and confusion.
But it was especially whilst he followed the high road through the open country that Maurice felt his anguish stifling him. As they drew nearer to Belfort the train of runaways closed up and became a continuous procession. Ah! the poor people who imagined they would find a shelter-place under the walls of the stronghold. The man belaboured the horse, and the woman followed, dragging the children with her. Entire families, bending beneath their burdens, and with the little ones, who were unable to keep up, lagging behind, were hastening over the blinding white roads which the fiery sun was heating. Many of the fugitives had taken off their shoes that they might cover the ground more rapidly, and were walking along barefooted; and mothers with their dress-bodies unfastened were giving the breast to crying infants, without pausing for a moment in their march.
In the panic-fraught breeze which dishevelled their hair and lashed their hastily donned garments, many of the runaways looked round with scared faces, and made gestures with trembling hands as though to shut out all view of the horizon. Others, farmers, accompanied by all their servants, were hastening across the fields, driving before them their herds and flocks—their sheep, cows, oxen and horses, which they had turned out with blows from their sheds and stables. They were making for the mountain gorges, the high table-lands, the deserted forests, and the sight of them recalled the memory of those great migrations of ancient times, when invaded nations made way for the conquering barbarians. They intended to live under canvas in some lonely rock-girt spot, so far from the roads that not one of the enemy's soldiers would dare to approach it. And the flying clouds that enveloped them were soon wafted away behind the clumps of fir trees, whilst the lowing of the cattle and the thuds of their hoofs grew more and more indistinct. Meantime, the flood of vehicles and wayfarers pressed along the road, hampering the march of the troops and becoming, as one approached Belfort, so compact and strong—with a force like the irresistible current of a spreading torrent—that the soldiers were repeatedly compelled to halt.
During one of those brief halts Maurice beheld a scene which he long remembered, as one might remember a blow dealt one in the face. There was a solitary house by the roadside, the abode of some poor peasant, whose meagre patch of land stretched behind it. Firmly rooted to his native soil, this man had been unwilling to leave his fields, feeling that if he did so he must needs tear his flesh to shreds. So he remained there, and could be seen crouching on a bench in a low room, whence with empty eyes he watched the passing soldiers, whose retreat was about to place his ripe corn at the mercy of the invader. Beside him stood a young woman, his wife, with a child in her arms, whilst another child was pulling at her skirts; and all three, mother and children, were sobbing and moaning. Suddenly, however, the door was roughly flung open, and on the threshold appeared the grandmother, a tall, thin, aged woman, who was furiously flourishing her bare arms which looked like knotted cords. Her grey hair, escaping from under her cap, was waving round her gaunt head, and so intense was her rage that the words she shouted were half-stifled in her throat, whence they escaped but indistinctly in an agonising hiccough. At first the soldiers began to laugh. The old lunatic had a fine phiz! But some of her words reached them, and they heard that she was shouting: 'Blackguards! brigands! cowards! cowards!'
In a more and more piercing voice she spat forth, as it were, that insulting epithet—coward. And then the laughter ceased, and a great chill sped through the ranks. The men lowered their heads and looked elsewhere.
'Cowards! cowards! cowards!'
Suddenly the old woman appeared to increase in stature. She raised her spare, tragic figure, draped in a shred of a dress, to its full height; and waving her long arm from west to east with so comprehensive a gesture that it seemed to embrace the entire heavens, she shouted: 'The Rhine is not there, you cowards—the Rhine is over there. Cowards! cowards!'
At last they were resuming their march, and Maurice, whose glance at this moment fell upon Jean's face, saw that the corporal's eyes were full of tears. He was thunderstruck, and his own suffering was increased at the thought that even this brutish peasant had felt the insult—an unmerited one, but to which they must needs submit. Everything then seemed to crumble away in Maurice's poor, aching head, and, overcome both by physical and moral suffering, he could never remember how he had finished the march.
The Seventh Army Corps had required an entire day to cover the fourteen or fifteen miles separating Dannemarie from Belfort; and night was again falling and it was very late when the troops were able to prepare their bivouacs under the walls of the fortress, on the very spot whence they had started four days previously to march against the enemy. Despite the lateness of the hour and their great weariness, the men insisted on lighting their fires and cooking their soupe. It was the first time, for four days, that they had something warm to swallow. And squatting around the fires in the freshening night air, they were all dipping their noses into their basins, and grunts of content were rising on all sides, when a rumour circulated, burst upon, spread through, and stupefied the camp. Two fresh telegrams had arrived at brief intervals. The Prussians had not crossed the Rhine at Markolsheim, and there was no longer a single Prussian at Huningen. The passage of the Rhine at Markolsheim, the pontoon bridge thrown across the river at night, thanks to powerful electric lights—all those alarming stories were mere dreams, the unaccountable hallucinations of the sub-prefect of Schelestadt. As for the army corps that threatened Huningen, the famous army corps of the Black Forest, which had made all Alsace tremble, this was composed of a petty detachment of Wurtembergers—two battalions of foot and a squadron of horse—who by skilful tactics, repeated marching and counter-marching, sudden and unforeseen apparitions, had created a belief in the presence of thirty or forty thousand men. To think the Dannemarie Viaduct had narrowly escaped being blown up that morning! Twenty leagues of prosperous country had been ravaged through an idiotic panic, for no reason whatever; and at thought of all they had seen that dreadful day—the inhabitants flying in terror, driving their cattle into the mountains, and the stream of furniture-laden vehicles flowing towards the town amid a troop of women and children—the soldiers felt thoroughly enraged, and vented their anger in exasperated jeers.
'It's altogether too funny,' stammered Loubet, with his mouth full, as he flourished his spoon. 'So that was the enemy we were taken to fight? There was nobody at all. Twelve leagues forward and twelve back, and not even a mouse anywhere. All that for nothing—for the mere pleasure of getting in a funk!'
Then Chouteau, who was noisily cleaning his basin, soundly rated the generals without naming them: 'The hogs! What idiots they are! As timid as hares. As they bolted like that when there was nobody, what would they have done had they found a real army in front of them?'
Another armful of wood had been flung on the fire that they might enjoy themselves around the tall leaping flame, and Lapoulle, whilst warming his legs, with an air of ecstasy, burst into an idiotic laugh at Chouteau's remarks, though he could not understand them; whereupon Jean, who had hitherto turned a deaf ear to the chatter, ventured to say paternally: 'Can't you be quiet? If you were overheard there might be some unpleasantness.' He, himself, with his simple common sense, was disgusted with the stupidity of the commanders. Still, he must enforce respect, and as Chouteau continued growling, he stopped him by saying, 'Silence! Here's the lieutenant. Address yourself to him if you have any remark to make.'
Maurice, who sat apart from the others in silence, had lowered his head. This was the end of everything! They were only at the beginning of the war, but it was all over. The indiscipline and mutinous behaviour of the men at the very first reverse had already turned the army into a mere mob without a tie to bind it together, but thoroughly demoralised and ripe for every catastrophe. They, beneath Belfort, had not seen a single Prussian, yet they were already beaten.
The monotonous days that followed were fraught with uneasiness and the tedium of waiting. To occupy the time of his men General Douay made them toil at the defensive works of the fortress, which were still far from completed. They turned up the soil and split the rocks. Meanwhile, no news came. Where was MacMahon? What was taking place under Metz? The most extravagant rumours
