'All the same,' shouted Loubet with that market boy's laugh of his; 'all the same we are not going to Berlin.'
'To Berlin! to Berlin!' Maurice again heard the cry bellowed forth by the swarming crowd on the Boulevards during that night of mad enthusiasm that had determined him to enlist. But the wind had changed into a tempestuous squall, there had been a terrible veering, and the very temperament of the French race was symbolised by the heated confidence which at the first reverse had suddenly collapsed into the despair now galloping among these vagrant, dispersed soldiers who were vanquished without having fought.
'This popgun of mine jolly well hurts my arms,' resumed Loubet, as he again changed his chassepot from one shoulder to the other. 'A nice toy, indeed, to carry about with one.' And then alluding to the money he had received as a substitute[9] he added: 'All the same, only fifteen hundred francs for such a trade as this--it's a regular swindle. That rich bloke whose place I've took must be smoking some nice pipes by his fireside, while I'm off to get my head cracked.'
'I had finished my time,' growled Chouteau, 'and I was just about to slope, but on account of this war they made me stay. Ah! what cursed bad luck to stumble into such a swinish business as this.'
He was balancing his rifle with a feverish hand, and suddenly he threw it, with all his strength, over a hedge. 'There,' said he, 'that's the place for the dirty thing.'
The gun spun round twice, and then fell in a furrow, where it lay motionless, stretched out like a dead body. Other guns were already flying through the air to join it, and the field was soon strewn with prostrate weapons looking sadly stiff in their abandonment under the oppressive sun. What with hunger torturing their stomachs, their shoes which injured their feet, this march which filled them with suffering, and the unforeseen defeat threateningly pursuing them, the men were seized as it were with epidemic madness. They could not hope for anything now; the generals bolted, the commissariat did not even feed them; and what with weariness and worry they experienced a desire to have done with the whole business before even beginning it. And that being so, the chassepot might as well join the knapsack. So with imbecile rage, and with the jeers of madmen amusing themselves, the laggards, scattered in endless file far away into the country, sent their guns flying into the fields.