LITMIR.BIZ

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night of mad enthusiasm that had determined him to enlist. But the wind had changed into a tempestuous squall, there had been a terrible veering, and the very temperament of the French race was symbolised by the heated confidence which at the first reverse had suddenly collapsed into the despair now galloping among these vagrant, dispersed soldiers who were vanquished without having fought.

      'This popgun of mine jolly well hurts my arms,' resumed Loubet, as he again changed his chassepot from one shoulder to the other. 'A nice toy, indeed, to carry about with one.' And then alluding to the money he had received as a substitute[9] he added: 'All the same, only fifteen hundred francs for such a trade as this—it's a regular swindle. That rich bloke whose place I've took must be smoking some nice pipes by his fireside, while I'm off to get my head cracked.'

      'I had finished my time,' growled Chouteau, 'and I was just about to slope, but on account of this war they made me stay. Ah! what cursed bad luck to stumble into such a swinish business as this.'

      He was balancing his rifle with a feverish hand, and suddenly he threw it, with all his strength, over a hedge. 'There,' said he, 'that's the place for the dirty thing.'

      The gun spun round twice, and then fell in a furrow, where it lay motionless, stretched out like a dead body. Other guns were already flying through the air to join it, and the field was soon strewn with prostrate weapons looking sadly stiff in their abandonment under the oppressive sun. What with hunger torturing their stomachs, their shoes which injured their feet, this march which filled them with suffering, and the unforeseen defeat threateningly pursuing them, the men were seized as it were with epidemic madness. They could not hope for anything now; the generals bolted, the commissariat did not even feed them; and what with weariness and worry they experienced a desire to have done with the whole business before even beginning it. And that being so, the chassepot might as well join the knapsack. So with imbecile rage, and with the jeers of madmen amusing themselves, the laggards, scattered in endless file far away into the country, sent their guns flying into the fields.

      Before ridding himself of his weapon, Loubet twirled it round and round like a drum-major's cane. Lapoulle, seeing his comrades fling their guns away, fancied no doubt it was a new drill exercise, and imitated them. Pache, however, with a confused consciousness of his duty, which he owed to his religious education, refused to do so, and was bespattered with insults by Chouteau, who called him a parson's drudge. 'There's a black-beetle for you,' said the house painter. 'Well, go and serve mass, as you're afraid to do like your comrades.'

      Maurice, who was very gloomy, marched on in silence, his head bent under the fiery sun. Amid a kind of nightmare, brought on by his atrocious weariness, and peopled with phantoms, he advanced as if bound for some abyss lying ahead; and he, the man of education, experienced a subsidence of all his culture, an abasement that lowered him to the bestial level of the wretches surrounding him. 'Ah! you are right,' he suddenly said to Chouteau.

      He had already deposited his gun on a pile of stones, when Jean, who had vainly been trying to prevent the arms being thrown away in this abominable fashion, perceived him, and darted towards him.

      'Take up your gun at once; at once, you hear me!' cried the corporal, his face suffused by a rush of terrible anger. Usually so calm and conciliatory, he now had flaming eyes, and his voice thundered. His men, who had never seen him like this before, stopped short in surprise. 'Take up your gun at once, or you'll have to deal with me.'

      Maurice, quivering with excitement, let but one word fall which he sought to render insulting: 'Clodhopper!'

      'Yes, that's it; I'm a clodhopper, and you are a gentleman, you are! And for that very reason you're a pig, a dirty pig. I tell you so to your face.' At this some hooting was heard, but the corporal continued vehemently: 'When a man's educated, he shows it. If we are peasants and brutes you ought to set us a good example, you who know more than we do. Take up your gun, I say, or I'll have you shot when we halt.'

