“Just think, mamma is down sick with the worry and confusion; she can’t leave her bed, so, you see, I have to attend to everything, for papa is with the National Guards up in the citadel. A little while ago the Emperor left the building—I suppose he wanted to let people see he is not a coward—and succeeded in getting as far as the bridge down at the end of the street. A shell alighted right in front of him; one of his equerries had his horse killed under him. And then he came back—he couldn’t do anything else, could he, now?”
“You must have heard some talk of how the battle is going. What do they say, those gentlemen upstairs?”
She looked at him in surprise. Her pretty face was bright and smiling, with its fluffy golden hair and the clear, childish eyes of one who bestirred herself among her multifarious duties, in the midst of all those horrors, which she did not well understand.
“No, I know nothing. About midday I sent up a letter for Marshal MacMahon, but it could not be given him right away, because the Emperor was in the room. They were together nearly an hour, the Marshal lying on his bed, the Emperor close beside him seated on a chair. That much I know for certain, because I saw them when the door was opened.”
“And then, what did they say to each other?”
She looked at him again, and could not help laughing.
“Why, I don’t know; how could you expect me to? There’s not a living soul knows what they said to each other.”
She was right; he made an apologetic gesture in recognition of the stupidity of his question. But the thought of that fateful conversation haunted him; the interest there was in it for him who could have heard it! What decision had they arrived at?
“And now,” Rose added, “the Emperor is back in his cabinet again, where he is having a conference with two generals who have just come in from the battlefield.” She checked herself, casting a glance at the main entrance of the building. “See! there is one of them, now—and there comes the other.”
He hurried from the room, and in the two generals recognized Ducrot and Douay, whose horses were standing before the door. He watched them climb into their saddles and gallop away. They had hastened into the city, each independently of the other, after the plateau of Illy had been captured by the enemy, to notify the Emperor that the battle was lost. They placed the entire situation distinctly before him; the army and Sedan were even then surrounded on every side; the result could not help but be disastrous.