Then Maurice suddenly realised how terribly he was overcome with fatigue. It was, indeed, certain—the whole army was about to retreat, and that being so, there was nothing for him to do but to sleep pending the arrival of the Seventh Corps. He crossed the Place again, and once more found himself at the chemist's, where he dined as though in a dream. Then it certainly seemed to him that his foot was dressed and that he was carried into a room upstairs. Black night, annihilation followed. He slept on, overwhelmed, and scarcely breathing. After an uncertain lapse of time, however—hours or centuries, he could not tell—a shudder disturbed his slumbers, and he sat up in bed in the profound darkness. Where was he? What was that continuous roar of thunder that had awakened him? All at once his memory returned, and he hastened to the window to look out. In the obscurity down below a regiment of artillery was crossing the Place, usually so quiet at night time; the men, horses, and guns following each other in endless succession, at a trot which made the little lifeless houses fairly shake. Unreasoning disquietude took possession of Maurice as he beheld this sudden departure. What time could it be? The town-hall clock struck four. He was endeavouring to tranquillise himself, reflecting that the scene he witnessed must simply be the outcome of the orders issued the previous afternoon, when on turning his head he perceived something which gave the finishing stroke to his anguish. The corner first-floor window at the notary's house was still lighted up, and at regular intervals the dark shadow of the Emperor was profiled upon the curtains.
Maurice quickly slipped on his trousers, intending to go downstairs, but at this moment Combette appeared on the threshold carrying a candlestick and gesticulating. 'I saw you from below just as I came back from the town-hall,' he said, 'and I came up to tell you the news. Just fancy! they haven't let me go to bed! For two hours past the mayor and I have had to attend to fresh requisitions. Yes, once again everything is altered. Ah! that officer who didn't want any telegram to be sent to Paris was in the right!'
He continued talking for a long time in imperfect, disjointed phrases; and Maurice, who remained silent, with anguish in his heart, ended by understanding him. At about midnight a telegram for the Emperor had arrived from the Minister of War, in reply to that sent to Paris by the marshal. The exact wording of the despatch was not known; but an aide-de-camp had openly declared at the town-hall that the Empress and the Ministerial Council feared there would be a revolution in Paris if the Emperor abandoned Bazaine and returned there. Those who had drawn up the despatch, inaccurately informed as to the true positions of the German forces, seemed to believe that the army of Châlons had an advance upon the enemy which it no longer possessed, and with an extraordinary burst of passion insisted, despite everything, on a forward march.
'The Emperor sent for the marshal,' added the chemist, 'and they remained shut up together during nearly an hour. Of course, I don't know what they said to each other, but all the officers have repeated to me that we are no longer retreating, and that the march on the Meuse is resumed. We have just requisitioned all the ovens in the town for the First Corps, which to-morrow morning will arrive here in place of the Twelfth, whose artillery, as you can see for yourself, is at this moment starting for La Besace. This time it's settled; you are marching to battle.' He paused. He also was looking at the lighted window at the notary's. Then, with a thoughtful, inquisitive air, he resumed in an undertone: 'Yes; what can they have said to one another? It's comical all the same. A man's threatened with danger, and, in order to avoid it, he decides at six o'clock that he will retreat; then, at midnight, he rushes head first into that very danger, although the situation remains identical.'
Maurice was still listening to the guns as they rolled along through the little black town down below, to the horses trotting past without cessation, to the men flowing away towards the Meuse, towards the terrible Unknown of the morrow. And, meantime, on the little window curtains he still saw the Emperor's shadow pass by at regular intervals; the shadow of that invalid, kept on his legs by insomnia, pacing to and fro, feeling that he must needs continue on the move despite all his sufferings, and with his ears full of the noise made by all those horses and soldiers whom he was sending to death. So a few hours had sufficed, and now the disaster was decided upon, accepted! What, indeed, could they have said to each other, that Emperor and that marshal, both of whom were aware of the calamity to which they were marching, who in the evening had been convinced of defeat—given the frightful situation in which the army would henceforth find itself—and who could not have changed their opinion in the morning since the peril was increasing hour by hour? General de Palikao's plan, the lightning march on Montmédy, already a hazardous venture on August 22, still susceptible, possibly, of accomplishment on the 25th, with veterans and a captain of genius, became on the 27th an act of sheer madness in presence of the continual hesitation of the commanders and the increasing demoralisation of the troops. If both Emperor and marshal knew this, why did they yield to the pitiless voices that goaded them on in their indecision? The marshal, perhaps, had but the limited, obedient mind of the soldier, great in its abnegation. And the Emperor, who no longer commanded, was awaiting destiny. They were asked to give their lives and the lives of the army, and they consented to give them. That was the Night of the Crime—the abominable night when a nation was murdered, for thenceforward the army was in distress, one hundred thousand men were sent to the slaughter!