      Maurice, already conquered, had picked up his gun. Tears of rage obscured his eyes. He resumed his march, staggering like a drunken man amid his comrades, who now jeered at him for having given in. Ah! that Jean, Maurice hated him with an inextinguishable hatred, struck as he was in the heart by this severe lesson which he felt to be deserved. And when Chouteau growled out that when men had a corporal like that they waited for a day of battle to lodge a stray bullet in his head, Maurice, quite maddened, distinctly saw himself smashing Jean's skull behind a wall.

      A diversion occurred, however. Loubet noticed that during the quarrel Pache also had ended by getting rid of his gun, gently depositing it at the foot of a bank. Why had he done this? He did not try to explain, but laughed slyly, in the somewhat shame-faced style of a good little boy detected in his first fault. Then, very gay and quite revived, he marched on with his arms swinging; and along the endless roads, between the fields of ripe corn and the hop grounds that followed one another, ever the same, the straggling march continued, and the laggards without knapsacks or guns were now but a tramping crowd, a medley of scamps and beggars, at whose approach the frightened villagers closed their doors.

      Just then an unforeseen meeting put the finishing touch to Maurice's rage. A dull, continuous rumbling was heard from afar; it was the reserve artillery, which had been the last to start, and the first detachment of which suddenly debouched round a turn of the road, the laggard linesmen having barely time to throw themselves into the fields. There was an entire artillery regiment of six squadrons marching in column, the colonel in the centre and each officer in his place, and they all clattered along at equal, carefully observed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, horses, and men. And in the fifth squadron Maurice recognised his cousin Honoré's gun. The quartermaster was there, proudly erect on his horse, to the left of the front driver, Adolphe, a stalwart, fair-complexioned man, who bestrode a sturdy chestnut, which admirably matched the off-horse trotting beside it; whilst Adolphe's chum, Louis, the gunner, a dark little fellow, would be seen among the six men seated in pairs on the ammunition boxes. They all seemed to have grown taller to Maurice, who had become acquainted with them at the camp, and the gun, drawn by its four horses and followed by its caisson, to which six other horses were harnessed, appeared to him as dazzling as a sun, well groomed and furbished, idolised by all its people, man and beast, who clung to it as it were with the discipline and attachment of a gallant family; and fearfully was Maurice's suffering increased when he saw his cousin Honoré dart a contemptuous glance at all the laggards, and then look quite stupefied on perceiving him among this flock of unarmed men. The defiling was nearly over already. The train of the batteries, the ammunition and forage waggons, the field smithies passed by; and then in a last cloud of dust came the spare men and horses, who vanished from sight at another bend of the road, amid the gradually subsiding clatter of wheels and hoofs.

      'Pooh!' said Loubet, 'it's easy enough to swagger when you travel about in a carriage.'

      The staff had found Altkirch unoccupied. There were no Prussians there as yet. Still fearing, however, that he was being pursued, and that the enemy might appear at any moment, General Douay had determined upon pushing on to Dannemarie, where the first detachments only arrived at five in the evening. Eight o'clock had struck, and night was gathering in, when the regiments, in frightful confusion and reduced to half their strength, commenced preparations for bivouacking. The men were quite exhausted, sinking both with hunger and fatigue. The laggards, the lamentable and interminable tag-rag and bobtail of the army, the cripples and mutineers scattered along the roads, continued arriving, now one by one, now in little bands, until ten o'clock, and had to search in the darkness for their companies which they could not find.

      As soon as Jean had joined his regiment he went to look for Lieutenant Rochas to report to him all that had happened, and found him and Captain Beaudoin conferring with the colonel at the door of a little inn, all three of them visibly preoccupied about the roll call, and anxious as to what had become of their men. At the first words the corporal addressed to the lieutenant, Colonel de Vineuil, overhearing him, made him approach and relate everything. There was an expression of deep despondency on the colonel's yellow face, lighted by eyes that seemed all the blacker on account of the whiteness of his thick snowy hair and long drooping moustaches.

      'Half a dozen of these scamps must be shot, sir,' exclaimed Captain Beaudoin, without waiting

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