He drew himself still more erect, raising his arm like a flag-staff. 'Listen, there has been fighting to-day, and the staff are waiting for news. Well, I'll tell you what news will come! The Prussians have been thrashed--thrashed to such a point that they have neither arms nor legs left them, thrashed to such a degree that only crumbs of them remain for us to sweep away!'
At that moment a loud, dolorous cry resounded under the sombre heavens. Was it the plaintive note of some night bird? Was it the sobbing voice of Mystery coming from afar? The whole camp, shrouded in darkness, shuddered at the sound, and the disquietude fostered by the delay in the arrival of the expected despatches became more intense, feverish, and widespread. The flame of the candle that illuminated the anxious vigil of the staff had shot up higher, and now it was shining erect, without a flicker, like the flame of a taper beside a death-bed.
But it was ten o'clock; and Gaude, springing from the dark ground where he had been lost to view, was the first to sound the signal for the men to retire for the night. Far and near, the other bugles replied, till the sound gradually died away in a faint flourish, as though the very instruments were drowsy. Then Weiss, who had lingered there so long, affectionately pressed Maurice to his heart, and bade him be brave and hopeful. He would kiss Henriette for him, and say all manner of kind things to uncle Fouchard.
Just as he was going off a rumour sped through the camp causing a feverish agitation: Marshal MacMahon had gained a great victory, it was said; the Crown Prince of Prussia and 25,000 men had been taken prisoners; the enemy had been driven back, annihilated, leaving his guns and baggage in the hands of the French.
'Of course!' exclaimed Rochas in his thundering voice; and running after Weiss, who, quite delighted, was hastening away towards Mulhausen, he added: 'We'll kick them all the way back, sir, all the way back!'
A quarter of an hour later, however, a despatch announced that the army had been obliged to abandon Wœrth,[8] and was in full retreat. Ah! What a night! Rochas, overcome by sleep, had wrapped himself in his cloak, and as often happened was slumbering on the ground, disdaining any shelter. Maurice and Jean had slipped into the tent, where, with their heads resting on their knapsacks, Loubet, Chouteau, Pache, and Lapoulle had already settled themselves. There was just room for six men, provided they curled up their legs. At the outset Loubet enlivened all these hungry fellows by convincing Lapoulle that some fowls would be given out at ration time, next day; they felt so tired, however, that they were soon snoring, careless whether the Prussians came or not. Jean remained for a moment quite motionless, pressed close against Maurice. Despite his great fatigue he could not get to sleep, for everything that Weiss had said of the innumerable, all-devouring German nation, that was up in arms against France, was revolving in his brain; and he realised that his companion also was awake, thinking of the self-same things. Suddenly Maurice drew back impatiently, and Jean divined that he inconvenienced him. The instinctive enmity and repugnance, due to difference of class and education, that separated the peasant from the young man of culture, assumed a form of physical dislike. It filled Jean with a feeling of shame and secret sadness, and he tried to make himself small, as it were, to escape the hostile contempt that he divined in Maurice. The night was freshening, but inside the tent, with all these closely packed bodies, the atmosphere became so stifling that Maurice, seized with feverish exasperation, at length bounded outside, and stretched himself on the ground a few paces off. Jean, feeling quite wretched, sank into a kind of semi-somnolence, full of unpleasant dreams, in which his sorrow that nobody cared for him was mingled with the apprehension of a terrible misfortune, which he fancied he could hear galloping along, afar off, in the depths of the Unknown.