“Where are you going?” asked the stranger in a high, thin voice.
“To Sedan.”
“Then turn back,” he cried; “Sedan is no place for a woman. It is a hell on earth. I saw it all, mon Dieu. I saw it all. I was at Bazeilles. I saw the children thrown into the windows of the burning houses. I saw the Bavarians shoot our women in the streets. I saw the troops rush into Sedan like rabbits into their holes, and then the Prussians bombarded the town. They had six hundred guns all round the town, and they fired upon that little place which was packed full like a sheep-pen. It is not war—it is butchery. What is the good God doing? What is He thinking of?”
And the man, who had the pasty face of a clerk or a commercial traveller, raised his whip to heaven in a gesture of fierce anger. Mademoiselle Brun looked at him with measuring eyes. He was almost a man at that moment. But perhaps her standard of manhood was too high.
“And is Sedan taken?” she asked quietly.
“Sedan is taken. Macmahon is wounded. The emperor is prisoner, and the whole French army has surrendered. Ninety thousand men. The Prussians had two hundred and forty thousand men. Ah! That emperor—that scoundrel!”
Mademoiselle Brun looked at him coldly, but without surprise. She had dealt with Frenchmen all her life, and probably expected that the fallen should be reviled—an unfortunate characteristic in an otherwise great national spirit.
“And the cavalry?” she asked.
“Ah!” cried the man, and again his dull eye flashed. “The cavalry were splendid. They tried to cut their way out. They passed through the Prussian cavalry and actually faced the infantry, but the fire was terrible. No man ever saw or heard anything like it. The cuirassiers were mown down like corn. The cavalry exists no longer, madame, but its name is immortal.”
There was nothing poetic about Mademoiselle Brun, who listened rather coldly.