The teeth of the former were set in the latter's cheek, their arms, stiff in death, had not relaxed their terrible hug, binding the pair with such a bond of everlasting hate and fury that ultimately it was found necessary to bury them in a common grave.
Then Prosper made haste to lead Silvine away, since they could accomplish nothing in that house where Death had taken up his abode, and upon their return, despairing, to the post where the donkey and cart had been detained, it so chanced that they found, in company with the officer who had treated them so harshly, a general on his way to visit the battlefield. This gentleman requested to be allowed to see the pass, which he examined attentively and restored to Silvine; then, with an expression of compassion on his face, he gave directions that the poor woman should have her donkey returned to her and be allowed to go in quest of her husband's body. Stopping only long enough to thank her benefactor, she and her companion, with the cart trundling after them, set out for the Fond de Givonne, obedient to the instructions that were again given them not to pass through Sedan.
After that they bent their course to the left in order to reach the plateau of Illy by the road that crosses the wood of la Garenne, but here again they were delayed; twenty times they nearly abandoned all hope of getting through the wood, so numerous were the obstacles they encountered. At every step their way was barred by huge trees that had been laid low by the artillery fire, stretched on the ground like mighty giants fallen. It was the part of the forest that had suffered so severely from the cannonade, where the projectiles had plowed their way through the secular growths as they might have done through a square of the Old Guard, meeting in either case with the sturdy resistance of veterans. Everywhere the earth was cumbered with gigantic trunks, stripped of their leaves and branches, pierced and mangled, even as mortals might have been, and this wholesale destruction, the sight of the poor limbs, maimed, slaughtered and weeping tears of sap, inspired the beholder with the sickening horror of a human battlefield. There were corpses of men there, too; soldiers, who had stood fraternally by the trees and fallen with them. A lieutenant, from whose mouth exuded a bloody froth, had been tearing up the grass by handfuls in his agony, and his stiffened fingers were still buried in the ground. A little farther on a captain, prone on his stomach, had raised his head to vent his anguish in yells and screams, and death had caught and fixed him in that strange attitude. Others seemed to be slumbering among the herbage, while a zouave; whose blue sash had taken fire, had had his hair and beard burned completely from his head. And several times it happened, as they traversed those woodland glades, that they had to remove a body from the path before the donkey could proceed on his way. Presently they came to a little valley, where the sights of horror abruptly ended. The battle had evidently turned at this point and expended its force in another direction, leaving this peaceful nook of nature untouched. The trees were all uninjured; the carpet of velvety moss was undefiled by blood. A little brook coursed merrily among the duckweed, the path that ran along its bank was shaded by tall beeches. A penetrating charm, a tender peacefulness pervaded the solitude of the lovely spot, where the living waters gave up their coolness to the air and the leaves whispered softly in the silence.
Prosper had stopped to let the donkey drink from the stream.
'Ah, how pleasant it is here!' he involuntarily exclaimed in his delight.
Silvine cast an astonished look about her, as if wondering how it was that she, too, could feel the influence of the peaceful scene. Why should there be repose and happiness in that hidden nook, when surrounding it on every side were sorrow and affliction? She made a gesture of impatience.
'Quick, quick, let us be gone. Where is the spot? Where did you tell me you saw Honore?'
And when, at some fifty paces from there, they at last came out on the plateau of Illy, the level plain unrolled itself in its full extent before their vision. It was the real, the true battlefield that they beheld now, the bare fields stretching away to the horizon under the wan, cheerless sky, whence showers were streaming down continually. There were no piles of dead visible; all the Prussians must have been buried by this time, for there was not a single one to be seen among the corpses of the French that were scattered here and there, along the roads and in the fields, as the conflict had swayed in one direction or another. The first that they encountered was a sergeant, propped against a hedge, a superb man, in the bloom of his youthful vigor; his face was tranquil and a smile seemed to rest on his parted lips. A hundred paces further on, however, they beheld another, lying across the road, who had been mutilated most frightfully, his head almost entirely shot away, his shoulders covered with great splotches of brain matter. Then, as they advanced further into the field, after the single bodies, distributed here and there, they came across little groups; they saw seven men aligned in single rank, kneeling and with their muskets at the shoulder in the position of aim, who had been hit as they were about to fire, while close beside them a subaltern had also fallen as he was in the act of giving the word of command. After that the road led along the brink of a little ravine, and there they beheld a spectacle that aroused their horror to the highest pitch as they looked down into the chasm, into which an entire company seemed to have been blown by the fiery blast; it was choked with corpses, a landslide, an avalanche of maimed and mutilated men, bent and twisted in an inextricable tangle, who with convulsed fingers had caught at the yellow clay of the bank to save themselves in their descent, fruitlessly. And a dusky flock of ravens flew away, croaking noisily, and swarms of flies, thousands upon thousands of them, attracted by the odor of fresh blood, were buzzing over the bodies and returning incessantly.
'Where is the spot?' Silvine asked again.
They were then passing a plowed field that was completely covered with knapsacks. It was manifest that some regiment had been roughly handled there, and the men, in a moment of panic, had relieved themselves of their burdens. The debris of every sort with which the ground was thickly strewn served to explain the episodes of the conflict. There was a stubble field where the scattered
Silvine, who was beginning to weary of those fields of death over which she had tramped so many long miles, looked about her with increasing distrust and uneasiness.
'Where is the spot? where is it?'
But Prosper made no answer; he also was becoming uneasy. What distressed him even more than the sights of suffering among his fellow-soldiers was the dead horses, the poor brutes that lay outstretched upon their side, that were met with in great numbers. Many of them presented a most pitiful spectacle, in all sorts of harrowing attitudes, with heads torn from the body, with lacerated flanks from which the entrails protruded. Many were resting on their back, with their four feet elevated in the air like signals of distress. The entire extent of the broad plain was dotted with them. There were some that death had not released after their two days' agony; at the faintest sound they would raise their head, turning it eagerly from right to left, then let it fall again upon the ground, while others lay motionless and momentarily gave utterance to that shrill scream which one who has heard it can never forget, the lament of the dying horse, so piercingly mournful that earth and heaven seemed to shudder in unison with it. And Prosper, with a bleeding heart, thought of poor Zephyr, and told himself that perhaps he might see him once again.
Suddenly he became aware that the ground was trembling under the thundering hoof-beats of a headlong charge. He turned to look, and had barely time to shout to his companion:
'The horses, the horses! Get behind that wall!'
From the summit of a neighboring eminence a hundred riderless horses, some of them still bearing the saddle and master's kit, were plunging down upon them at break-neck speed. They were cavalry mounts that had lost their masters and remained on the battlefield, and instinct had counseled them to associate together in a band. They had had neither hay nor oats for two days, and had cropped the scanty grass from off the plain, shorn the hedge-rows of leaves and twigs, gnawed the bark from the trees, and when they felt the pangs of hunger pricking at their vitals like a keen spur, they started all together at a mad gallop and charged across the deserted, silent fields, crushing the dead out of all human shape, extinguishing the last spark of life in the wounded.
The band came on like a whirlwind; Silvine had only time to pull the donkey and cart to one side where they
