The Downfall

Part III
Chapter III

That morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time to the gay, ringing notes of the French bugles, and now they were on their way to Pont-a-Mousson, marching in the ranks of the convoy of prisoners, which was guarded front and rear by platoons of Prussian infantry, while a file of men with fixed bayonets flanked the column on either side. Whenever they came to a German post they heard only the lugubrious, ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets.

Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left-hand road and would pass through Sedan; perhaps he would have an opportunity of seeing his sister Henriette. All the pleasure, however, that he had experienced at his release from that foul cesspool where he had spent nine days of agony was dashed to the ground and destroyed during the three-mile march from the peninsula of Iges to the city. It was but another form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners, shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock of sheep with the dog at their heels. There is no spectacle in all the world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished troops being marched off into captivity under guard of their conquerors, without arms, their empty hands hanging idly at their sides; and these men, clad in rags and tatters, besmeared with the filth in which they had lain for more than a week, gaunt and wasted after their long fast, were more like vagabonds than soldiers; they resembled loathsome, horribly dirty tramps, whom the gendarmes would have picked up along the highways and consigned to the lockup. As they passed through the Faubourg of Torcy, where men paused on the sidewalks and women came to their doors to regard them with mournful, compassionate interest, the blush of shame rose to Maurice's cheek, he hung his head and a bitter taste came to his mouth.

Jean, whose epidermis was thicker and mind more practical, thought only of their stupidity in not having brought off with them a loaf of bread apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt departure they had even gone off without breakfasting, and hunger soon made its presence felt by the nerveless sensation in their legs. Others among the prisoners appeared to be in the same boat, for they held out money, begging the people of the place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an extremely tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold piece, extending it above the heads of the soldiers of the escort; and he was almost frantic that he could purchase nothing. Just at that time Jean, who had been keeping his eyes open, perceived a bakery a short distance ahead, before which were piled a dozen loaves of bread; he immediately got his money ready and, as the column passed, tossed the baker a five-franc piece and endeavored to secure two of the loaves; then, when the Prussian who was marching at his side pushed him back roughly into the ranks, he protested, demanding that he be allowed to recover his money from the baker. But at that juncture the captain commanding the detachment, a short, bald-headed man with a brutal expression of face, came hastening up; he raised his revolver over Jean's head as if about to strike him with the butt, declaring with an oath that he would brain the first man that dared to lift a finger. And the rest of the captives continued to shamble on, stirring up the dust of the road with their shuffling feet, with eyes averted and shoulders bowed, cowed and abjectly submissive as a drove of cattle.

"Oh! how good it would seem to slap the fellow's face just once!" murmured Maurice, as if he meant it. "How I should like to let him have just one from the shoulder, and drive his teeth down his dirty throat!"

And during the remainder of their march he could not endure to look on that captain, with his ugly, supercilious face.

They had entered Sedan and were crossing the Pont de Meuse, and the scenes of violence and brutality became more numerous than ever. A woman darted forward and would have embraced a boyish young sergeant—likely she was his mother—and was repulsed with a blow from a musket-butt that felled her to the ground. On the Place Turenne the guards hustled and maltreated some citizens because they cast provisions to the prisoners. In the Grande Rue one of the convoy fell in endeavoring to secure a bottle that a lady extended to him, and was assisted to his feet with kicks. For a week now Sedan had witnessed the saddening spectacle of the defeated driven like cattle through its streets, and seemed no more accustomed to it than at the beginning; each time a fresh detachment passed the city was stirred to its very depths by a movement of pity and indignation.

Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like Maurice's, reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him that they might see Delaherche somewhere among the throng. He gave his friend a nudge of the elbow.

"Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street presently, will you?"

They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, indeed, when they became aware of several pairs of eyes turned on the column from one of the tall windows of the factory, and as they drew nearer recognized Delaherche and his wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame Delaherche. They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched with tremulous eagerness to receive them. Maurice saw at once that his sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched the flying loaves, fearing there might none be left for them. They both had raised their arms and were waving them frantically above their head, shouting meanwhile with all the force of their lungs:

"Here we are! This way, this way!"

The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst of their surprise. Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly brightened, and they displayed by the warmth of their gestures the pleasure they experienced in the encounter. There was one solitary loaf left, which Gilberte insisted on throwing with her own hands, and pitched it into Jean's extended arms in such a charmingly awkward way that she gave a winsome laugh at her own expense. Maurice, unable to stop on account of the pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted, in a tone of anxious inquiry:

"And Henriette? Henriette?"

Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was inaudible in the shuffling tramp of so many feet. He seemed to understand that the young man had failed to catch his meaning, for he gesticulated like a semaphore; there was one gesture in particular that he repeated several times, extending his arm with a sweeping motion toward the south, apparently intending to convey the idea of some point in the remote distance: Off there, away off there. Already the head of the column was wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the facade of the factory was lost to sight, together with the kindly faces of the three Delaherches; the last the two friends saw of them was the fluttering of the white handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them a farewell.

"What did he say?" asked Jean.

Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear where there was nothing to be seen. "I don't know; I could not understand him; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear from her."

And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the Prussians urging on the weary men with the brutality of conquerors; the column left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, long-drawn array, hastening their steps, like sheep at whose heels the dogs are snapping.

When they passed through Bazeilles Jean and Maurice thought of Weiss, and cast their eyes about in an effort to distinguish the site of the little house that had been defended with such bravery. While they were at Camp Misery they had heard the woeful tale of slaughter and conflagration that had blotted the pretty village from existence, and the abominations that they now beheld exceeded all they had dreamed of or imagined. At the expiration of twelve days the ruins were smoking still; the tottering walls had fallen in, there were not ten houses standing. It afforded them some small comfort, however, to meet a procession of carts and wheelbarrows loaded with Bavarian helmets and muskets that had been collected after the conflict. That evidence of the chastisement that had been inflicted on those murderers and incendiaries went far toward mitigating the affliction of defeat.

The column was to halt at Douzy to give the men an opportunity to eat breakfast. It was not without much suffering that they reached that place; already the prisoners' strength was giving out, exhausted as they were by their ten days of fasting. Those who the day before had availed of the abundant supplies to gorge themselves were seized with vertigo, their enfeebled legs refused to support their weight, and their gluttony, far from restoring their lost strength, was a further source of weakness to them. The consequence was that, when the train was halted in a meadow to the left of the village, these poor creatures flung themselves upon the ground with no desire to eat. Wine was wanting; some charitable women who came, bringing a few bottles, were driven off by the sentries. One of them in her affright fell and sprained her ankle, and there ensued a painful scene of tears and hysterics, during which the Prussians confiscated the bottles and drank their contents amid jeers and insulting laughter. This tender compassion of the peasants for the poor soldiers who were being led away into captivity was manifested constantly along the route, while it was said the harshness they displayed toward the generals amounted almost to cruelty. At that same Douzy, only a few days previously, the villagers had hooted and reviled a number of paroled officers who were on their way to Pont-a-Mousson. The roads were not safe for general officers; men wearing the blouse—escaped soldiers, or deserters, it may be—fell on them with pitch-forks and endeavored to take their life as traitors, credulously pinning their faith to that legend of bargain and sale which, even twenty years later, was to continue to shed its opprobrium upon those leaders who had commanded armies in that campaign.

Maurice and Jean ate half their bread, and were so fortunate as to have a mouthful of brandy with which to wash it down, thanks to the kindness of a worthy old farmer. When the order was given to resume their advance, however, the distress throughout the convoy was extreme. They were to halt for the night at Mouzon, and although the march was a short one, it seemed as if it would tax the men's strength more severely than they could bear; they could not get on their feet without giving utterance to cries of pain, so stiff did their tired legs become the moment they stopped to rest. Many removed their shoes to relieve their galled and bleeding feet. Dysentery continued to rage; a man fell before they had gone half a mile, and they had to prop him against a wall and leave him. A little further on two others sank at the foot of a hedge, and it was night before an old woman came along and picked them up. All were stumbling, tottering, and dragging themselves along, supporting their forms with canes, which the Prussians, perhaps in derision, had suffered them to cut at the margin of a wood. They were a straggling array of tramps and beggars, covered with sores, haggard, emaciated, and footsore; a sight to bring tears to the eyes of the most stony-hearted. And the guards continued to be as brutally strict as ever; those who for any purpose attempted to leave the ranks were driven back with blows, and the platoon that brought up the rear had orders to prod with their bayonets those who hung back. A sergeant having refused to go further, the captain summoned two of his men and instructed them to seize him, one by either arm, and in this manner the wretched man was dragged over the ground until he agreed to walk. And what made the whole thing more bitter and harder to endure was the utter insignificance of that little pimply-faced, bald-headed officer, so insufferably consequential in his brutality, who took advantage of his knowledge of French to vituperate the prisoners in it in curt, incisive words that cut and stung like the lash of a whip.

"Oh!" Maurice furiously exclaimed, "to get the puppy in my hands and drain him of his blood, drop by drop!"

