Henriette had seen everything: those dying eyes seeking for her, that frightful quiver of the death-pangs, that big boot pushing the corpse aside. She did not cry out, but she silently, furiously bit at what was near her mouth; and it was a hand that her teeth caught hold of. The Bavarian roared, the pain was so atrocious. He threw her down, almost felling her. Their faces met, and never was she able to forget that red hair and beard splashed with blood, and those blue eyes dilated and swimming with fury.
Later on, Henriette could not clearly remember what had happened after her husband's death. She, herself, had had but one desire, to return to his corpse, take it, and watch over it. However, as happens in nightmares, all sorts of obstacles rose up before her, staying her course at every step. Again had a brisk fusillade broken out, and there was a great stir among the German troops who occupied Bazeilles. The French Marine Infantry was, at last, again reaching the village, and the engagement began afresh with so much violence that the young woman was thrown into a lane on the left, among a crazed, terrified flock of villagers. There could be no doubt, however, as to the issue of the struggle; it was too late to reconquer the abandoned positions. During another half-hour the men of the Marine Infantry fought with the utmost desperation, sacrificing their lives in a superb, furious transport; but at each moment the foe received reinforcements which streamed forth from all sides, the meadows, the roads, and the park of Montivilliers. Nothing could now have dislodged them from that village, which they had secured at such fearful cost, where several thousands of their men were lying dead amid blood and flames. Destruction was now completing its work, the place had become but a charnel-house of scattered limbs and smoking ruins. Slaughtered, annihilated, Bazeilles was dwindling into ashes.
For a last time did Henriette espy in the distance her little house, the floors of which were falling into a vortex of fiery flakes. And ever, alongside the wall facing the house, could she see her husband's corpse. But another human stream caught her in its flow, the bugles sounded the retreat, and she was carried away, how she knew not, among the troops as they gradually fell back. And then she became as it were a thing, a mere rolling waif borne onward amid the confused tramping of a multitude that was streaming along the highway. And she was conscious of nothing further, till at last she found herself at Balan, in the house of some strangers, where she sat sobbing in a kitchen, with her head resting upon a table.
[CHAPTER V]
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CALVARY—THE GREAT CHARGE
At ten o'clock the men of Captain Beaudoin's company were still lying in the cabbage field on the plateau of Algeria, whence they had not stirred since early morning. The cross fire from the batteries on the Hattoy hill and the peninsula of Iges was increasing in violence, and had again just killed a couple of soldiers; but still no orders came to advance. Were they going to remain there all day then, allowing themselves to be pounded like that, without making any attempt at fighting?
The men were no longer even able to relieve their feelings by firing their chassepots, for Captain Beaudoin had succeeded in putting a stop to that furious and useless fusillade, directed upon the little wood over yonder, where not a single Prussian seemed to have remained. The sun was now becoming most oppressive; the men fairly roasted as they lay there under the flaming sky.
Jean, on turning round, felt anxious on seeing that Maurice's head had sunk to the ground. The young fellow's eyes were closed, and his cheek was close pressed to the soil; he looked, too, extremely pale and did not stir. 'Hallo, what's up?' asked Jean.
Maurice, however, had simply fallen asleep. He had been overcome by waiting and weariness, although death was on the wing all around. When he suddenly awoke again there was a calm look in his widely opened eyes, but the scared, wavering expression of the battlefield immediately returned to them. He had no notion how long his slumber had lasted; it seemed to him as though he were emerging from delightful, infinite nihility.