This made Delaherche quite indignant, and he intervened; but Napoleon had already disappeared. The loud rush of the Meuse was still resounding; a plaint of infinite sadness seemed to have sped by in the growing dimness. From afar off came the muttering of other scattered noises. Was it the echo of the terrible order, 'March! march!' shouted from Paris, the order that had impelled this man on and on, from halting-place to halting-place, dragging with him along the highways of defeat all the irony of his imperial escort, and now brought to a stand, confronted by the frightful disaster that he had foreseen and had come to meet. Ah! how many brave fellows were about to die through his fault, and how profoundly must he have been stirred in every corner of his being—he, the sick man, the sentimental dreamer, so silently and mournfully waiting for destiny!
Weiss and Delaherche accompanied the two soldiers as far as the plateau of Floing. 'Farewell!' said Maurice, as he embraced his brother-in-law.
'No, no, till we meet again!' gaily exclaimed the manufacturer.
Jean, with his keen scent, at once found the 106th, whose tents were pitched on the slope of the plateau, behind the cemetery. Night had now almost completely fallen, but one could still distinguish the dark, massy roofs of the town, beyond which were Balan and Bazeilles in the meadows that stretched as far as the range of hills from Remilly to Frénois; whilst on the left extended a black patch, the wood of La Garenne, and on the right, down below, glittered the Meuse, like a broad, pale ribbon. For a moment Maurice scanned the vast horizon as it faded away in the darkness.
'Ah! here's the corporal!' exclaimed Chouteau; 'has he come back from rations?'
There was some little commotion. All day long the men had been rejoining their regiments, some of them quite alone, others in little parties, and amid such a scramble that the officers had even renounced asking for explanations. Indeed, they closed their eyes, only too glad to welcome those who chose to come back. Moreover, Captain Beaudoin had arrived but a short time previously, and it was only at two o'clock that Lieutenant Rochas had reached the camp, having with him merely a third of the men of his disbanded company. The latter, however, was now almost complete again. Some of the men were drunk, whilst others were still famished, not having managed to obtain even a scrap of bread; for there had again been no distribution of rations. Loubet had certainly endeavoured to cook some cabbages, pulled up out of a neighbouring garden, but he had neither salt nor lard to make the vegetables palatable, and the men's stomachs were still groaning with hunger.
'Come, corporal, what have you brought, you who are so artful?' resumed Chouteau, in a bantering way; 'oh! I don't need anything myself; Loubet and I lunched in capital style at a lady's.'
Anxious faces were turned towards Jean, the squad had been waiting for him—especially those unlucky fellows, Lapoulle and Pache—for they had not managed to get a bite, and they had relied on him, in the belief that if need were he could actually extract flour from mill stones. And Jean, moved to pity, filled with remorse at the thought that he had abandoned his men, divided between them the half-loaf which he had placed in his knapsack before leaving Weiss's house. 'Curse it! curse it!' repeated Lapoulle, finding no other words to express the satisfaction with which he devoured the bread; whilst Pache mumbled a Pater and an Ave, so as to make sure that Heaven would send him his daily food again on the morrow.
Bugler Gaude had just blown a sonorous blast, the summons to the roll-call. There was no tattoo however; the camp at once sank into deep silence. And when Sergeant Sapin, with the thin, sickly face and the contracted nose, had found that his half-section was complete, he gently remarked: 'Some of them will be missing to-morrow night.' Then, noticing that Jean was looking at him, he added with an air of tranquil certainty, gazing the while into the darkness with dreamy eyes: 'Oh! for my part I shall be killed to-morrow.'
It was nine o'clock. The night threatened to be very cold, for a great deal of mist had risen from the Meuse, hiding the stars from view. Maurice shivered as he lay beside Jean under a hedge, and suggested that it would perhaps be better for them to turn into the tent. Worn out, however, aching in every limb since their rest at Weiss's, neither of them was able to get to sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who, disdaining any shelter and simply wrapped in a blanket, was snoring like a hero on the damp ground near them. Then, for a long time they fixed their attention on the little, flickering flame of a candle, burning in a large tent where the colonel and a few officers were sitting up. M. de Vineuil had seemed very anxious all the evening at not receiving any orders for the following day. He felt that his regiment was quite adrift, still far too much to the front, though he had already fallen back some distance, relinquishing the advanced position that he had taken up in the morning. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had not shown himself; he was said to be ill in bed at the Golden Cross Hotel, and the colonel had at last decided to send an officer to warn him that the new position appeared a dangerous one; the Seventh Corps being so scattered, having far too long a line to defend, from the bend of the Meuse to the wood of La Garenne. The battle would certainly begin at dawn. They now had only seven or eight hours of that deep, black peacefulness before them. At last the candle in the colonel's tent was extinguished, and at that moment Maurice was greatly surprised to see Captain Beaudoin pass by, furtively skirting the hedge, and vanishing in the direction of Sedan.