His powers of endurance were almost exhausted, but it was his rage that he had to choke down, even more than his fatigue, that was cause of his suffering. Everything exasperated him and set on edge his tingling nerves; the harsh notes of the Prussian trumpets particularly, which inspired him with a desire to scream each time he heard them. He felt he should never reach the end of their cruel journey without some outbreak that would bring down on him the utmost severity of the guard. Even now, when traversing the smallest hamlets, he suffered horribly and felt as if he should die with shame to behold the eyes of the women fixed pityingly on him; what would it be when they should enter Germany, and the populace of the great cities should crowd the streets to laugh and jeer at them as they passed? And he pictured to himself the cattle cars into which they would be crowded for transportation, the discomforts and humiliations they would have to suffer on the journey, the dismal life in German fortresses under the leaden, wintry sky. No, no; he would have none of it; better to take the risk of leaving his bones by the roadside on French soil than go and rot off yonder, for months and months, perhaps, in the dark depths of a casemate.

"Listen," he said below his breath to Jean, who was walking at his side; "we will wait until we come to a wood; then we'll break through the guards and run for it among the trees. The Belgian frontier is not far away; we shall have no trouble in finding someone to guide us to it."

Jean, accustomed as he was to look at things coolly and calculate chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, too, in his revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of an escape.

"Have you taken leave of your senses! the guard will fire on us, and we shall both be killed."

But Maurice replied there was a chance the soldiers might not hit them, and then, after all, if their aim should prove true, it would not matter so very much.

"Very well!" rejoined Jean, "but what is going to become of us afterward, dressed in uniform as we are? You know perfectly well that the country is swarming in every direction with Prussian troops; we could not go far unless we had other clothes to put on. No, no, my lad, it's too risky; I'll not let you attempt such an insane project."

And he took the young man's arm and held it pressed against his side, as if they were mutually sustaining each other, continuing meanwhile to chide and soothe him in a tone that was at once rough and affectionate.

Just then the sound of a whispered conversation close behind them caused them to turn and look around. It was Chouteau and Loubet, who had left the peninsula of Iges that morning at the same time as they, and whom they had managed to steer clear of until the present moment. Now the two worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have overheard Maurice's words, his plan for escaping through the mazes of a forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf. His breath was hot upon their neck as he murmured:

"Say, comrades, count us in on that. That's a capital idea of yours, to skip the ranch. Some of the boys have gone already, and sure we're not going to be such fools as to let those bloody pigs drag us away like dogs into their infernal country. What do you say, eh? Shall we four make a break for liberty?"

Maurice's excitement was rising to fever-heat again; Jean turned and said to the tempter:

"If you are so anxious to get away, why don't you go? there's nothing to prevent you. What are you up to, any way?"

He flinched a little before the corporal's direct glance, and allowed the true motive of his proposal to escape him.

"Dame! it would be better that four should share the undertaking. One or two of us might have a chance of getting off."

Then Jean, with an emphatic shake of the head, refused to have anything whatever to do with the matter; he distrusted the gentleman, he said, as he was afraid he would play them some of his dirty tricks. He had to exert all his authority with Maurice to retain him on his side, for at that very moment an opportunity presented itself for attempting the enterprise; they were passing the border of a small but very dense wood, separated from the road only by the width of a field that was covered by a thick growth of underbrush. Why should they not dash across that field and vanish in the thicket? was there not safety for them in that direction?

Loubet had so far said nothing. His mind was made up, however, that he was not going to Germany to run to seed in one of their dungeons, and his nose, mobile as a hound's, was sniffing the atmosphere, his shifty eyes were watching for the favorable moment. He would trust to his legs and his mother wit, which had always helped him out of his scrapes thus far. His decision was quickly made.

"Ah, zut! I've had enough of it; I'm off!"

He broke through the line of the escort, and with a single bound was in the field, Chouteau following his example and running at his side. Two of the Prussian soldiers immediately started in pursuit, but the others seemed dazed, and it did not occur to them to send a ball after the fugitives. The entire episode was so soon over that it was not easy to note its different phases. Loubet dodged and doubled among the bushes and it appeared as if he would certainly succeed in getting off, while Chouteau, less nimble, was on the point of being captured, but the latter, summoning up all his energies in a supreme burst of speed, caught up with his comrade and dexterously tripped him; and while the two Prussians were lumbering up to secure the fallen man, the other darted into the wood and vanished. The guard, finally remembering that they had muskets, fired a few ineffectual shots, and there was some attempt made to search the thicket, which resulted in nothing.

Meantime the two soldiers were pummeling poor Loubet, who had not regained his feet. The captain came running up, beside himself with anger, and talked of making an example, and with this encouragement kicks and cuffs and blows from musket-butts continued to rain down upon the wretched man with such fury that when at last they stood him on his feet he was found to have an arm broken and his skull fractured. A peasant came along, driving a cart, in which he was placed, but he died before reaching Mouzon.

"You see," was all that Jean said to Maurice.

