itful and emotional temperament of
his nation, vibrating from one moment to another between the loftiest
enthusiasm and the most abject despair; she, the patient, indomitable
housewife, such an inconsiderable little creature in her resignation and
self-effacement, meeting adversity with a brave face and eyes full of
inexpugnable courage and resolution, fashioned from the stuff of which
heroes are made.

"Proud of me!" cried Maurice. "Ah! truly, you have great reason to be.
For a month and more now we have been flying, like the cowards that we
are!"

"What of it? we are not the only ones," said Jean with his practical
common sense; "we do what we are told to do."

But the young man broke out more furiously than ever: "I have had enough
of it, I tell you! Our imbecile leaders, our continual defeats, our
brave soldiers led like sheep to the slaughter--is it not enough, seeing
all these things, to make one weep tears of blood? We are here now in
Sedan, caught in a trap from which there is no escape; you can see the
Prussians closing in on us from every quarter, and certain destruction
is staring us in the face; there is no hope, the end is come. No! I
shall remain where I am; I may as well be shot as a deserter. Jean, do
you go, and leave me here. No! I won't go back there; I will stay here."

He sank upon the pillow in a renewed outpour of tears. It was an utter
breakdown of the nervous system, sweeping everything before it, one of
those sudden lapses into hopelessness to which he was so subject, in
which he despised himself and all the world. His sister, knowing as she
did the best way of treating such crises, kept an unruffled face.

"That would not be a nice thing to do, dear Maurice--desert your post in
the hour of danger."

He rose impetuously to a sitting posture: "Then give me my musket! I
will go and blow my brains out; that will be the shortest way of ending
it." Then, pointing with outstretched arm to Weiss, where he sat silent
and motionless, he said: "There! that is the only sensible man I have
seen; yes, he is the only one who saw things as they were. You remember
what he said to me, Jean, at Mulhausen, a month ago?"

"It is true," the corporal assented; "the gentleman said we should be
beaten."

And the scene rose again before their mind's eye, that night of
anxious vigil, the agonized suspense, the prescience of the disaster at
Froeschwiller hanging in the sultry heavy air, while the Alsatian told