The captain gazed at the sergeant.
"What is it you say?" he asked again.
"I say that the knapsacks are packed, captain, and the flints are in the muskets."
"You are either drunk or mad," cried the captain; "take yourself off to bed."
The sergeant was just about to withdraw, in fact, when another officer stopped him and questioned him more minutely, gathering by the accuracy of his replies that it was really the truth.
"How could such an order be given unless the two captains had known of it?"
"Who gave the order?... Doubtless it must have been the lieutenant-colonel?"
"No doubt," the sergeant replied mechanically.
Both the captains rose and went to find the lieutenant-colonel. He was equally astonished and as much in the dark as they were.
The order must have come from M. Toustain, deputy-governor and commander-at-arms of the fortress of Béfort. They all three went to M. Toustain. He had not heard anything of the rumour they brought him; but suddenly an idea struck him. It was a plot. The two captains at once rushed back to the barracks to order the knapsacks to be unstrapped, the flints to be taken out of the muskets and the soldiers to be confined to the barracks.