The two friends cast a look in the direction of the wood that sufficiently expressed their sentiments toward the scoundrel who had gained his freedom by such base means, while their hearts were stirred with feelings of deepest compassion for the poor devil whom he had made his victim, a guzzler and a toper, who certainly did not amount to much, but a merry, good-natured fellow all the same, and nobody's fool. And that was always the way with those who kept bad company, Jean moralizingly observed: they might be very fly, but sooner or later a bigger rascal was sure to come along and make a meal of them.

Notwithstanding this terrible lesson Maurice, upon reaching Mouzon, was still possessed by his unalterable determination to attempt an escape. The prisoners were in such an exhausted condition when they reached the place that the Prussians had to assist them to set up the few tents that were placed at their disposal. The camp was formed near the town, on low and marshy ground, and the worst of the business was that another convoy having occupied the spot the day before, the field was absolutely invisible under the superincumbent filth; it was no better than a common cesspool, of unimaginable foulness. The sole means the men had of self-protection was to scatter over the ground some large flat stones, of which they were so fortunate as to find a number in the vicinity. By way of compensation they had a somewhat less hard time of it that evening; the strictness of their guardians was relaxed a little once the captain had disappeared, doubtless to seek the comforts of an inn. The sentries began by winking at the irregularity of the proceeding when some children came along and commenced to toss fruit, apples and pears, over their heads to the prisoners; the next thing was they allowed the people of the neighborhood to enter the lines, so that in a short time the camp was swarming with impromptu merchants, men and women, offering for sale bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who had money had no trouble in supplying their needs so far as eating, drinking, and smoking were concerned. A bustling animation prevailed in the dim twilight; it was like a corner of the market place in a town where a fair is being held.

But Maurice drew Jean behind their tent and again said to him in his nervous, flighty way:

"I can't stand it; I shall make an effort to get away as soon as it is dark. To-morrow our course will take us away from the frontier; it will be too late."

"Very well, we'll try it," Jean replied, his powers of resistance exhausted, his imagination, too, seduced by the pleasing idea of freedom. "They can't do more than kill us."

After that he began to scrutinize more narrowly the venders who surrounded him on every side. There were some among the comrades who had succeeded in supplying themselves with blouse and trousers, and it was reported that some of the charitable people of the place had regular stocks of garments on hand, designed to assist prisoners in escaping. And almost immediately his attention was attracted to a pretty girl, a tall blonde of sixteen with a pair of magnificent eyes, who had on her arm a basket containing three loaves of bread. She was not crying her wares like the rest; an anxious, engaging smile played on her red lips, her manner was hesitating. He looked her steadily in the face; their glances met and for an instant remained confounded. Then she came up, with the embarrassed smile of a girl unaccustomed to such business.

"Do you wish to buy some bread?"

He made no reply, but questioned her by an imperceptible movement of the eyelids. On her answering yes, by an affirmative nod of the head, he asked in a very low tone of voice:

"There is clothing?"

"Yes, under the loaves."

Then she began to cry her merchandise aloud: "Bread! bread! who'll buy my bread?" But when Maurice would have slipped a twenty-franc piece into her fingers she drew back her hand abruptly and ran away, leaving the basket with them. The last they saw of her was the happy, tender look in her pretty eyes, as in the distance she turned and smiled on them.

When they were in possession of the basket Jean and Maurice found difficulties staring them in the face. They had strayed away from their tent, and in their agitated condition felt they should never succeed in finding it again. Where were they to bestow themselves? and how effect their change of garments? It seemed to them that the eyes of the entire assemblage were focused on the basket, which Jean carried with an awkward air, as if it contained dynamite, and that its contents must be plainly visible to everyone. It would not do to waste time, however; they must be up and doing. They stepped into the first vacant tent they came to, where each of them hurriedly slipped on a pair of trousers and donned a blouse, having first deposited their discarded uniforms in the basket, which they placed on the ground in a dark corner of the tent and abandoned to its fate. There was a circumstance that gave them no small uneasiness, however; they found only one head-covering, a knitted woolen cap, which Jean insisted Maurice should wear. The former, fearing his bare-headedness might excite suspicion, was hanging about the precincts of the camp on the lookout for a covering of some description, when it occurred to him to purchase his hat from an extremely dirty old man who was selling cigars.

"Brussels cigars, three sous apiece, two for five!"

Customs regulations were in abeyance since the battle of Sedan, and the imports of Belgian merchandise had been greatly stimulated. The old man had been making a handsome profit from his traffic, but that did not prevent him from driving a sharp bargain when he understood the reason why the two men wanted to buy his hat, a greasy old affair of felt with a great hole in its crown. He finally consented to part with it for two five-franc pieces, grumbling that he should certainly have a cold in his head.

Then Jean had another idea, which was neither more nor less than to buy out the old fellow's stock in trade, the two dozen cigars that remained unsold. The bargain effected, he pulled his hat down over his eyes and began to cry in the itinerant hawker's drawling tone:

"Here you are, Brussels cigars, two for three sous, two for three sous!"

