'But you?' he suddenly asked, his memory returning to him. 'Didn't you eat then?'
'I?' said Jean. 'Oh, I'm tougher than you. I can wait. A drop of Adam's ale, and I'm on my legs again.'
He again went to the fountain to fill his bowl, which he emptied at a draught, clacking his tongue. His face, however, was also ashy pale, and he felt so famished that his hands trembled.
'Make haste and let's get off,' he said to Maurice. 'We must join the comrades, youngster.'
Leaning heavily on Jean's arm, Maurice then allowed himself to be led away. Never had woman's arm brought such warmth as this to his heart. Now that everything was crumbling to the ground, amid this extreme misery, with death threatening him, he experienced a delicious sensation of comfort, on realising that there was yet one who loved him and succoured him; and perhaps also the idea that this heart which was wholly his was the heart of a man of simple mind, of a peasant but slightly removed from the soil, and who had once been so repugnant to him, now added an infinite sweetness to his feelings of gratitude. Was not this the fraternity of the earliest days of the world, the friendship that existed long before there was any culture, before there were any classes; the friendship of two men, linked together, bound up in one another in their mutual need of assistance, threatened as they were by inimical nature? He could hear his humanity beating in Jean's breast, and he even felt proud that his comrade was stronger than himself, that he succoured him and devoted himself to him; whilst Jean, on the other hand, without analysing his sensations, experienced a feeling of delight in shielding his young friend's refinement and intelligence—qualities that in himself had remained in a rudimentary state. Since the violent death of his wife, carried off in a fearful tragedy, he had thought himself without a heart, and he had sworn that he would have nothing more to do with those creatures who bring man so much suffering, even when their natures are not evil. And the mutual friendship of Jean and Maurice became to both of them, as it were, an expansion of their beings; they did not embrace, and yet, however dissimilar their natures, they were none the less closely united, so bound up in one another, as they tramped along that terrible road to Remilly, the one supporting the other, that they seemed to form but one being compounded of pity and suffering.
Whilst the rear-guard was leaving Raucourt, the Germans entered the town at the other end; and two of their batteries which were immediately planted on the heights, upon the left, commenced firing. At this moment, as the 106th was moving off by the downhill-road, skirting the Emmane, it found itself in the line of fire. One shell cut down a poplar on the river bank, and another buried itself in a meadow near Captain Beaudoin. Until reaching Haraucourt the defile gradually contracts, and one there plunges into a narrow passage, overlooked on either hand by crested hills covered with trees. If a handful of Prussians were in ambuscade there, a disaster was certain. Cannonaded in the rear, with an attack possible both on right and left, the troops now advanced in increasing anxiety, eager to get out of this dangerous pass. And thus a last flash of energy came to even the weariest among them. The men, who a little while ago had been crawling from door to door through Raucourt, now stepped out jauntily, revived by the spur of peril. Even the horses seemed to realise that a terrible price might have to be paid for a moment lost; and the head of the column must have already been at Remilly, and the impetus given to the retreat was continuing, when all at once the men again ceased to advance.
'Dash it!' said Chouteau, 'are they going to leave us here?'
The 106th had not yet reached Haraucourt and the shells were still falling. Whilst the regiment was marking time pending the resumption of the march, a shell burst on the right, fortunately without wounding anyone. Five minutes elapsed, seeming frightfully long, an eternity. But the men could not move; there was some obstacle over yonder, barring the road like a wall suddenly thrown up. The colonel, rising in his stirrups, looked ahead, quivering, and feeling that panic was spreading among his men behind him.
'Everyone knows that we've been sold!' resumed Chouteau, vehemently.