Despairing and shuddering, Maurice thought of all these things as he watched that shadow on Madame Desroches' dainty muslin curtains, that feverish shadow ever on the tramp, and which the pitiless voice coming from Paris seemed to be urging on. Had not the Empress wished that night for the father's death so that the son might reign? March! march! without a glance behind, under the rain and through the mud, march to extermination, so that this supreme final game for possession of an agonising empire may be played out to the last card! March! march! die like a hero on the piled-up corpses of your people; strike the whole world with compassionate admiration so that it may forgive your posterity! And doubtless the Emperor was marching to death. The kitchen was no longer blazing down below; the equerries, the aides-de-camp, the chamberlains were all asleep; the whole house was black, save for that lighted window, on the curtains of which the shadow was incessantly passing to and fro, the shadow of one who had quietly resigned himself to the fatal sacrifice amid all the deafening uproar occasioned by the Twelfth Army Corps, which was still marching along in the darkness.
It suddenly occurred to Maurice that if the forward march were resumed the Seventh Corps would not pass through Le Chêne, and he pictured himself left behind, separated from his regiment as though he had deserted. His foot no longer smarted, a skilful dressing, and a few hours of complete rest had calmed its feverishness. When Combette had given him a pair of shoes, broad shoes in which he was quite at his ease, he became desirous of starting at once, hoping that he might still meet the 106th on the Vouziers road. After vainly endeavouring to detain him, the chemist had half made up his mind to drive off with him in his gig, and scour the roads in the chance hope of finding the army corps, when Fernand, Combette's assistant, turned up and explained that he had only absented himself to go and see after a cousin whom he was in love with. It was this tall, pale fellow, with the look of a poltroon, who then put the horse to the trap and drove off with Maurice. It was not yet five o'clock; the rain was streaming like a deluge from the inky sky, and the lamps of the vehicle were dimmed and barely lighted the road, which ran through a vast drenched stretch of country full of tumultuous sounds that caused them to pull up at each half-mile, in the belief that an army was near at hand.
Meantime Jean, in the camp before Vouziers, had not had a moment's sleep. Since Maurice had explained to him that the retreat would save everything he had been on the look-out, preventing his men from leaving their quarters, and awaiting the orders for raising the camp which the officers might give at any moment. At about two o'clock a great clatter of horses' hoofs resounded amid the dense obscurity, which the camp fires dotted as with ruddy stars. This was an advance guard of cavalry setting out towards Ballay and Quatre-Champs, for the purpose of watching the Boult-aux-Bois and Croix-aux-Bois roads. An hour later the infantry and the artillery set themselves in motion, abandoning those positions of Falaise and Chestres, which during two long days they had seemed so obstinately bent on defending against an enemy who never came. The sky was overcast, and the night still deep, as each regiment retired in profound silence, like a procession of shadows flitting away into the darkness. Each heart, however, was beating joyously as though they had, one and all, escaped some threatening ambush. They already pictured themselves drawn up under the walls of Paris on the eve of the revanche.
Jean looked around him through the dense night. The road was edged with trees, and it seemed to him that it lay between large meadows. Then came rising ground and then declivities, and they were reaching a village—no doubt Ballay—when a heavy cloud, darkening the sky, suddenly burst, and the rain came down with violence. So much had already fallen on the men, however, that they no longer complained, but simply distended their shoulders. Ballay was speedily left behind; and, as they drew nearer to Quatre-Champs, furious squalls of wind swept through the widening valley. When they had passed Quatre-Champs, and had reached the vast plateau whose barren lands stretch as far as Noirval, the hurricane put forth all its strength, and they were lashed by a frightful deluge. And it was here that orders to halt stopped in turn every regiment.
The entire Seventh Corps, thirty and odd thousand men, had been gathered together here by the time the dawn arose, a dawn of a muddy hue seen through streaming grey water. What was up? Why were they halting? Disquietude was already spreading through the ranks, and some asserted that the marching orders had just been changed. The men had received instructions to ground their arms, and were forbidden to break the ranks and sit down. At certain moments the wind swept across the high table-land with such violence that they had to stand shoulder to shoulder to avoid being carried away. The icy rain was blinding them, pelting their faces and streaming through their clothes. And two hours went by, an interminable spell of waiting, the reason of which no one knew, though anguish was again oppressing every heart.