"I regret it also, but I am powerless."
"We played together here as children," said Marteau. "My father has kept it well since. Your father died and now mine is gone——"
"And I am very sorry," answered the young woman softly.
Marteau turned away, peered out of the window and sank into gloomy silence.
CHAPTER IX
THE EMPEROR EATS AND RIDES
Sézanne was a scene of the wildest confusion that night. It was congested with troops and more and more were arriving every minute. They entered the town in fearful condition. They had been weary and ragged and naked before. Now they were in a state of extreme prostration; wet, cold, covered with mud. The roads were blocked with mired artillery, the guns were sunk into the mud to the hubs, the tired horses could no longer move them. The woods on either side were full of stragglers, many of whom had dropped down on the wet ground and slept the sleep of complete exhaustion. Some, indeed, sick and helpless, died where they lay. Everything eatable and drinkable in Sézanne had vanished as a green field before a swarm of locusts when Marmont's division had come through some hours before.
The town boasted a little square or open space in the midst. A huge fire was burning in the center of this open space. A cordon of grenadiers kept the ground about the fire clear of stragglers. Suddenly the Emperor rode into the midst. He was followed by a wet, cold, mud-spattered, bedraggled staff, all of them unutterably weary. Intense resolution blazed in the Emperor's eyes. He had had nothing to eat or drink since morning, but that ancient bodily vigor, that wonderful power of endurance, which had stood him in such good stead in days gone by, seemed to have come back to him now. He was all fire and energy and determination. So soon as his presence was known, couriers reported to him. Many of them he stopped with questions.
"The convoy of arms, provisions, powder," he snapped out to an officer of Marmont's division approaching him, "which was to meet us here. Have you seen it?"