Henriette was instinctively bound for the Sub-Prefecture, where she felt certain she would gain some information; and, to avoid being accosted, the idea occurred to her of cutting through the side streets. But she was unable to pass along the Rue du Four and the Rue des Laboureurs: they were blocked with cannon, endless rows of guns, caissons, and ammunition waggons, which had been huddled together there the day before, and seemed to have been forgotten. There was not even a sentry mounting guard over them; and the sight of all that gloomy, unutilised artillery, slumbering in abandonment in the depths of those deserted by-ways, chilled Henriette's heart. She now had to retrace her steps by way of the Place du Collège towards the high street, where, outside the Hôtel de l'Europe, she saw some orderlies holding horses, and waiting for a party of field officers, whose voices resounded loudly in the brightly illuminated dining-room. People were still more plentiful on the Place du Rivage and the Place Turenne, where groups of anxious townsfolk, women and children, were mingled with scared, disbanded soldiers, going hither and thither; and she saw a general rush swearing out of the Golden Cross Hotel and gallop off in a rage at the risk of knocking everybody down. For a moment she seemed to think of entering the town-hall; however she ultimately turned into the Rue du Pont-de-Meuse to reach the Sub-Prefecture.
And never before in her eyes had Sedan presented such a tragic aspect as that which it now wore in the dim, dirty morning twilight, full of fog. The houses seemed to be dead; many of them were empty, abandoned a couple of days since; and others, where fear-fraught insomnia could be divined, remained hermetically closed. With all those streets still half deserted, peopled merely with anxious shadows, traversed by abrupt departures in the midst of all the laggard soldiers who had been roaming about since the previous day, it was a morning to make one fairly shiver. The light would gradually increase, and by-and-by the town would be crowded, submerged by the impending disaster; but as yet it was only half-past five, and so far one could barely hear the cannonade, its booming being deadened by the lofty black houses.