n one of the steps of the dark
staircase. Craning his neck and directing his glance through the glazed
fanlight over the door of the apartment, he beheld a sight that was
never to fade from his memory.

In the bare and cheerless room, the conventional bourgeois "parlor," was
the Emperor, seated at a table on which his plate was laid, lighted
at either end by wax candles in great silver candelabra. Silent in the
background stood two aides-de-camp with folded arms. The wine in the
glass was untasted, the bread untouched, a breast of chicken was cooling
on the plate. The Emperor did not stir; he sat staring down at the cloth
with those dim, lusterless, watery eyes that the young man remembered
to have seen before at Rheims; but he appeared more weary than then, and
when, evidently at the cost of a great effort, he had raised a couple of
mouthfuls to his lips, he impatiently pushed the remainder of the food
from him with his hand. That was his dinner. His pale face was blanched
with an expression of suffering endured in silence.

As Maurice was passing the dining room on the floor beneath, the door
was suddenly thrown open, and through the glow of candles and the
steam of smoking joints he caught a glimpse of a table of equerries,
chamberlains, and aides-de-camp, engaged in devouring the Emperor's
game and poultry and drinking his champagne, amid a great hubbub of
conversation. Now that the marshal's dispatch had been sent off, all
these people were delighted to know that the retreat was assured. In a
week they would be at Paris and could sleep between clean sheets.

Then, for the first time, Maurice suddenly became conscious of the
terrible fatigue that was oppressing him like a physical burden; there
was no longer room for doubt, the whole army was about to fall back, and
the best thing for him to do was to get some sleep while waiting for the
7th corps to pass. He made his way back across the square to the house
of his friend Combette, where, like one in a dream, he ate some dinner,
after which he was mistily conscious of someone dressing his foot and
then conducting him upstairs to a bedroom. And then all was blackness
and utter annihilation; he slept a dreamless, unstirring sleep. But
after an uncertain length of time--hours, days, centuries, he knew
not--he gave a start and sat bolt upright in bed in the surrounding
darkness. Where was he? What was that continuous rolling sound, like
the rattling of thunder, that ha