s the experience of
Sedan over again, only this time they drain us of our last drop of
life-blood." Then taking up the paper and reading from it: "One hundred
and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and
standards, one hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six machine
guns, eight hundred casemate and barbette guns, three hundred thousand
muskets, two thousand military train wagons, material for eighty-five
batteries--"

And he went on giving further particulars: how Marshal Bazaine had been
blockaded in Metz with the army, bound hand and foot, making no effort
to break the wall of adamant that surrounded him; the doubtful relations
that existed between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his indecision
and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a great
role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed upon
himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences, and
the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with Bismarck,
King William and the Empress-regent, who in the end put her foot down
and refused to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a cession of
territory; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the completion
of the web that destiny had been weaving, famine in Metz, a compulsory
capitulation, officers and men, hope and courage gone, reduced to accept
the bitter terms of the victor. France no longer had an army.

"In God's name!" Jean ejaculated in a deep, low voice. He had not fully
understood it all, but until then Bazaine had always been for him the
great captain, the one man to whom they were to look for salvation.
"What is left us to do now? What will become of them at Paris?"

The doctor was just coming to the news from Paris, which was of a
disastrous character. He called their attention to the fact that the
paper from which he was reading was dated November 5. The surrender of
Metz had been consummated on the 27th of October, and the tidings were
not known in Paris until the 30th. Coming, as it did, upon the heels of
the reverses recently sustained at Chevilly, Bagneux and la Malmaison,
after the conflict at Bourget and the loss of that position, the
intelligence had burst like a thunderbolt over the desperate populace,
angered and disgusted by the feebleness and impotency of the government
of National Defense. And thus it was that on the following day, the
31st, the city was threatened with a general insurrection, an