since daybreak, twelve hours had been consumed in advancing three
short leagues; they were harassed and fatigued as much by their constant
halts and the stress of their emotions as by the actual toil of the
march. For the last two nights they had had scarce any sleep; their
hunger had been unappeased since they left Vouziers. In Raucourt the
distress was terrible; men fell in the ranks from sheer inanition.

The little town is rich, with its numerous factories, its handsome
thoroughfare lined with two rows of well-built houses, and its pretty
church and _mairie_; but the night before Marshal MacMahon and the
Emperor had passed that way with their respective staffs and all the
imperial household, and during the whole of the present morning the
entire 1st corps had been streaming like a torrent through the main
street. The resources of the place had not been adequate to meet the
requirements of these hosts; the shelves of the bakers and grocers were
empty, and even the houses of the bourgeois had been swept clean of
provisions; there was no bread, no wine, no sugar, nothing capable of
allaying hunger or thirst. Ladies had been seen to station themselves
before their doors and deal out glasses of wine and cups of bouillon
until cask and kettle alike were drained of their last drop. And so
there was an end, and when, about three o'clock, the first regiments
of the 7th corps began to appear the scene was a pitiful one; the broad
street was filled from curb to curb with weary, dust-stained men, dying
with hunger, and there was not a mouthful of food to give them. Many of
them stopped, knocking at doors and extending their hands beseechingly
toward windows, begging for a morsel of bread, and women were seen to
cry and sob as they motioned that they could not help them, that they
had nothing left.

At the corner of the Rue Dix-Potiers Maurice had an attack of dizziness
and reeled as if about to fall. To Jean, who came hastening up, he said:

"No, leave me; it is all up with me. I may as well die here!"

He had sunk down upon a door-step. The corporal spoke in a rough tone of
displeasure assumed for the occasion:

"_Nom de Dieu!_ why don't you try to behave like a soldier! Do you want
the Prussians to catch you? Come, get up!"

Then, as the young man, lividly pale, his eyes tight-closed, almost
unconscious, made no reply, he let slip another oath, but in another key
this time, in a tone of infinite gentleness and pity:

"