'Hallo!' remarked Weiss, 'those fellows are Bavarians--I can tell it by their helmets.'
At the same time it seemed to him that some other columns, half hidden by the railway line, were pressing onward, on the right, and endeavouring to reach some distant trees, whence, by an oblique movement, they might again descend upon Bazeilles. Should they succeed in thus sheltering themselves in the park of Montivilliers, the village might be captured. This was vaguely but promptly realised by Weiss. However, as the front attack was becoming more determined, he ceased thinking of it. He had abruptly turned towards the heights of Floing, which rose up on the north, above the town of Sedan. A battery installed there had just opened fire, puffs of smoke could be seen ascending in the bright sunlight, and the detonations could be distinctly heard.
'Hum,' said Weiss, 'the dance will be a general one.'
The lieutenant, who was looking in the same direction, made a vigorous gesture of assent, and added: 'But Bazeilles is the important point. The issue of the battle will be decided here.'
'There's no doubt about it. The marshal himself must certainly have that opinion, for he came here last night to tell us that we must fight to the last man rather than let the enemy take the village.'
Weiss shook his head, however, scanned the horizon around him, and then, in a hesitating way, as though he were talking to himself, remarked: 'Well, no--no--I hardly fancy that--I'm afraid of something else--something I hardly dare say----' He spoke no further, but held out his arms as though they were the branches of a vice; and then turning towards the north, he brought his hands together as if the vice-chops had suddenly met. In this fashion he expressed the fears that had been troubling him since the previous day, fears based on his knowledge of the country, and on everything that he had observed of the march of the hostile armies. And even now, when the broad plain expanded in the radiant sunshine, his eyes returned once more to the hills on the left bank of the river, over which, throughout an entire day and an entire night, there had marched such an interminable, black swarm of German troops. A battery was firing from the left of Remilly, but the one whose shells were beginning to fall at Bazeilles was installed at Pont-Maugis on the bank of the river. Weiss folded his eye-glasses one over the other, and held them to one eye that he might the more effectually explore the wooded slopes. However, he could only see the white puffs of smoke with which the guns were, each minute, capping the heights. What had become, then, of the human torrent which had streamed along those hills? All that he could distinguish, after prolonged scrutiny, was a cluster of horses and uniforms--some general and his staff, no doubt--perched at the corner of a pine wood on the Marfée hill, above Noyers and Frénois. Farther on was the loop of the Meuse, barring the west; and on this side the only possible line of retreat on Mézières lay along the narrow road passing through the defile of St. Albert, between the river and the forest of the Ardennes. On the previous day, chancing to meet a general in a hollow road of the valley of Givonne--a general who he afterwards learnt was Ducrot, the commander of the First Corps--Weiss had ventured to speak to him of this one possible line of retreat. Unless the troops immediately retired by the road in question, if they waited until the Prussians had crossed the Meuse at Donchery and intercepted the passage of the river, they would certainly find themselves immobilised, brought to a stand at the Belgian frontier. That same evening, moreover, it had already seemed too late to effect the movement, for the Uhlans were reported to be in possession of the Donchery bridge--another bridge which had not been blown up, in this case through forgetfulness to bring the powder required for the purpose. And now, thought Weiss despairingly, the whole stream of men, the great black swarm, must be crossing the plain of Donchery on its way towards the defile of St. Albert, with its advance guard already threatening St. Menges and Floing, whither he had conducted Jean and Maurice the previous night. He could espy the distant steeple of Floing looking like a fine white needle in the brilliant sunlight.