The night had been pregnant with the anguish of this disaster. And now in the east appeared the dawn, an ambiguous dawn, infinitely sad, that whitened the tents full of sleepers, among whom one could now dimly descry the cadaverous-looking faces of Loubet and Lapoulle, Chouteau and Pache, who were still snoring with their mouths wide open. The aurora of a day of mourning was rising amid the soot-tinted mists that had ascended from the distant river.
[CHAPTER II]
THE PANIC—FROM BELFORT TO RHEIMS
Towards eight o'clock the heavy clouds were dissipated by the sun, and the bright, hot August Sunday shone upon Mulhausen, nestling amid the broad fertile plain. From the camp, now wide awake and buzzing with life, one could hear the bells of all the parish churches ringing out in full peal through the limpid atmosphere. Fraught though it was with a terrible disaster, this beautiful Sunday was a gay one, and the sky had a festive brilliancy.
When Gaude suddenly sounded the call to rations, Loubet affected great astonishment. What would there be? Some of that fowl which he had promised to Lapoulle the night before? Born amid the Paris Halles, in the Rue de la Cossonnerie, Loubet was the chance offspring of a market woman, and had enlisted, so he expressed it, for money's sake, after trying in turn a variety of callings. Fond of his stomach, he had a keen scent for dainty morsels, so he went off to see the rations distributed, whilst Chouteau, the artist—in reality a house painter of Montmartre—a handsome man and a revolutionist, who was furious at having been kept in the army after completing his time, began chaffing Pache, whom he had caught saying his prayers, on his knees, behind the tent. Pache, a sorry-looking little fellow with a pointed head, coming from some far-away village in Picardy, submitted to the chaffing with the patient gentleness of a martyr. He, and that colossus Lapoulle—a brutish peasant reared amid the Sologne marshes, and so stupendously ignorant that on joining the regiment he had asked to be shown the King—were the butts of the squad.
Although the news of the disaster of Frœschweiler had been current since the reveille, the four men laughed together, and set about their accustomed tasks with the indifference of machines. A bantering growl of surprise was heard when Corporal Jean, accompanied by Maurice, came back from the rationing with some firewood. So the supply which the men had vainly awaited the evening before in order to cook their soupe had arrived at last. There had merely been twelve hours' delay.
'A good mark for the commissariat!' exclaimed Chouteau.
'Never mind, we've got it now!' said Loubet. 'You shall see what a capital pot-au-feu I'll make you.'