thank goodness," replied the Lieutenant, his long arms going like
windmills. "Wait a little; you'll find it warm enough!"

The soldiers were all delighted; the animation in the camp was still
more pronounced. A feverish impatience had taken possession of the
men, now that they were actually in line of battle between Chestres and
Falaise. At last they were to have a sight of those Prussians who,
if the newspapers were to be believed, were knocked up by their long
marches, decimated by sickness, starving, and in rags, and every man's
heart beat high with the prospect of annihilating them at a single blow.

"We are lucky to come across them again," said Jean. "They've been
playing hide-and-seek about long enough since they slipped through our
fingers after their battle down yonder on the frontier. But are these
the same troops that whipped MacMahon, I wonder?"

Maurice could not answer his question with any degree of certainty.
It seemed to him hardly probable, in view of what he had read in the
newspapers at Rheims, that the third army, commanded by the Crown Prince
of Prussia, could be at Vouziers, when, only two days before, it was
just on the point of going into camp at Vitry-le-Francois. There had
been some talk of a fourth army, under the Prince of Saxony, which was
to operate on the line of the Meuse; this was doubtless the one that was
now before them, although their promptitude in occupying Grand-Pre was
a matter of surprise, considering the distances. But what put the
finishing touch to the confusion of his ideas was his stupefaction to
hear General Bourgain-Desfeuilles ask a countryman if the Meuse did not
flow past Buzancy, and if the bridges there were strong. The general
announced, moreover, in the confidence of his sublime ignorance, that
a column of one hundred thousand men was on the way from Grand-Pre to
attack them, while another, of sixty thousand, was coming up by the way
of Sainte-Menehould.

"How's your foot, Maurice?" asked Jean.

"It don't hurt now," the other laughingly replied. "If there is to be a
fight, I think it will be quite well."

It was true; his nervous excitement was so great that he was hardly
conscious of the ground on which he trod. To think that in the whole
campaign he had not yet burned powder! He had gone forth to the
frontier, he had endured the agony of that terrible night of expectation
before Mulhausen, and had not seen a Prussian, had not fired a shot;
then he had ret