Maurice was still listening to the guns as they rolled along through the little black town down below, to the horses trotting past without cessation, to the men flowing away towards the Meuse, towards the terrible Unknown of the morrow. And, meantime, on the little window curtains he still saw the Emperor's shadow pass by at regular intervals; the shadow of that invalid, kept on his legs by insomnia, pacing to and fro, feeling that he must needs continue on the move despite all his sufferings, and with his ears full of the noise made by all those horses and soldiers whom he was sending to death. So a few hours had sufficed, and now the disaster was decided upon, accepted! What, indeed, could they have said to each other, that Emperor and that marshal, both of whom were aware of the calamity to which they were marching, who in the evening had been convinced of defeat--given the frightful situation in which the army would henceforth find itself--and who could not have changed their opinion in the morning since the peril was increasing hour by hour? General de Palikao's plan, the lightning march on Montmédy, already a hazardous venture on August 22, still susceptible, possibly, of accomplishment on the 25th, with veterans and a captain of genius, became on the 27th an act of sheer madness in presence of the continual hesitation of the commanders and the increasing demoralisation of the troops. If both Emperor and marshal knew this, why did they yield to the pitiless voices that goaded them on in their indecision? The marshal, perhaps, had but the limited, obedient mind of the soldier, great in its abnegation. And the Emperor, who no longer commanded, was awaiting destiny. They were asked to give their lives and the lives of the army, and they consented to give them. That was the Night of the Crime--the abominable night when a nation was murdered, for thenceforward the army was in distress, one hundred thousand men were sent to the slaughter!
Despairing and shuddering, Maurice thought of all these things as he watched that shadow on Madame Desroches' dainty muslin curtains, that feverish shadow ever on the tramp, and which the pitiless voice coming from Paris seemed to be urging on. Had not the Empress wished that night for the father's death so that the son might reign? March! march! without a glance behind, under the rain and through the mud, march to extermination, so that this supreme final game for possession of an agonising empire may be played out to the last card! March! march! die like a hero on the piled-up corpses of your people; strike the whole world with compassionate admiration so that it may forgive your posterity! And doubtless the Emperor _was_ marching to death. The kitchen was no longer blazing down below; the equerries, the aides-de-camp, the chamberlains were all asleep; the whole house was black, save for that lighted window, on the curtains of which the shadow was incessantly passing to and fro, the shadow of one who had quietly resigned himself to the fatal sacrifice amid all the deafening uproar occasioned by the Twelfth Army Corps, which was still marching along in the darkness.