closed their doors.
Just then an unforeseen meeting put the finishing touch to Maurice's rage. A dull, continuous rumbling was heard from afar; it was the reserve artillery, which had been the last to start, and the first detachment of which suddenly debouched round a turn of the road, the laggard linesmen having barely time to throw themselves into the fields. There was an entire artillery regiment of six squadrons marching in column, the colonel in the centre and each officer in his place, and they all clattered along at equal, carefully observed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, horses, and men. And in the fifth squadron Maurice recognised his cousin Honoré's gun. The quartermaster was there, proudly erect on his horse, to the left of the front driver, Adolphe, a stalwart, fair-complexioned man, who bestrode a sturdy chestnut, which admirably matched the off-horse trotting beside it; whilst Adolphe's chum, Louis, the gunner, a dark little fellow, would be seen among the six men seated in pairs on the ammunition boxes. They all seemed to have grown taller to Maurice, who had become acquainted with them at the camp, and the gun, drawn by its four horses and followed by its caisson, to which six other horses were harnessed, appeared to him as dazzling as a sun, well groomed and furbished, idolised by all its people, man and beast, who clung to it as it were with the discipline and attachment of a gallant family; and fearfully was Maurice's suffering increased when he saw his cousin Honoré dart a contemptuous glance at all the laggards, and then look quite stupefied on perceiving him among this flock of unarmed men. The defiling was nearly over already. The train of the batteries, the ammunition and forage waggons, the field smithies passed by; and then in a last cloud of dust came the spare men and horses, who vanished from sight at another bend of the road, amid the gradually subsiding clatter of wheels and hoofs.
'Pooh!' said Loubet, 'it's easy enough to swagger when you travel about in a carriage.'
The staff had found Altkirch unoccupied. There were no Prussians there as yet. Still fearing, however, that he was being pursued, and that the enemy might appear at any moment, General Douay had determined upon pushing on to Dannemarie, where the first detachments only arrived at five in the evening. Eight o'clock had struck, and night was gathering in, when the regiments, in frightful confusion and reduced to half their strength, commenced preparations for bivouacking. The men were quite exhausted, sinking both with hunger and fatigue. The laggards, the lamentable and interminable tag-rag and bobtail of the army, the cripples and mutineers scattered along the roads, continued arriving, now one by one, now in little bands, until ten o'clock, and had to search in the darkness for their companies which they could not find.
As soon as Jean had joined his regiment he went to look for Lieutenant Rochas to report to him all that had happened, and found him and Captain Beaudoin conferring with the colonel at the door of a little inn, all three of them visibly preoccupied about the roll call, and anxious as to what had become of their men. At the first words the corporal addressed to the lieutenant, Colonel de Vineuil, overhearing him, made him approach and relate everything. There was an expression of deep despondency on the colonel's yellow face, lighted by eyes that seemed all the blacker on account of the whiteness of his thick snowy hair and long drooping moustaches.
'Half a dozen of these scamps must be shot, sir,' exclaimed Captain Beaudoin, without waiting for M. de Vineuil to give his opinion.
Lieutenant Rochas nodded assent, but the colonel made a gesture of helplessness: 'There are too many of them. Nearly seven hundred. How could you manage—whom could you select? Besides, to tell the truth, the general won't have it. He's quite paternal, and says he never punished a single man in Algeria. No, no; I can do nothing. It's terrible.'
'It is terrible,' boldly rejoined the captain, 'it's the end of everything.'
Jean was retiring, when he heard Surgeon-Major Bouroche, whom he had not seen, growl in an undertone on the threshold of the inn that without discipline and punishments the army was done for. Before a week was over the men would be kicking their officers, whereas if a few of these fine fellows had been shot at once, the others, perhaps, would have profited by the lesson.
Nobody was punished. With commendable forethought some officers of the rear-guard escorting the army train had caused the knapsacks and guns bestrewing either side of the roads to be picked up. Only a small number was missing, and the men were re-armed at daybreak, furtively as it were, so as to hush up the affair. Orders had been given to raise the camp at five o'clock, but the men were roused at four, and the retreat on Belfort was hastened, the commanders being convinced that the Prussians were now only two or three leagues away. The men had to content themselves with biscuit, and with nothing to warm their stomachs they remained quite foundered after that brief, feverish night. And again that morning anything like an orderly march was prevented by the precipitate departure.
The day was an infinitely sad one, far worse than the day before. The character of the scenery had changed; they had entered a mountainous country, the roads climbed and descended slopes planted with fir trees; and the narrow valleys, bushy with furze, were spangled with golden flowers. But across that stretch of country so bright in the August sunrays, panic, growing more and more frenzied, had been sweeping since the previous day. A fresh despatch, instructing the mayors to warn the inhabitants to place their valuables in safety, had brought the general terror to a climax. Was the enemy at hand then? Would they even have time enough to escape? And they all fancied they could hear the roar of the invasion coming nearer and nearer; that sound like the dull roll of an overflowing river which had been swelling in volume ever since their departure from Mulhausen, and which now, at each village they came to, was increased by some fresh scene of terror, fraught with wailing and uproar.
Maurice marched along like a somnambulist, with his feet tingling, and his shoulders crushed by his gun and knapsack. He no longer thought of anything; at the sights that met his gaze he fancied himself in a nightmare; and he was no longer conscious of his comrades' tramp, realising merely that Jean was at his side, worn out with the same weariness and the same grief as himself. The villages they passed through presented a lamentable, pitiful aspect, such as to fill the heart with poignant anguish. As soon as the retreating troops, the worn-out, footsore, straggling soldiers appeared, the inhabitants began to bestir themselves, and hasten their flight. They had felt so easy in mind only a fortnight previously; all Alsace, indeed, had awaited the war with a smile, convinced that the fighting would take place in Germany. But now France was invaded, and the tempest was falling upon their heads, around their houses, and over their fields like one of those terrible hail and thunder storms which ruin an entire province in a couple of hours.
Before the doors of the houses, amid a scene of fearful confusion, men were loading carts and piling up articles of furniture, careless whether they broke them or not; and from the upper windows women flung out a last mattress or lowered a baby's cradle which had been well-nigh forgotten. And the baby having been strapped inside it, the cradle was perched atop of the load, among the upturned legs of the chairs and tables. In another vehicle, standing behind, the poor, infirm, old grandfather was being bound to a wardrobe that he might be carted away like some household utensil. Then there were those who had no cart, and who piled a few goods and chattels into a wheelbarrow, and others who went off with simply a bundle of clothes under their arm, and others too who had only thought of saving their parlour clock, which they pressed to their hearts as though it had been an infant. It was impossible to remove everything, and many articles of furniture and heavy bundles of linen lay abandoned in the ditches. Some folks before leaving fastened up their homes, and the houses with their doors and shutters securely closed looked quite dead; but the majority of the people, in their haste and the despairing conviction that everything would be destroyed, left their old homesteads open, with doors and windows gaping widely; and these poor empty houses, through which the wind could blow as it listed, and whence the very cats had fled, shuddering at what was about to happen, were the saddest of all, sad like the houses of a captured town depopulated by fright. At each succeeding village the spectacle became more and more pitiable, the number of those who were moving and hastening away became larger and larger, and there was shaking of fists, swearing of oaths, and shedding of tears
