"That's a mighty weak army," commented the boy.
"It is," the hunchback agreed, "but it's only supposed to be a covering army, so far as I can make out. It can fall back on the defenses of Paris."
"But couldn't Von Kluck surround Paris, then?"
The hunchback shook his head.
"Impossible," he said. "Von Kluck would have to stretch his line out on a circle ninety miles long—for that's the circumference of the advance trenches beyond the outer fortifications of the city—and to do that would make his line so thin that it could be broken like the paper in a circus-rider's hoop.
"I think," he continued, "mark you, I don't know, that Manoury's army is intended to do the same thing that Le Grand Couronne did—to make the Germans think our line is strongest at the two ends, when, in reality, it is strongest in the middle."
"Is Joffre doing that so as to weaken the German opposition to our rebound?"
"It looks like it," Croquier admitted, "but that sort of thing is hard to find out until weeks, sometimes months, afterward. A generalissimo never lets his plans be known. To-night's news may give some clew. Now, I'm off."
As soon as Croquier had started for the factory, Horace set out to put into effect a resolution to which he had come during a wakeful night.
He was not going to sit at home idle when Paris was in danger!