of Stonne, with the
lofty summits o'erhanging them on either side, while through the woods
on their right came the incessant volleying of the artillery. Colonel
de Vineuil rode at the head of his regiment, bracing himself firmly in
his saddle, his face set and very pale, his eyes winking like those of
one trying not to weep. Captain Beaudoin strode along in silence,
gnawing his mustache, while Lieutenant Rochas let slip an occasional
imprecation, invoking ruin and destruction on himself and everyone
besides. Even the most cowardly among the men, those who had the least
stomach for fighting, were shamed and angered by their continuous
retreat; they felt the bitter humiliation of turning their backs while
those beasts of Prussians were murdering their comrades over yonder.

After emerging from the pass the road, from a tortuous path among the
hills, increased in width and led through a broad stretch of level
country, dotted here and there with small woods. The 106th was now a
portion of the rear-guard, and at every moment since leaving Osches
had been expecting to feel the enemy's attack, for the Prussians were
following the column step by step, never letting it escape their
vigilant eyes, waiting, doubtless, for a favorable opportunity to fall
on its rear. Their cavalry were on the alert to take advantage of any
bit of ground that promised them an opportunity of getting in on our
flank; several squadrons of Prussian Guards were seen advancing from
behind a wood, but they gave up their purpose upon a demonstration
made by a regiment of our hussars, who came up at a gallop, sweeping
the road. Thanks to the breathing-spell afforded them by this
circumstance the retreat went on in sufficiently good order, and
Raucourt was not far away, when a spectacle greeted their eyes that
filled them with consternation and completely demoralized the troops.
Upon coming to a cross-road they suddenly caught sight of a hurrying,
straggling, flying throng, wounded officers, soldiers without arms and
without organization, runaway teams from the train, all--men and
animals--mingled in wildest confusion, wild with panic. It was the
wreck of one of the brigades of the 1st division, which had been sent
that morning to escort the train to Mouzon; there had been an
unfortunate misconception of orders, and this brigade and a portion of
the wagons had taken a wrong road and reached Varniforet, near
Beaumont, at the very time when the 5th corps was being driven back in
disorder. Taken unawares, overborne by the flank attack of an enemy
superior in numbers, they had fled; and bleeding, with haggard faces,
crazed with fear, were now returning to spread consternation among
their comrades; it was as if they had been wafted thither on the
breath of the battle that had been raging incessantly since noon.

Alarm and anxiety possessed everyone, from highest to lowest, as the
column poured through Raucourt in wild stampede. Should they turn to
the left, toward Autrecourt, and attempt to pass the Meuse at Villers,
as had been previously decided? The general hesitated, fearing to
encounter difficulties in crossing there, even if the bridge were not
already in possession of the Prussians; he finally decided to keep
straight on through the defile of Harancourt and thus reach Remilly
before nightfall. First Mouzon, then Villers, and last Remilly; they
were still pressing on northward, with the tramp of the uhlans on the
road behind them. There remained scant four miles for them to
accomplish, but it was five o'clock, and the men were sinking with
fatigue. They had been under arms since daybreak, twelve hours had
been consumed in advancing three short leagues; they were harassed and
fatigued as much by their constant halts and the stress of their
emotions as by the actual toil of the march. For the last two nights
they had had scarce any sleep; their hunger had been unappeased since
they left Vouziers. In Raucourt the distress was terrible; men fell in
the ranks from sheer inanition.

The little town is rich, with its numerous factories, its handsome
thoroughfare lined with two rows of well-built houses, and its pretty
church and _mairie_; but the night before Marshal MacMahon and the
Emperor had passed that way with their respective staffs and all the
imperial household, and during the whole of the present morning the
entire 1st corps had been streaming like a torrent through the main
street. The resources of the place had not been adequate to meet the
requirements of these hosts; the shelves of the bakers and grocers
were empty, and even the houses of the bourgeois had been swept clean
of provisions; there was no bread, no wine, no sugar, nothing capable
of allaying hunger or thirst. Ladies had been seen to station
themselves before their doors and deal out glasses of wine and cups of
bouillon until cask and kettle alike were drained of their last drop.
And so there was an end, and when, about three o'clock, the first
regiments of the 7th corps began to appear the scene was a pitiful
one; the broad street was filled from curb to curb with weary,
dust-stained men, dying with hunger, and there was not a mouthful of
food to give them. Many of them stopped, knocking at doors and
extending their hands beseechingly toward windows, begging for a
morsel of bread, and women were seen to cry and sob as they motioned
that they could not help them, that they had nothing left.

