would be protected by the wall.
'
But the horses had taken the obstacle in their stride and were already scouring away in the distance on the other side with a rumble like that of a receding thunder-storm; striking into a sunken road they pursued it as far as the corner of a little wood, behind which they were lost to sight.
Silvine, when she had brought the cart back into the road, insisted that Prosper should answer her question before they proceeded further.
'Come, where is it? You told me you could find the spot with your eyes bandaged; where is it? We have reached the ground.'
He, drawing himself up and anxiously scanning the horizon in every direction, seemed to become more and more perplexed.
'There were three trees, I must find those three trees in the first place. Ah,
Then perceiving people to his left, two men and a woman, it occurred to him to question them, but the woman ran away at his approach and the men repulsed him with threatening gestures; and he saw others of the same stripe, clad in sordid rags, unspeakably filthy, with the ill-favored faces of thieves and murderers, and they all shunned him, slinking away among the corpses like jackals or other unclean, creeping beasts. Then he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry passed the dead behind them were shoeless, their bare, white feet exposed, devoid of covering, and he saw how it was: they were the tramps and thugs who followed the German armies for the sake of plundering the dead, the detestable crew who followed in the wake of the invasion in order that they might reap their harvest from the field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose in front of him and scurried away on a run, a sack slung across his shoulder, the watches and small coins, proceeds of his robberies, jingling in his pockets.
A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old, however, allowed Prosper to approach him, and when the latter, seeing him to be French, rated him soundly, the boy spoke up in his defense. What, was it wrong for a poor fellow to earn his living? He was collecting chassepots, and received five sous for every chassepot he brought in. He had run away from his village that morning, having eaten nothing since the day before, and engaged himself to a contractor from Luxembourg, who had an arrangement with the Prussians by virtue of which he was to gather the muskets from the field of battle, the Germans fearing that should the scattered arms be collected by the peasants of the frontier, they might be conveyed into Belgium and thence find their way back to France. And so it was that there was quite a flock of poor devils hunting for muskets and earning their five sous, rummaging among the herbage, like the women who may be seen in the meadows, bent nearly double, gathering dandelions.
'It's a dirty business,' Prosper growled.
'What would you have! A chap must eat,' the boy replied. 'I am not robbing anyone.'
Then, as he did not belong to that neighborhood and could not give the information that Prosper wanted, he pointed out a little farmhouse not far away where he had seen some people stirring.
Prosper thanked him and was moving away to rejoin Silvine when he caught sight of a chassepot, partially buried in a furrow. His first thought was to say nothing of his discovery; then he turned about suddenly and shouted, as if he could not help it:
'Hallo! here's one; that will make five sous more for you.'
As they approached the farmhouse Silvine noticed other peasants engaged with spades and picks in digging long trenches; but these men were under the direct command of Prussian officers, who, with nothing more formidable than a light walking-stick in their hands, stood by, stiff and silent, and superintended the work. They had requisitioned the inhabitants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner, fearing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, and a gang of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side by side in close contiguity to one another, not searching them, not even looking at their faces, while two men followed after, equipped with great shovels, and covered the row with a layer of earth, so thin that the ground had already begun to crack beneath the showers. The work was so badly and hastily done that before two weeks should have elapsed each of those fissures would be breathing forth pestilence. Silvine could not resist the impulse to pause at the brink of the trench and look at those pitiful corpses as they were brought forward, one after another. She was possessed by a horrible fear that in each fresh body the men brought from the cart she might recognize Honore. Was not that he, that poor wretch whose left eye had been destroyed? No! Perhaps that one with the fractured jaw was he? The one thing certain to her mind was that if she did not make haste to find him, wherever he might be on that boundless, indeterminate plateau, they would pick him up and bury him in a common grave with the others. She therefore hurried to rejoin Prosper, who had gone on to the farmhouse with the cart.
'
There were none but Prussians at the farm, however, together with a woman servant and her child, just come in from the woods, where they had been near perishing of thirst and hunger. The scene was one of patriarchal simplicity and well-earned repose after the fatigues of the last few days. Some of the soldiers had hung their uniforms from a clothes-line and were giving them a thorough brushing, another was putting a patch on his trousers, with great neatness and dexterity, while the cook of the detachment had built a great fire in the middle of the courtyard on which the soup was boiling in a huge pot from which ascended a most appetizing odor of cabbage and bacon. There is no denying that the Prussians generally displayed great moderation toward the inhabitants of the country after the conquest, which was made the easier to them by the spirit of discipline that prevailed among the troops. These men might have been taken for peaceable citizens just come in from their daily avocations, smoking their long pipes. On a bench beside the door sat a stout, red-bearded man, who had taken up the servant's child, a little urchin five or six years old, and was dandling it and talking baby-talk to it in German, delighted to see the little one laugh at the harsh syllables which it could not understand.
Prosper, fearing there might be more trouble in store for them, had turned his back on the soldiers immediately on entering, but those Prussians were really good fellows; they smiled at the little donkey, and did not even trouble themselves to ask for a sight of the pass.
Then ensued a wild, aimless scamper across the bosom of the great, sinister plain. The sun, now sinking rapidly toward the horizon, showed its face for a moment from between two clouds. Was night to descend and surprise them in the midst of that vast charnel-house? Another shower came down; the sun was obscured, the rain and mist formed an impenetrable barrier about them, so that the country around, roads, fields, trees, was shut out from their vision. Prosper knew not where they were; he was lost, and admitted it: his memory was all astray, he could recall nothing precise of the occurrences of that terrible day but one before. Behind them, his head lowered almost to the ground, the little donkey trotted along resignedly, dragging the cart, with his customary docility. First they took a northerly course, then they returned toward Sedan. They had lost their bearings and could not tell in which direction they were going; twice they noticed that they were passing localities that they had passed before and retraced their steps. They had doubtless been traveling in a circle, and there came a moment when in their exhaustion and despair they stopped at a place where three roads met, without courage to pursue their search further, the rain pelting down on them, lost and utterly miserable in the midst of a sea of mud.
But they heard the sound of groans, and hastening to a lonely little house on their left, found there, in one of the bedrooms, two wounded men. All the doors were standing open; the two unfortunates had succeeded in dragging themselves thus far and had thrown themselves on the beds, and for the two days that they had been alternately shivering and burning, their wounds having received no attention, they had seen no one, not a living soul. They were tortured by a consuming thirst, and the beating of the rain against the window-panes added to their torment, but they could not move hand or foot. Hence, when they heard Silvine approaching, the first word that escaped their lips was: 'Drink! Give us to drink!' that longing, pathetic cry, with which the wounded always pursue the by-passer whenever the sound of footsteps arouses them from their lethargy. There were many cases similar to this, where men were overlooked in remote corners, whither they had fled for refuge. Some were picked up even five and six days later, when their sores were filled with maggots and their sufferings had rendered them delirious.
When Silvine had given the wretched men a drink Prosper, who, in the more sorely injured of the twain, had recognized a comrade of his regiment, a chasseur d'Afrique, saw that they could not be far from the ground over
