it was that there were three
guns in service at Palatinat, while at the Porte de Paris there may have
been a half dozen. As they had only seven or eight rounds to each gun,
however, the men husbanded their ammunition, limiting themselves to
a shot every half hour, and that only as a sort of salve to their
self-respect, for none of their missiles reached the enemy; all
were lost in the meadows opposite them. Hence the enemy's batteries,
disdainful of such small game, contemptuously pitched a shell at them
from time to time, out of charity, as it were.

Those batteries over across the river were objects of great interest to
Delaherche. He was eagerly scanning the heights of la Marfee with his
naked eye, when all at once he thought of the spy-glass with which he
sometimes amused himself by watching the doings of his neighbors from
the terrace. He ran downstairs and got it, returned and placed it in
position, and as he was slowly sweeping the horizon and trees, fields,
houses came within his range of vision, he lighted on that group of
uniforms, at the angle of a pine wood, over the main battery at Frenois,
of which Weiss had caught a glimpse from Bazeilles. To him, however,
thanks to the excellence of his glass, it would have been no difficult
matter to count the number of officers of the staff, so distinctly he
made them out. Some of them were reclining carelessly on the grass,
others were conversing in little groups, and in front of them all stood
a solitary figure, a spare, well-proportioned man to appearances, in
an unostentatious uniform, who yet asserted in some indefinable way his
masterhood. It was the Prussian King, scarce half finger high, one of
those miniature leaden toys that afford children such delight. Although
he was not certain of this identity until later on the manufacturer
found himself, by reason of some inexplicable attraction, constantly
returning to that diminutive puppet, whose face, scarce larger than a
pin's head, was but a pale point against the immense blue sky.

It was not midday yet, and since nine o'clock the master had been
watching the movements, inexorable as fate, of his armies. Onward, ever
onward, they swept, by roads traced for them in advance, completing
the circle, slowly but surely closing in and enveloping Sedan in their
living wall of men and guns. The army on his left, that had come up
across the level plain of Donchery, was debouching still from the pass
of Saint-Albert and,