Their safety was now assured. He signaled Maurice to go on before. It happened to the latter to discover an umbrella lying on the grass; he picked it up and, as a few drops of rain began to fall just then, opened it tranquilly as they were about to pass the line of sentries.

"Two for three sous, two for three sous, Brussels cigars!"

It took Jean less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of merchandise. The men came crowding about him with chaff and laughter: a reasonable fellow, that; he didn't rob poor chaps of their money! The Prussians themselves were attracted by such unheard-of bargains, and he was compelled to trade with them. He had all the time been working his way toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two cigars went to a big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not speak a word of French.

"Don't walk so fast, confound it!" Jean breathed in a whisper behind Maurice's back. "You'll have them after us."

Their legs seemed inclined to run away with them, although they did their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a great effort to pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a number of people were collected before an inn. Some villagers were chatting peaceably with German soldiers, and the two runaways made a pretense of listening, and even hazarded a few observations on the weather and the probability of the rain continuing during the night. They trembled when they beheld a man, a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively, but as he smiled with an air of great good-nature they thought they might venture to address him, asking in a whisper:

"Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir?"

"Yes, it is; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and afterward cut across the fields, to the left."

Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the slumbering trees, where no sound reached their ears, where nothing stirred and they believed their safety was assured them, they sank into each other's arms in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion. Maurice was sobbing violently, while big tears trickled slowly down Jean's cheeks. It was the natural revulsion of their overtaxed feelings after the long-protracted ordeal they had passed through, the joy and delight of their mutual assurance that their troubles were at an end, and that thenceforth suffering and they were to be strangers. And united by the memory of what they had endured together in ties closer than those of brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild embrace, and the kiss that they exchanged at that moment seemed to them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they had never experienced before in all their life; a kiss such as they never could receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying friendship, giving additional confirmation to the certainty that thereafter their two hearts would be but one, for all eternity.

When they had separated at last: "Little one," said Jean, in a trembling voice, "it is well for us to be here, but we are not at the end. We must look about a bit and try to find our bearings."

Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of the frontier, declared that all they had to do was to pursue a straight course, whereon they resumed their way, moving among the trees in Indian file with the greatest circumspection, until they reached the edge of the thicket. There, mindful of the injunction of the kind-hearted villager, they were about to turn to the left and take a short cut across the fields, but on coming to a road, bordered with a row of poplars on either side they beheld directly in their path the watch-fire of a Prussian detachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing his beat, gleamed in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their soup and conversing; the fugitives stood not upon the order of their going, but plunged into the recesses of the wood again, in mortal terror lest they might be pursued. They thought they heard the sound of voices, of footsteps on their trail, and thus for over an hour they wandered at random among the copses, until all idea of locality was obliterated from their brain; now racing like affrighted animals through the underbrush, again brought up all standing, the cold sweat trickling down their face, before a tree in which they beheld a Prussian. And the end of it was that they again came out on the poplar-bordered road not more than ten paces from the sentry, and quite near the soldiers, who were toasting their toes in tranquil comfort.

"Hang the luck!" grumbled Jean. "This must be an enchanted wood."

This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of snapping twigs and rolling stones betrayed them. And as they did not answer the challenge of the sentry, but made off at the double-quick, the men seized their muskets and sent a shower of bullets crashing through the thicket, into which the fugitives had plunged incontinently.

"Nom de Dieu!" ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain.

He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in the calf of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it drove him up against a tree.

"Are you hurt?" Maurice anxiously inquired.

"Yes, and in the leg, worse luck!"

They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread expectancy of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels; but the firing had ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense stillness that had again settled down upon the wood and the surrounding country. It was evident that the Prussians had no inclination to beat up the thicket.

Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet; forced back a groan. Maurice sustained him with his arm.

"Can't you walk?"

"I should say not!" He gave way to a fit of rage, he, always so self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have thumped himself. "God in Heaven, if this is not hard luck! to have one's legs knocked from under him at the very time he is most in need of them! It's too bad, too bad, by my soul it is! Go on, you, and put yourself in safety!"

But Maurice laughed quietly as he answered:

"That is silly talk!"

He took his friend's arm and helped him along, for neither of them had any desire to linger there. When, laboriously and by dint of heroic effort, they had advanced some half-dozen paces further, they halted again with renewed alarm at beholding before them a house, standing at the margin of the wood, apparently a sort of farmhouse. Not a light was visible at any of the windows, the open courtyard gate yawned upon the dark and deserted dwelling. And when they plucked up their courage a little and ventured to enter the courtyard, great was their surprise to find a horse standing there with a saddle on his back, with nothing to indicate the why or wherefore of his being there. Perhaps it was the owner's intention to return, perhaps he was lying behind a bush with a bullet in his brain. They never learned how it was.

