which Margueritte's division had charged, inasmuch as the poor devil had been able to drag himself to that house. All the information he could get from him, however, was of the vaguest; yes, it was over that way; you turned to the left, after passing a big field of potatoes.
Immediately she was in possession of this slender clue Silvine insisted on starting out again. An inferior officer of the medical department chanced to pass with a cart just then, collecting the dead; she hailed him and notified him of the presence of the wounded men, then, throwing the donkey's bridle across her arm, urged him along over the muddy road, eager to reach the designated spot, beyond the big potato field. When they had gone some distance she stopped, yielding to her despair.
'My God, where is the place! Where can it be?'
Prosper looked about him, taxing his recollection fruitlessly.
'I told you, it is close beside the place where we made our charge. If only I could find my poor Zephyr-'
And he cast a wistful look on the dead horses that lay around them. It had been his secret hope, his dearest wish, during the entire time they had been wandering over the plateau, to see his mount once more, to bid him a last farewell.
'It ought to be somewhere in this vicinity,' he suddenly said. 'See! over there to the left, there are the three trees. You see the wheel-tracks? And, look, over yonder is a broken-down caisson. We have found the spot; we are here at last!'
Quivering with emotion, Silvine darted forward and eagerly scanned the faces of two corpses, two artillerymen who had fallen by the roadside.
'He is not here! He is not here! You cannot have seen aright. Yes, that is it; some delusion must have cheated your eyes.' And little by little an air-drawn hope, a wild delight crept into her mind. 'If you were mistaken, if he should be alive! And be sure he is alive, since he is not here!'
Suddenly she gave utterance to a low, smothered cry. She had turned, and was standing on the very position that the battery had occupied. The scene was most frightful, the ground torn and fissured as by an earthquake and covered with wreckage of every description, the dead lying as they had fallen in every imaginable attitude of horror, arms bent and twisted, legs doubled under them, heads thrown back, the lips parted over the white teeth as if their last breath had been expended in shouting defiance to the foe. A corporal had died with his hands pressed convulsively to his eyes, unable longer to endure the dread spectacle. Some gold coins that a lieutenant carried in a belt about his body had been spilled at the same time as his life-blood, and lay scattered among his entrails. There were Adolphe, the driver, and the gunner, Louis, clasped in each other's arms in a fierce embrace, their sightless orbs starting from their sockets, mated even in death. And there, at last, was Honore, recumbent on his disabled gun as on a bed of honor, with the great rent in his side that had let out his young life, his face, unmutilated and beautiful in its stern anger, still turned defiantly toward the Prussian batteries.
'Oh! my friend,' sobbed Silvine, 'my friend, my friend-'
She had fallen to her knees on the damp, cold ground, her hands joined as if in prayer, in an outburst of frantic grief. The word friend, the only name by which it occurred to her to address him, told the story of the tender affection she had lost in that man, so good, so loving, who had forgiven her, had meant to make her his wife, despite the ugly past. And now all hope was dead within her bosom, there was nothing left to make life desirable. She had never loved another; she would put away her love for him at the bottom of her heart and hold it sacred there. The rain had ceased; a flock of crows that circled above the three trees, croaking dismally, affected her like a menace of evil. Was he to be taken from her again, her cherished dead, whom she had recovered with such difficulty? She dragged herself along upon her knees, and with a trembling hand brushed away the hungry flies that were buzzing about her friend's wide-open eyes.
