The Downfall

that was attached to the cravate.

Another billow of vapor came scurrying up from the river, enshrouding in its fleecy depths colonel, standard, and all, and the battalion passed on, whitherward no one could tell. First their route had conducted them over descending ground, now they were climbing a hill. On reaching the summit the command, halt! started at the front and ran down the column; the men were cautioned not to leave the ranks, arms were ordered, and there they remained, the heavy knapsacks forming a grievous burden to weary shoulders. It was evident that they were on a plateau, but to discern localities was out of the question; twenty paces was the extreme range of vision. It was now seven o'clock; the sound of firing reached them more distinctly, other batteries were apparently opening on Sedan from the opposite bank.

'Oh! I,' said Sergeant Sapin with a start, addressing Jean and Maurice, 'I shall be killed to-day.'

It was the first time he had opened his lips that morning; an expression of dreamy melancholy had rested on his thin face, with its big, handsome eyes and thin, pinched nose.

'What an idea!' Jean exclaimed; 'who can tell what is going to happen him? Every bullet has its billet, they say, but you stand no worse chance than the rest of us.'

'Oh, but me-I am as good as dead now. I tell you I shall be killed to-day.'

The near files turned and looked at him curiously, asking him if he had had a dream. No, he had dreamed nothing, but he felt it; it was there.

'And it is a pity, all the same, because I was to be married when I got my discharge.'

A vague expression came into his eyes again; his past life rose before him. He was the son of a small retail grocer at Lyons, and had been petted and spoiled by his mother up to the time of her death; then rejecting the proffer of his father, with whom he did not hit it off well, to assist in purchasing his discharge, he had remained with the army, weary and disgusted with life and with his surroundings. Coming home on furlough, however, he fell in love with a cousin and they became engaged; their intention was to open a little shop on the small capital which she would bring him, and then existence once more became desirable. He had received an elementary education; could read, write, and cipher. For the past year he had lived only in anticipation of this happy future.

He shivered, and gave himself a shake to dispel his revery, repeating with his tranquil air:

'Yes, it is too bad; I shall be killed to-day.'

No one spoke; the uncertainty and suspense continued. They knew not whether the enemy was on their front or in their rear. Strange sounds came to their ears from time to time from out the depths of the mysterious fog: the rumble of wheels, the deadened tramp of moving masses, the distant clatter of horses' hoofs; it was the evolutions of troops, hidden from view behind the misty curtain, the batteries, battalions, and squadrons of the 7th corps taking up their positions in line of battle. Now, however, it began to look as if the fog was about to lift; it parted here and there and fragments floated lightly off, like strips of gauze torn from a veil, and bits of sky appeared, not transparently blue, as on a bright summer's day, but opaque and of the hue of burnished steel, like the cheerless bosom of some deep, sullen mountain tarn. It was in one of those brighter moments when the sun was endeavoring to struggle forth that the regiments of chasseurs d'Afrique, constituting part of Margueritte's division, came riding by, giving the impression of a band of spectral horsemen. They sat very stiff and erect in the saddle, with their short cavalry jackets, broad red sashes and smart little kepis, accurate in distance and alignment and managing admirably their lean, wiry mounts, which were almost invisible under the heterogeneous collection of tools and camp equipage that they had to carry. Squadron after squadron they swept by in long array, to be swallowed in the gloom from which they had just emerged, vanishing as if dissolved by the fine rain. The truth was, probably, that they were in the way, and their leaders, not knowing what use to put them to, had packed them off the field, as had often been the case since the opening of the campaign. They had scarcely ever been employed on scouting or reconnoitering duty, and as soon as there was prospect of a fight were trotted about for shelter from valley to valley, useless objects, but too costly to be endangered.

Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them. 'That fellow, yonder, looks like him,' he said, under his breath. 'I wonder if it is he?'

'Of whom are you speaking?' asked Jean.

'Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at Osches, you remember.'

Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a general officer and his staff dashing down the descending road, and Maurice recognized the general of their brigade, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, shouting and gesticulating wildly. He had torn himself reluctantly from his comfortable quarters at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was evident from the horrible temper he was in that the condition of affairs that morning was not satisfactory to him. In a tone of voice so loud that everyone could hear he roared:

'In the devil's name, what stream is that off yonder, the Meuse or the Moselle?'

The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest. As at Bazeilles the effect was theatrical; the curtain rolled slowly upward to the flies, disclosing the setting of the stage. From a sky of transparent blue the sun poured down a flood of bright, golden light, and Maurice was no longer at a loss to recognize their position.

'Ah!' he said to Jean, 'we are on the plateau de l'Algerie. That village that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more distant still, a little to the right, is Fleigneux. Then those scrubby trees on the horizon, away in the background, are the forest of the Ardennes, and there lies the frontier-'

He went on to explain their position, naming each locality and pointing to it with outstretched hand. The plateau de l'Algerie was a belt of reddish ground, something less than two miles in length, sloping gently downward from the wood of la Garenne toward the Meuse, from which it was separated by the meadows. On it the line of the 7th corps had been established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were not sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly maintain his touch with the 1st corps, which was posted at right angles with his line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny.

'Oh, isn't it grand, isn't it magnificent!'

And Maurice, revolving on his heel, made with his hand a sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon. From their position on the plateau the whole wide field of battle lay stretched before them to the south and west: Sedan, almost at their feet, whose citadel they could see overtopping the roofs, then Balan and Bazeilles, dimly seen through the dun smoke-clouds that hung heavily in the motionless air, and further in the distance the hills of the left bank, Liry, la Marfee, la Croix-Piau. It was away toward the west, however, in the direction of Donchery, that the prospect was most extensive. There the Meuse curved horseshoe-wise, encircling the peninsula of Iges with a ribbon of pale silver, and at the northern extremity of the loop was distinctly visible the narrow road of the Saint-Albert pass, winding between the river bank and a beetling, overhanging hill that was crowned with the little wood of Seugnon, an offshoot of the forest of la Falizette. At the summit of the hill, at the carrefour of la Maison-Rouge, the road from Donchery to Vrigne-aux-Bois debouched into the Mezieres pike.

'See, that is the road by which we might retreat on Mezieres.'

Even as he spoke the first gun was fired from Saint-Menges. The fog still hung over the bottom-lands in shreds and patches, and through it they dimly descried a shadowy body of men moving through the Saint-Albert defile.

'Ah, they are there,' continued Maurice, instinctively lowering his voice. 'Too late, too late; they have intercepted us!'

It was not eight o'clock. The guns, which were thundering more fiercely than ever in the direction of Bazeilles, now also began to make themselves heard at the eastward, in the valley of la Givonne, which was hid from view; it was the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, debouching from the Chevalier wood and attacking the 1st corps, in front of Daigny village; and now that the XIth Prussian corps, moving on Floing, had opened fire on General Douay's troops, the investment was complete at every point of the great periphery of several leagues' extent, and the action was general all along the line.

Maurice suddenly perceived the enormity of their blunder in not retreating on Mezieres during the night; but as yet the consequences were not clear to him; he could not foresee all the disaster that was to result from that fatal error of judgment. Moved by some indefinable instinct of danger, he looked with apprehension on the adjacent heights that commanded the plateau de l'Algerie. If time had not been allowed them to make good their retreat, why had they not backed up against the frontier and occupied those heights of Illy and Saint-Menges, whence, if they could not maintain their position, they would at least have been free to cross over into Belgium? There were two points that appeared to him especially threatening, the mamelon of Hattoy, to the