The Downfall

Part II
Chapter VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ah! dear boy, dear boy!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Help! help!"

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

"To the colors!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That way, that way!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My poor darling!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she apathetically replied:

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you wish to be killed?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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