But Maurice had conceived a new scheme, which appeared to afford him great satisfaction.

"See here, the frontier is too far away; we should never succeed in reaching it without a guide. What do you say to changing our plan and going to Uncle Fouchard's, at Remilly? I am so well acquainted with every inch of the road that I'm sure I could take you there with my eyes bandaged. Don't you think it's a good idea, eh? I'll put you on this horse, and I suppose Uncle Fouchard will grumble, but he'll take us in."

Before starting he wished to take a look at the injured leg. There were two orifices; the ball appeared to have entered the limb and passed out, fracturing the tibia in its course. The flow of blood had not been great; he did nothing more than bandage the upper part of the calf tightly with his handkerchief.

"Do you fly, and leave me here," Jean said again.

"Hold your tongue; you are silly!"

When Jean was seated firmly in the saddle Maurice took the bridle and they made a start. It was somewhere about eleven o'clock, and he hoped to make the journey in three hours, even if they should be unable to proceed faster than a walk. A difficulty that he had not thought of until then, however, presented itself to his mind and for a moment filled him with consternation: how were they to cross the Meuse in order to get to the left bank? The bridge at Mouzon would certainly be guarded. At last he remembered that there was a ferry lower down the stream, at Villers, and trusting to luck to befriend him, he shaped his course for that village, striking across the meadows and tilled fields of the right bank. All went well enough at first; they had only to dodge a cavalry patrol which forced them to hide in the shadow of a wall and remain there half an hour. Then the rain began to come down in earnest and his progress became more laborious, compelled as he was to tramp through the sodden fields beside the horse, which fortunately showed itself to be a fine specimen of the equine race, and perfectly gentle. On reaching Villers he found that his trust in the blind goddess, Fortune, had not been misplaced; the ferryman, who, at that late hour, had just returned from setting a Bavarian officer across the river, took them at once and landed them on the other shore without delay or accident.

And it was not until they reached the village, where they narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of the pickets who were stationed along the entire length of the Remilly road, that their dangers and hardships really commenced; again they were obliged to take to the fields, feeling their way along blind paths and cart-tracks that could scarcely be discerned in the darkness. The most trivial obstacle sufficed to drive them a long way out of their course. They squeezed through hedges, scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches, forced a passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling rain, had sunk down crosswise on his saddle in a condition of semi-consciousness, holding on with both hands by the horse's mane, while Maurice, who had slipped the bridle over his right arm, had to steady him by the legs to keep him from tumbling to the ground. For more than a league, for two long, weary hours that seemed like an eternity, did they toil onward in this fatiguing way; floundering, stumbling, slipping in such a manner that it seemed at every moment as if men and beast must land together in a heap at the bottom of some descent. The spectacle they presented was one of utter, abject misery, besplashed with mud, the horse trembling in every limb, the man upon his back a helpless mass, as if at his last gasp, the other, wild-eyed and pale as death, keeping his feet only by an effort of fraternal love. Day was breaking; it was not far from five o'clock when at last they came to Remilly.

In the courtyard of his little farmhouse, which was situated at the extremity of the pass of Harancourt, overlooking the village, Father Fouchard was stowing away in his carriole the carcasses of two sheep that he had slaughtered the day before. The sight of his nephew, coming to him at that hour and in that sorry plight, caused him such perturbation of spirit that, after the first explanatory words, he roughly cried:

"You want me to take you in, you and your friend? and then settle matters with the Prussians afterward, I suppose. I'm much obliged to you, but no! I might as well die right straight off and have done with it."

He did not go so far, however, as to prohibit Maurice and Prosper from taking Jean from the horse and laying him on the great table in the kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster from her bed and slipped it beneath the head of the wounded man, who was still unconscious. But it irritated the old fellow to see the man lying on his table; he grumbled and fretted, saying that the kitchen was no place for him; why did they not take him away to the hospital at once? since there fortunately was a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the old schoolhouse; and there was a big room in it, with everything nice and comfortable.

"To the hospital!" Maurice hotly replied, "and have the Prussians pack him off to Germany as soon as he is well, for you know they treat all the wounded as prisoners of war. Do you take me for a fool, uncle? I did not bring him here to give him up."

Things were beginning to look dubious, the uncle was threatening to pitch them out upon the road, when someone mentioned Henriette's name.

"What about Henriette?" inquired the young man.

