know. At Mazagran—I was barely nineteen at the time—we were only one hundred and twenty-three men, neither more nor less, yet we held out during four days against twelve thousand Arabs. Yes, indeed, for years and years out there in Africa, at Mascara, Biskra, and Dellys, then too in Khabylia, and later on at Laghouat, if you had only been with us, sir, you would have seen how all those dirty blackamoors skedaddled as soon as ever we appeared. And at Sebastopol, sir—ah! dash it, it can't be said that we had an easy time of it out there. Gales strong enough to tear the very hair out of your head, such bitter cold and ceaseless alerts, and then, at the very end, everything blown into the air by those savages! But all the same we made them dance—dance to our tune in our own frying pan. And then Solferino—you were not there, sir, so why do you speak of it? Ah! it was warm at Solferino—though there fell more water from the sky that day than you have seen fall in all your life—and a nice dressing we gave the Austrians. You should have seen how they ran away from our bayonets, how they galloped and pushed one another aside to run the faster, as if they were on fire!'
He was brimming over with delight, and all the old military gaiety of France rang out in his triumphant laugh. This was the legend—the French trooper marching victoriously all over the world with his sweetheart on one hand and a glass of good wine in the other; the universe conquered whilst singing a drinking refrain. A French corporal and four men, and lo! immense armies of foreigners bit the dust.
But he suddenly thundered out: 'Beaten, France beaten! Those Prussian pigs beat such men as we!' Then stepping up to Weiss he caught hold of a lapel of his coat. His tall, slim, knight-errant style of figure expressed profound contempt for any enemy, no matter who that enemy might be, and supreme indifference as to conditions of time and place. 'Listen to me, sir,' he said; 'if the Prussians dare to come here we will escort them home again—we'll kick them all the way back—all the way back to Berlin. You hear me!'
Then he waved his hand superbly, with the serenity of a child, the candid conviction of the innocent babe that knows nothing and fears nothing. 'Parbleu!' he added. 'That's how it is, because it can't be otherwise.'
Dazed and almost convinced, Weiss hastily declared that he asked for nothing better. As for Maurice, who held his tongue, not daring to speak out before his superior, he ended by laughing in unison with him. That devil of a lieutenant, stupid though he was, had warmed his heart. Jean, too, with a nod of the head, had approved each of the lieutenant's words. He also had fought at Solferino, when it rained so heavily. Moreover, that was the proper way to speak. If all the officers had spoken like that, the men would not have cared a fig about there being no pots or pans, or flannel waistbands.
For some time past the night had completely fallen, and in the darkness Rochas continued waving his long arms. He had never spelt through more than one book—a volume on the victories of Napoleon I. that had found its way from a pedlar's box into his knapsack—and unable to calm himself he vented all his science in this impetuous outburst: 'At Castiglione, Marengo, Austerlitz and Wagram we thrashed the Austrians! At Eylau, Jena, and Lutzen we thrashed Prussia! At Friedland, Smolensko, and the Moskowa we thrashed the Russians! We thrashed Spain and England everywhere! We thrashed the whole world, right and left, from top to bottom. Yet to-day you say we are to be thrashed ourselves! Why? How? Has the world suddenly been changed?'
He drew himself still more erect, raising his arm like a flag-staff. 'Listen, there has been fighting to-day, and the staff are waiting for news. Well, I'll tell you what news will come! The Prussians have been thrashed—thrashed to such a point that they have neither arms nor legs left them, thrashed to such a degree that only crumbs of them remain for us to sweep away!'
At that moment a loud, dolorous cry resounded under the sombre heavens. Was it the plaintive note of some night bird? Was it the sobbing voice of Mystery coming from afar? The whole camp, shrouded in darkness, shuddered at the sound, and the disquietude fostered by the delay in the arrival of the expected despatches became more intense, feverish, and widespread. The flame of the candle that illuminated the anxious vigil of the staff had shot up higher, and now it was shining erect, without a flicker, like the flame of a taper beside a death-bed.
But it was ten o'clock; and Gaude, springing from the dark ground where he had been lost to view, was the first to sound the signal for the men to retire for the night. Far and near, the other bugles replied, till the sound gradually died away in a faint flourish, as though the very instruments were drowsy. Then Weiss, who had lingered there so long, affectionately pressed Maurice to his heart, and bade him be brave and hopeful. He would kiss Henriette for him, and say all manner of kind things to uncle Fouchard.
Just as he was going off a rumour sped through the camp causing a feverish agitation: Marshal MacMahon had gained a great victory, it was said; the Crown Prince of Prussia and 25,000 men had been taken prisoners; the enemy had been driven back, annihilated, leaving his guns and baggage in the hands of the French.
'Of course!' exclaimed Rochas in his thundering voice; and running after Weiss, who, quite delighted, was hastening away towards Mulhausen, he added: 'We'll kick them all the way back, sir, all the way back!'
A quarter of an hour later, however, a despatch announced that the army had been obliged to abandon Wœrth,[8] and was in full retreat. Ah! What a night! Rochas, overcome by sleep, had wrapped himself in his cloak, and as often happened was slumbering on the ground, disdaining any shelter. Maurice and Jean had slipped into the tent, where, with their heads resting on their knapsacks, Loubet, Chouteau, Pache, and Lapoulle had already settled themselves. There was just room for six men, provided they curled up their legs. At the outset Loubet enlivened all these hungry fellows by convincing Lapoulle that some fowls would be given out at ration time, next day; they felt so tired, however, that they were soon snoring, careless whether the Prussians came or not. Jean remained for a moment quite motionless, pressed close against Maurice. Despite his great fatigue he could not get to sleep, for everything that Weiss had said of the innumerable, all-devouring German nation, that was up in arms against France, was revolving in his brain; and he realised that his companion also was awake, thinking of the self-same things. Suddenly Maurice drew back impatiently, and Jean divined that he inconvenienced him. The instinctive enmity and repugnance, due to difference of class and education, that separated the peasant from the young man of culture, assumed a form of physical dislike. It filled Jean with a feeling of shame and secret sadness, and he tried to make himself small, as it were, to escape the hostile contempt that he divined in Maurice. The night was freshening, but inside the tent, with all these closely packed bodies, the atmosphere became so stifling that Maurice, seized with feverish exasperation, at length bounded outside, and stretched himself on the ground a few paces off. Jean, feeling quite wretched, sank into a kind of semi-somnolence, full of unpleasant dreams, in which his sorrow that nobody cared for him was mingled with the apprehension of a terrible misfortune, which he fancied he could hear galloping along, afar off, in the depths of the Unknown.
Several hours must have elapsed, and the whole black, motionless camp seemed to be annihilated beneath the oppressive weight of that dense, evil night, heavy with something fearful which was as yet without a name. Every now and again there was an upheaval of that sea of darkness, a sudden groan resounded from some invisible tent, the gasp of some soldier in a fitful dream. Then there came noises that were not easily recognised, the snorting of a horse, the clash of a sabre, the hasty footsteps of some belated prowler—all those commonplace sounds which acquire at times a menacing sonority. Suddenly a great glow blazed forth near the canteen. The front was brilliantly illuminated, and the piles of arms could be seen with ruddy reflections streaking the burnished barrels of the guns, as if with trickling runnels of freshly shed blood. The sentinels stood out dark and erect amid this sudden conflagration. Was this the enemy, whose appearance the officers had been predicting for two days past, and to meet whom they had marched expressly from Belfort to Mulhausen? Then, amid a great crackling and sparkling, the flame suddenly went out. After smouldering for hours, the pile of green wood, with which Lapoulle and Loubet had busied themselves so long, had all at once blazed up and burnt away as though it had been so