At the corner of the Rue Dix-Potiers Maurice had an attack of
dizziness and reeled as if about to fall. To Jean, who came hastening
up, he said:

"No, leave me; it is all up with me. I may as well die here!"

He had sunk down upon a door-step. The corporal spoke in a rough tone
of displeasure assumed for the occasion:

"_Nom de Dieu!_ why don't you try to behave like a soldier! Do you
want the Prussians to catch you? Come, get up!"

Then, as the young man, lividly pale, his eyes tight-closed, almost
unconscious, made no reply, he let slip another oath, but in another
key this time, in a tone of infinite gentleness and pity:

"_Nom de Dieu!_ _Nom de Dieu!_"

And running to a drinking-fountain near by, he filled his basin with
water and hurried back to bathe his friend's face. Then, without
further attempt at concealment, he took from his sack the last
remaining biscuit that he had guarded with such jealous caution, and
commenced crumbling it into small bits that he introduced between the
other's teeth. The famishing man opened his eyes and ate greedily.

"But you," he asked, suddenly recollecting himself, "how comes it that
you did not eat it?"

"Oh, I!" said Jean. "I'm tough, I can wait. A good drink of Adam's
ale, and I shall be all right."

He went and filled his basin again at the fountain, emptied it at a
single draught, and came back smacking his lips in token of
satisfaction with his feast. He, too, was cadaverously pale, and so
faint with hunger that his hands were trembling like a leaf.

"Come, get up, and let's be going. We must be getting back to the
comrades, little one."

Maurice leaned on his arm and suffered himself to be helped along as
if he had been a child; never had woman's arm about him so warmed his
heart. In that extremity of distress, with death staring him in the
face, it afforded him a deliciously cheering sense of comfort to know
that someone loved and cared for him, and the reflection that that
heart, which was so entirely his, was the heart of a simple-minded
peasant, whose aspirations scarcely rose above the satisfaction of his
daily wants, for whom he had recently experienced a feeling of
repugnance, served to add to his gratitude a sensation of ineffable
joy. Was it not the brotherhood that had prevailed in the world in its
earlier days, the friendship that had existed before caste and culture
were; that friendship which unites two men and makes them one in their
common need of assistance, in the presence of Nature, the common
enemy? He felt the tie of humanity uniting him and Jean, and was proud
to know that the latter, his comforter and savior, was stronger than
he; while to Jean, who did not analyze his sensations, it afforded
unalloyed pleasure to be the instrument of protecting, in his friend,
that cultivation and intelligence which, in himself, were only
rudimentary. Since the death of his wife, who had been snatched away
from him by a frightful catastrophe, he had believed that his heart
was dead, he had sworn to have nothing more to do with those
creatures, who, even when they are not wicked and depraved, are cause
of so much suffering to man. And thus, to both of them their
friendship was a comfort and relief. There was no need of any
demonstrative display of affection; they understood each other; there
was close community of sympathy between them, and, notwithstanding
their apparent external dissimilarity, the bond of pity and common
suffering made them as one during their terrible march that day to
Remilly.

As the French rear-guard left Raucourt by one end of the town the
Germans came in at the other, and forthwith two of their batteries
commenced firing from the position they had taken on the heights to
the left; the 106th, retreating along the road that follows the course
of the Emmane, was directly in the line of fire. A shell cut down a
poplar on the bank of the stream; another came and buried itself in
the soft ground close to Captain Beaudoin, but did not burst. From
there on to Harancourt, however, the walls of the pass kept
approaching nearer and nearer, and the troops were crowded together in
a narrow gorge commanded on either side by hills covered with trees. A
handful of Prussians in ambush on those heights might have caused
incalculable disaster. With the cannon thundering in their rear and
the menace of a possible attack on either flank, the men's uneasiness
increased with every step they took, and they were in haste to get out
of such a dangerous neighborhood; hence they summoned up their
reserved strength, and those soldiers who, but now in Raucourt, had
scarce been able to drag themselves along, now, with the peril that
lay behind them as an incentive, struck out at a good round pace. The
very horses seemed to be conscious that the loss of a minute might
cost them dear. And the impetus thus given continued; all was going
well, the head of the column must have reached Remilly, when, all at
once, their progress was arrested.

