"That didn't prevent six more shells falling at Corvigny, all on the church or in the square. And these six shells fell twenty minutes later, that is to say, at the time when it was to be presumed that the alarm would have been given and that the Corvigny garrison would have assembled in the square. This was just what had happened; and you can imagine the carnage that resulted."
"I agree; but, once more, the frontier was fifteen miles away. That distance must have given our troops time to form up again and to prepare for the attacks foretold by the bombardment. They had at least three or four hours before them."
"They hadn't fifteen minutes. The bombardment was not over before the assault began. Assault isn't the word: our troops, those at Corvigny as well as those which hastened up from the two forts, were decimated and routed, surrounded by the enemy, shot down or obliged to surrender, before it was possible to organize any sort of resistance. It all happened suddenly under the blinding glare of flash-lights erected no one knew where or how. And the catastrophe was immediate. You may take it that Corvigny was invested, attacked, captured and occupied by the enemy, all in ten minutes."
"But where did he come from? Where did he spring from?"
"Nobody knows."
"But the night-patrols on the frontier? The sentries? The company on duty at Ornequin?"
"Never heard of again. No one knows anything, not a word, not a rumor, about those three hundred men whose business it was to keep watch and to warn the others. You can reckon up the Corvigny garrison, with the soldiers who escaped and the dead whom the inhabitants identified and buried. But the three hundred light infantry of Ornequin disappeared without leaving the shadow of a trace behind them, not a fugitive, not a wounded man, not a corpse, nothing at all."
"It seems incredible. Whom did you talk to?"
"I saw ten people last night who, for a month, with no one to interfere with them except a few soldiers of the Landsturm placed in charge of Corvigny, have pursued a minute inquiry into all these problems, without establishing so much as a plausible theory. One thing alone is certain: the business was prepared long ago, down to the slightest detail. The exact range had been taken of the forts, the cupolas, the church and the square; and the siege-gun had been placed in position before and accurately laid so that the eleven shells should strike the eleven objects aimed at. That's all. The rest is mystery."
"And what about the château? And Élisabeth?"