Noon came, but there was still not a Prussian to be seen. One o'clock, two o'clock passed, still nothing. Then lassitude came, and with it doubt. In bantering voices the men began to jeer at their generals, who had taken fright, perhaps, at sight of their own shadows on some wall. It would be a charity to provide them with spectacles. Nice humbugs they were to have set everybody agog for nothing! And a wag called out: 'Is it the same as it was at Mulhausen, then?'
On hearing this, Maurice, in the anguish of his recollections, felt a pang at his heart. He remembered that foolish flight, that panic which had carried the Seventh Corps ten leagues away, although not a single German had shown himself! And the same affair was beginning again; he was fully convinced of it. If the enemy had not attacked them, now that four-and-twenty hours had elapsed since the skirmish of Grand-Pré, it could only be that the 4th Hussars had simply come into collision with some reconnoitring party of the enemy's cavalry. The hostile columns must still be far off, perhaps a couple of days' march away. This idea suddenly terrified Maurice, for he thought of all the time that the French had lost. In three days they had barely covered a distance of two leagues from Contreuve to Vouziers. On the 25th the other army corps had marched northward, under pretence of obtaining supplies, whilst now, on the 27th, they were descending southwards to accept a battle that no one offered them. Following the 4th Hussars towards the abandoned defiles of the Argonne, Bordas's brigade had fancied itself lost; and this had entailed the immediate advance of the remainder of the division that it belonged to, the immobilisation of the entire Seventh Corps, and finally the southward march of the rest of the army--all to no purpose! And Maurice reflected that each hour was of incalculable value, given that mad plan of joining Bazaine, a plan which only a general of genius could have executed with the help of veterans, and provided that he rushed straight before him and through every obstacle, like a blizzard.
'We are done for!' Maurice exclaimed, seized with despair in a sudden brief flash of lucidity.
Then, as Jean, to whom he addressed himself, opened his eyes wide, failing to understand him, he continued in an undertone, so that his words might only reach the corporal's ear: 'The commanders are stupid rather than malicious, that's certain, and they have no luck! They know nothing, they foresee nothing, they have no plan, no ideas, no lucky chances--Ah! everything's against us!'