And he learned that his sister had been an inmate of the house at Remilly for the last two days; her affliction had weighed so heavily on her that life at Sedan, where her existence had hitherto been a happy one, was become a burden greater than she could bear. Chancing to meet with Doctor Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was acquainted, her conversation with him had been the means of bringing her to take up her abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she had a little bedroom, in order to devote herself entirely to the care of the sufferers in the neighboring hospital. That alone, she said, would serve to quiet her bitter memories. She paid her board and was the means of introducing many small comforts into the life of the farmhouse, which caused Father Fouchard to regard her with an eye of favor. The weather was always fine with him, provided he was making money.

"Ah! so my sister is here," said Maurice. "That must have been what M. Delaherche wished to tell me, with his gestures that I could not understand. Very well; if she is here, that settles it; we shall remain."

Notwithstanding his fatigue he started off at once in quest of her at the ambulance, where she had been on duty during the preceding night, while the uncle cursed his luck that kept him from being off with the carriole to sell his mutton among the neighboring villages, so long as the confounded business that he had got mixed up in remained unfinished.

When Maurice returned with Henriette they caught the old man making a critical examination of the horse, that Prosper had led away to the stable. The animal seemed to please him; he was knocked up, but showed signs of strength and endurance. The young man laughed and told his uncle he might have him as a gift if he fancied him, while Henriette, taking her relative aside, assured him Jean should be no expense to him; that she would take charge of him and nurse him, and he might have the little room behind the cow-stables, where no Prussian would ever think to look for him. And Father Fouchard, still wearing a very sulky face and but half convinced that there was anything to be made out of the affair, finally closed the discussion by jumping into his carriole and driving off, leaving her at liberty to act as she pleased.

It took Henriette but a few minutes, with the assistance of Silvine and Prosper, to put the room in order; then she had Jean brought in and they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he giving no sign of life during the operation save to mutter some unintelligible words. He opened his eyes and looked about him, but seemed not to be conscious of anyone's presence in the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to be aware how utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a glass of wine and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from the yesterday's dinner, when Doctor Dalichamp came in, as was his daily custom previous to visiting the hospital, and the young man, in his anxiety for his friend, mustered up his strength to follow him, together with his sister, to the bedside of the patient.

The doctor was a short, thick-set man, with a big round head, on which the hair, as well as the fringe of beard about his face, had long since begun to be tinged with gray. The skin of his ruddy, mottled face was tough and indurated as a peasant's, spending as he did most of his time in the open air, always on the go to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; while the large, bright eyes, the massive nose, indicative of obstinacy, and the benignant if somewhat sensual mouth bore witness to the lifelong charities and good works of the honest country doctor; a little brusque at times, not a man of genius, but whom many years of practice in his profession had made an excellent healer.

When he had examined Jean, still in a comatose state, he murmured:

"I am very much afraid that amputation will be necessary."

The words produced a painful impression on Maurice and Henriette. Presently, however, he added:

"Perhaps we may be able to save the leg, but it will require the utmost care and attention, and will take a very long time. For the moment his physical and mental depression is such that the only thing to do is to let him sleep. To-morrow we shall know more."

Then, having applied a dressing to the wound, he turned to Maurice, whom he had known in bygone days, when he was a boy.

"And you, my good fellow, would be better off in bed than sitting there."

The young man continued to gaze before him into vacancy, as if he had not heard. In the confused hallucination that was due to his fatigue he developed a kind of delirium, a supersensitive nervous excitation that embraced all he had suffered in mind and body since the beginning of the campaign. The spectacle of his friend's wretched state, his own condition, scarce less pitiful, defeated, his hands tied, good for nothing, the reflection that all those heroic efforts had culminated in such disaster, all combined to incite him to frantic rebellion against destiny. At last he spoke.

"It is not ended; no, no! we have not seen the end, and I must go away. Since he must lie there on his back for weeks, for months, perhaps, I cannot stay; I must go, I must go at once. You will assist me, won't you, doctor? you will supply me with the means to escape and get back to Paris?"

Pale and trembling, Henriette threw her arms about him and caught him to her bosom.

"What words are those you speak? enfeebled as you are, after all the suffering you have endured! but think not I shall let you go; you shall stay here with me! Have you not paid the debt you owe your country? and should you not think of me, too, whom you would leave to loneliness? of me, who have nothing now in all the wide world save you?"

Their tears flowed and were mingled. They held each other in a wild tumultuous embrace, with that fond affection which, in twins, often seems as if it antedated existence. But for all that his exaltation did not subside, but assumed a higher pitch.

"I tell you I must go. Should I not go I feel I should die of grief and shame. You can have no idea how my blood boils and seethes in my veins at the thought of remaining here in idleness. I tell you that this business is not going to end thus, that we must be avenged. On whom, on what? Ah! that I cannot tell; but avenged we must and shall be for such misfortune, in order that we may yet have courage to live on!"