"Heavens and earth!" said Chouteau, "are they going to leave us here
in the road?"

The regiment had not yet reached Harancourt, and the shells were still
tumbling about them; while the men were marking time, awaiting the
word to go ahead again, one burst, on the right of the column, without
injuring anyone, fortunately. Five minutes passed, that seemed to them
long as an eternity, and still they did not move; there was some
obstacle on ahead that barred their way as effectually as if a strong
wall had been built across the road. The colonel, standing up in his
stirrups, peered nervously to the front, for he saw that it would
require but little to create a panic among his men.

"We are betrayed; everybody can see it," shouted Chouteau.

Murmurs of reproach arose on every side, the sullen muttering of their
discontent exasperated by their fears. Yes, yes! they had been brought
there to be sold, to be delivered over to the Prussians. In the
baleful fatality that pursued them, and among all the blunders of
their leaders, those dense intelligences were unable to account for
such an uninterrupted succession of disasters on any other ground than
that of treachery.

"We are betrayed! we are betrayed!" the men wildly repeated.

Then Loubet's fertile intellect evolved an idea: "It is like enough
that that pig of an Emperor has sat himself down in the road, with his
baggage, on purpose to keep us here."

The idle fancy was received as true, and immediately spread up and
down the line; everyone declared that the imperial household had
blocked the road and was responsible for the stoppage. There was a
universal chorus of execration, of opprobrious epithets, an unchaining
of the hatred and hostility that were inspired by the insolence of the
Emperor's attendants, who took possession of the towns where they
stopped at night as if they owned them, unpacking their luxuries,
their costly wines and plate of gold and silver, before the eyes of
the poor soldiers who were destitute of everything, filling the
kitchens with the steam of savory viands while they, poor devils, had
nothing for it but to tighten the belt of their trousers. Ah! that
wretched Emperor, that miserable man, deposed from his throne and
stripped of his command, a stranger in his own empire; whom they were
conveying up and down the country along with the other baggage, like
some piece of useless furniture, whose doom it was ever to drag behind
him the irony of his imperial state: cent-gardes, horses, carriages,
cooks, and vans, sweeping, as it were, the blood and mire from the
roads of his defeat with the magnificence of his court mantle,
embroidered with the heraldic bees!

In rapid succession, one after the other, two more shells fell;
Lieutenant Rochas had his _kepi_ carried away by a fragment. The men
huddled closer together and began to crowd forward, the movement
gathering strength as it ran from rear to front. Inarticulate cries
were heard, Lapoulle shouted furiously to go ahead. A minute longer
and there would have been a horrible catastrophe, and many men must
have been crushed to death in the mad struggle to escape from the
funnel-like gorge.

The colonel--he was very pale--turned and spoke to the soldiers:

"My children, my children, be a little patient. I have sent to see
what is the matter--it will only be a moment--"

But they did not advance, and the seconds seemed like centuries. Jean,
quite cool and collected, resumed his hold of Maurice's hand, and
whispered to him that, in case their comrades began to shove, they two
could leave the road, climb the hill on the left, and make their way
to the stream. He looked about to see where the francs-tireurs were,
thinking he might gain some information from them regarding the roads,
but was told they had vanished while the column was passing through
Raucourt. Just then the march was resumed, and almost immediately a
bend in the road took them out of range of the German batteries. Later
in the day it was ascertained that it was four cuirassier regiments of
Bonnemain's division who, in the disorder of that ill-starred retreat,
had thus blocked the road of the 7th corps and delayed the march.

It was nearly dark when the 106th passed through Angecourt. The wooded
hills continued on the right, but to the left the country was more
level, and a valley was visible in the distance, veiled in bluish
mists. At last, just as the shades of night were descending, they
stood on the heights of Remilly and beheld a ribbon of pale silver
unrolling its length upon a broad expanse of verdant plain. It was the
Meuse, that Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as if
victory awaited them.

Pointing to some lights in the distance that were beginning to twinkle
cheerily among the trees, down in that fertile valley that lay there
so peaceful in the mellow twilight, Maurice said to Jean, with the
glad content of a man revisiting a country that he knows and loves:

"Look! over that way--that is Sedan!"

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