ain rolled out of the station the Prussians entered the town. "Ah, the
cursed luck!" said Picot in conclusion; "how we had to ply our legs! And
we who should by rights have been in hospital!"

Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own and his
comrade's glass. "Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, and are running yet.
Bah! it is the best thing for us, after all, since it gives us a chance
to drink the health of those who were not knocked over."

Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of Froeschwiller,
following so close on the heels of the idiotic surprise at Wissembourg,
was the lightning flash whose baleful light disclosed to him the entire
naked, terrible truth. We were taken unprepared; we had neither guns,
nor men, nor generals, while our despised foe was an innumerable host,
provided with all modern appliances and faultless in discipline and
leadership. The three German armies had burst apart the weak line of our
seven corps, scattered between Metz and Strasbourg, like three powerful
wedges. We were doomed to fight our battle out unaided; nothing could be
hoped for now from Austria and Italy, for all the Emperor's plans were
disconcerted by the tardiness of our operations and the incapacity of
the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to be working against us, heaping all
sorts of obstacles and ill-timed accidents in our path and favoring the
secret plan of the Prussians, which was to divide our armies, throwing
one portion back on Metz, where it would be cut off from France, while
they, having first destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on
Paris. It was as plain now as a problem in mathematics that our defeat
would be owing to causes that were patent to everyone; it was bravery
without intelligent guidance pitted against numbers and cold science.
Men might discuss the question as they would in after days; happen
what might, defeat was certain in spite of everything, as certain and
inexorable as the laws of nature that rule our planet.

In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice's eyes suddenly lighted
on the legend scrawled on the wall before him--_Vive Napoleon!_ and a
sensation of intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a red
hot iron. Could it be true, then, that France, whose victories were the
theme of song and story everywhere, the great nation whose drums had
sounded throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had been thrown
in the dust at the first onset by a