om Ducrot only
a few minutes ago, in which he advises me of the fact, and also notifies
me that, by the marshal's appointment, he is in command of the army."

"Ah! so it is Ducrot who is to have his place! And what are the orders
now?"

The general shook his head sorrowfully. He had felt that the army
was doomed, and for the last twenty-four hours had been strenuously
recommending the occupation of Illy and Saint-Menges in order to keep a
way of retreat open on Mezieres.

"Ducrot will carry out the plan we talked of yesterday: the whole army
is to be concentrated on the plateau of Illy."

And he repeated his previous gesture, as if to say it was too late.

His words were partly inaudible in the roar of the artillery, but
Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it left him
dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded
since early that morning, General Ducrot commanding in his place for
the last two hours, the entire army retreating to the northward of
Sedan--and all these important events kept from the poor devils
of soldiers who were squandering their life's blood! and all their
destinies, dependent on the life of a single man, were to be intrusted
to the direction of fresh and untried hands! He had a distinct
consciousness of the fate that was in reserve for the army of Chalons,
deprived of its commander, destitute of any guiding principle of action,
dragged purposelessly in this direction and in that, while the Germans
went straight and swift to their preconcerted end with mechanical
precision and directness.

Bourgain-Desfeuilles had wheeled his horse and was moving away, when
General Douay, to whom a grimy, dust-stained hussar had galloped up with
another dispatch, excitedly summoned him back.

"General! General!"

His voice rang out so loud and clear, with such an accent of surprise,
that it drowned the uproar of the guns.

"General, Ducrot is no longer in command; de Wimpffen is chief. You know
he reached here yesterday, just in the very thick of the disaster at
Beaumont, to relieve de Failly at the head of the 5th corps--and he
writes me that he has written instructions from the Minister of War
assigning him to the command of the army in case the post should become
vacant. And there is to be no more retreating; the orders now are to
reoccupy our old positions, and defend them to the last."

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles drank in the tidings, his eyes bulging with
a