She caught sight of a bit of blood-stained paper between Honore's stiffened fingers. It troubled her; she tried to gain possession of the paper, pulling at it gently, but the dead man would not surrender it, seemingly tightening his hold on it, guarding it so jealously that it could not have been taken from him without tearing it in bits. It was the letter she had written him, that he had always carried next his heart, and that he had taken from its hiding place in the moment of his supreme agony, as if to bid her a last farewell. It seemed so strange, was such a revelation, that he should have died thinking of her; when she saw what it was a profound delight filled her soul in the midst of her affliction. Yes, surely, she would leave it with him, the letter that was so dear to him! she would not take it from him, since he was so bent on carrying it with him to the grave. Her tears flowed afresh, but they were beneficent tears this time, and brought healing and comfort with them. She arose and kissed his hands, kissed him on the forehead, uttering meanwhile but that one word, which was in itself a prolonged caress:
'My friend! my friend-'
Meantime the sun was declining; Prosper had gone and taken the counterpane from the cart, and between them they raised Honore's body, slowly, reverently, and laid it on the bed-covering, which they had stretched upon the ground; then, first wrapping him in its folds, they bore him to the cart. It was threatening to rain again, and they had started on their return, forming, with the donkey, a sorrowful little cortege on the broad bosom of the accursed plain, when a deep rumbling as of thunder was heard in the distance. Prosper turned his head and had only time to shout:
'The horses! the horses!'
It was the starving, abandoned cavalry mounts making another charge. They came up this time in a deep mass across a wide, smooth field, manes and tails streaming in the wind, froth flying from their nostrils, and the level rays of the fiery setting sun sent the shadow of the infuriated herd clean across the plateau. Silvine rushed forward and planted herself before the cart, raising her arms above her head as if her puny form might have power to check them. Fortunately the ground fell off just at that point, causing them to swerve to the left; otherwise they would have crushed donkey, cart, and all to powder. The earth trembled, and their hoofs sent a volley of clods and small stones flying through the air, one of which struck the donkey on the head and wounded him. The last that was seen of them they were tearing down a ravine.
'It's hunger that starts them off like that,' said Prosper. 'Poor beasts!'
Silvine, having bandaged the donkey's ear with her handkerchief, took him again by the bridle, and the mournful little procession began to retrace its steps across the plateau, to cover the two leagues that lay between it and Remilly. Prosper had turned and cast a look on the dead horses, his heart heavy within him to leave the field without having seen Zephyr.
A little below the wood of la Garenne, as they were about to turn off to the left to take the road that they had traversed that morning, they encountered another German post and were again obliged to exhibit their pass. And the officer in command, instead of telling them to avoid Sedan, ordered them to keep straight on their course and pass through the city; otherwise they would be arrested. This was the most recent order; it was not for them to question it. Moreover, their journey would be shortened by a mile and a quarter, which they did not regret, weary and foot-sore as they were.
When they were within Sedan, however, they found their progress retarded owing to a singular cause. As soon as they had passed the fortifications their nostrils were saluted by such a stench, they were obliged to wade through such a mass of abominable filth, reaching almost to their knees, as fairly turned their stomachs. The city, where for three days a hundred thousand men had lived without the slightest provision being made for decency or cleanliness, had become a cesspool, a foul sewer, and this devil's broth was thickened by all sorts of solid matter, rotting hay and straw, stable litter, and the excreta of animals. The carcasses of the horses, too, that were knocked on the head, skinned, and cut up in the public squares, in full view of everyone, had their full share in contaminating the atmosphere; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, the bones and heads were left lying on the pavement, where they attracted swarms of flies. Pestilence would surely break out in the city unless they made haste to rid themselves of all that carrion, of that stratum of impurity, which, in the Rue de Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the Place Turenne, reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian authorities had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be seen posted about the city, requisitioning the inhabitants, irrespective of rank, laborers, merchants, bourgeois, magistrates, for the morrow; they were ordered to assemble, armed with brooms and shovels, and apply themselves to the task, and were warned that they would be subjected to heavy penalties if the city was not clean by night. The President of the Tribunal had taken time by the forelock, and might even then be seen scraping away at the pavement before his door and loading the results of his labors upon a wheelbarrow with a fire-shovel.
Silvine and Prosper, who had selected the Grande Rue as their route for traversing the city, advanced but slowly through that lake of malodorous slime. In addition to that the place was in a state of ferment and agitation