Doctor Dalichamp, who had been watching the scene with intense interest, cautioned Henriette by signal to make no reply. Maurice would doubtless be more rational after he should have slept; and sleep he did, all that day and all the succeeding night, for more than twenty hours, and never stirred hand or foot. When he awoke next morning, however, he was as inflexible as ever in his determination to go away. The fever had subsided; he was gloomy and restless, in haste to withdraw himself from influences that he feared might weaken his patriotic fervor. His sister, with many tears, made up her mind that he must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor Dalichamp, when he came to make his morning visit, promised to do what he could to facilitate the young man's escape by turning over to him the papers of a hospital attendant who had died recently at Raucourt. It was arranged that Maurice should don the gray blouse with the red cross of Geneva on its sleeve and pass through Belgium, thence to make his way as best he might to Paris, access to which was as yet uninterrupted.

He did not leave the house that day, keeping himself out of sight and waiting for night to come. He scarcely opened his mouth, although he did make an attempt to enlist the new farm-hand in his enterprise.

"Say, Prosper, don't you feel as if you would like to go back and have one more look at the Prussians?"

The ex-chasseur d'Afrique, who was eating a cheese sandwich, stopped and held his knife suspended in the air.

"It don't strike me that it is worth while, from what we were allowed to see of them before. Why should you wish me to go back there, when the only use our generals can find for the cavalry is to send it in after the battle is ended and let it be cut to pieces? No, faith, I'm sick of the business, giving us such dirty work as that to do!" There was silence between them for a moment; then he went on, doubtless to quiet the reproaches of his conscience as a soldier: "And then the work is too heavy here just now; the plowing is just commencing, and then there'll be the fall sowing to be looked after. We must think of the farm work, mustn't we? for fighting is well enough in its way, but what would become of us if we should cease to till the ground? You see how it is; I can't leave my work. Not that I am particularly in love with Father Fouchard, for I doubt very strongly if I shall ever see the color of his money, but the beasties are beginning to take to me, and faith! when I was up there in the Old Field this morning, and gave a look at that d——d Sedan lying yonder in the distance, you can't tell how good it made me feel to be guiding my oxen and driving the plow through the furrow, all alone in the bright sunshine."

As soon as it was fairly dark, Doctor Dalichamp came driving up in his old gig. It was his intention to see Maurice to the frontier. Father Fouchard, well pleased to be rid of one of his guests at least, stepped out upon the road to watch and make sure there were none of the enemy's patrols prowling in the neighborhood, while Silvine put a few stitches in the blouse of the defunct ambulance man, on the sleeve of which the red cross of the corps was prominently displayed. The doctor, before taking his place in the vehicle, examined Jean's leg anew, but could not as yet promise that he would be able to save it. The patient was still in a profound lethargy, recognizing no one, never opening his mouth to speak, and Maurice was about to leave him without the comfort of a farewell, when, bending over to give him a last embrace, he saw him open his eyes to their full extent; the lips parted, and in a faint voice he said:

"You are going away?" And in reply to their astonished looks: "Yes, I heard what you said, though I could not stir. Take the remainder of the money, then. Put your hand in my trousers' pocket and take it."

Each of them had remaining nearly two hundred francs of the sum they had received from the corps paymaster.

But Maurice protested. "The money!" he exclaimed. "Why, you have more need of it than I, who have the use of both my legs. Two hundred francs will be abundantly sufficient to see me to Paris, and to get knocked in the head afterward won't cost me a penny. I thank you, though, old fellow, all the same, and good-by and good-luck to you; thanks, too, for having always been so good and thoughtful, for, had it not been for you, I should certainly be lying now at the bottom of some ditch, like a dead dog."

Jean made a deprecating gesture. "Hush. You owe me nothing; we are quits. Would not the Prussians have gathered me in out there the other day had you not picked me up and carried me off on your back? and yesterday again you saved me from their clutches. Twice have I been beholden to you for my life, and now I am in your debt. Ah, how unhappy I shall be when I am no longer with you!" His voice trembled and tears rose to his eyes. "Kiss me, dear boy!"

They embraced, and, as it had been in the wood the day before, that kiss set the seal to the brotherhood of dangers braved in each other's company, those few weeks of soldier's life in common that had served to bind their hearts together with closer ties than years of ordinary friendship could have done. Days of famine, sleepless nights, the fatigue of the weary march, death ever present to their eyes, these things made the foundation on which their affection rested. When two hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to sever the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before, among the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of their new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in their bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt unutterable. Would they meet again some day? and how, under what circumstances of sorrow or of gladness?

Doctor Dalichamp had clambered into his gig and was calling to Maurice. The young man threw all his heart and soul into the embrace he gave his sister Henriette, who, pale as death in her black mourning garments, looked on his face in silence through her tears.

"He whom I leave to your care is my brother. Watch over him, love him as I love him!"

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