Jean, still dazed, seemed to be awaking from a dream. Then he must have understood and have remembered everything, for two big tears rolled down his cheeks. So that weak fellow Maurice, whom he loved and tended like a child, had, in the enthusiasm of his friendship, found arms strong enough to carry him thither.
'Let me just look at your nob,' said Maurice.
The wound proved to be scarcely anything, a mere scratch of the scalp, but it had bled profusely. The hair, glued together by the blood, now served the purpose of a pledget, and Maurice took good care not to damp it, for fear of reopening the sore.
'There, you are clean now,' he added, 'you look like a human being again. Wait a bit, here's a cap.'
Thereupon, picking up the képi of a dead soldier which was lying beside him, he placed it carefully on Jean's head: 'It's just your size,' said he. 'Now if you can walk we shall be proper.'
Jean rose up and shook his head to make sure that it was firm. He only felt a slight heaviness, and that he could very well endure. Then, carried away by emotion, like the man of simple heart he was, he caught Maurice in his arms, and, almost smothering him, pressed him to his breast. 'Oh, my dear little fellow, my dear little fellow,' he repeated; it was all that he could say.
The Prussians were coming up, however, and they ought not to dawdle behind that wall. Lieutenant Rochas was already beating a retreat with his few men, protecting the colours, which the sub-lieutenant still carried, rolled around their shaft. Lapoulle, being very tall, was able to rise on tip-toe and fire a few more shots over the coping of the wall; but Pache carried his chassepot slung over his shoulder, opining, no doubt, that he had done quite enough work that day, and ought now to have something to eat and go to bed. Bending double, Jean and Maurice made haste to join the others. There was no lack either of guns or cartridges; one merely had to stoop to pick them up. So they again armed themselves, their knapsacks, rifles, and pouches having been abandoned over yonder, when Maurice had been obliged to hoist Jean upon his shoulders.
The wall stretched as far as the wood of La Garenne, and the little band, fancying itself saved, promptly threw itself behind a farmhouse, whence it reached the trees. 'Ah!' said Rochas, who retained all his fine, unshakable confidence, 'we'll just draw breath here for a moment, before resuming the offensive.'
At the first steps they took, however, they all felt that they were entering a hellish place; still, they could not fall back—whatever the danger, they must needs cross that wood, through which lay their only line of retreat. And it had become a most fearful wood, a wood of despair and death. Realising that some of the French troops must be retiring through it, the Prussians were riddling it with bullets, and covering it with shells. Lashed, as it were, by a tempest, it shook and howled amid the shattering of its branches. The shells cut down the trees, the bullets brought down the leaves in showers, plaintive voices seemed to issue from the split trunks, and sobs fell with the sap-laden boughs. It was like the awful agony of a chained multitude, the terror and wailing of thousands of beings rooted to the soil and unable to flee from the storm of lead and iron. Never was plaint of anguish more intense than in that bombarded forest.
Maurice and Jean, who had joined their comrades, at once felt frightened. They were making their way through full-grown trees and there was space to run, but the bullets whizzed past them every second, wildly ricocheting hither and thither, so that, as they glided from trunk to trunk, they could not tell from which side danger might come. Two men were killed, struck both in front and behind. A venerable oak, whose trunk was smashed by a shell, fell across Maurice's path with the tragic majesty of a hero, crushing all around it. And just as the young fellow was springing back, a colossal beech tree, which another shell had discrowned, snapped and sank to the ground, like some lofty cathedral pillar. Whither could they flee? On which side direct their steps? There were but toppling branches all around them; it seemed as though they were in some vast edifice that threatened ruin, and the ceilings of whose halls, following one upon another, were for ever and ever falling. And when they had sprung into a plantation to escape being crushed by the big trees, Jean narrowly missed being cut in half by a shell, which fortunately failed to explode. They were now unable to make way amid the inextricable multitude of shrubs and saplings. The slender stems detained them by the shoulders, the long grass twined around their ankles, sudden walls of brambles brought them to a standstill; whilst all around them flew the foliage detached by the giant scythe which was mowing down the wood. Another man, killed beside them by a bullet which penetrated his forehead, remained erect, caught between two young birches; and a score of times, whilst imprisoned in this plantation, they felt death brush them as it passed.