l, near the
frontier, Chapelle. All about him, far as he could see, the land was
his; he could direct the movements of the quarter of a million of men
and the eight hundred guns that constituted his army, could master at
a glance every detail of the operations of his invading host. Even then
the XIth corps was pressing forward toward Saint-Menges, while the Vth
was at Vrigne-aux-Bois, and the Wurtemburg division was near Donchery,
awaiting orders. This was what he beheld to the west, and if, turning
to the east, he found his view obstructed in that quarter by tree-clad
hills, he could picture to himself what was passing, for he had seen the
XIIth corps entering the wood of Chevalier, he knew that by that time
the Guards were at Villers-Cernay. There were the two arms of the
gigantic vise, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, the
Saxon Prince's army on the right, slowly, irresistibly closing on each
other, while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.

Underneath the King's position the long line of batteries, stretching
with hardly an interval from Remilly to Frenois, kept up an
unintermittent fire, pouring their shells into Daigny and la Moncelle,
sending them hurtling over Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus. It
was barely eight o'clock, and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board he
directed the movements of the game, awaiting the inevitable end, calmly
controlling the black cloud of men that beneath him swept, an array of
pigmies, athwart the smiling landscape.

II.

In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the bugler, sounded
reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was possessed of, but
the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the damp, heavy air,
and the men, who had not had courage even to erect their tents and had
thrown themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon the muddy ground, did
not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their ashen features set and
rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion. To arouse them from their
trance-like sleep they had to be shaken, one by one, and, with ghastly
faces and haggard eyes, they rose to their feet, like beings summoned,
against their will, back from another world. It was Jean who awoke
Maurice.

"What is it? Where are we!" asked the younger man. He looked
affrightedly around him, and beheld only that gray waste, in which were
floating the unsubstantial forms of his comrades. Objects twenty yards
a