a dark
alley. The result of the conflict could not remain long doubtful,
however; it was too late to reconquer the abandoned positions. For near
half an hour the infantry struggled against superior numbers and faced
death with splendid bravery, but the enemy's strength was constantly
increasing, their re-enforcements were pouring in from every direction,
the roads, the meadows, the park of Montivilliers; no force at our
command could have dislodged them from the position, so dearly bought,
where they had left thousands of their bravest. Destruction and
devastation now had done their work; the place was a shambles,
disgraceful to humanity, where mangled forms lay scattered among smoking
ruins, and poor Bazeilles, having drained the bitter cup, went up at
last in smoke and flame.

Henriette turned and gave one last look at her little house, whose
floors fell in even as she gazed, sending myriads of little sparks
whirling gayly upward on the air. And there, before her, prone at the
wall's foot, she saw her husband's corpse, and in her despair and grief
would fain have returned to him, but just then another crowd came up and
surged around her, the bugles were sounding the signal to retire, she
was borne away, she knew not how, among the retreating troops. Her
faculty of self-guidance left her; she was as a bit of flotsam swept
onward by the eddying human tide that streamed along the way. And that
was all she could remember until she became herself again and found
she was at Balan, among strangers, her head reclined upon a table in a
kitchen, weeping.

V.

It was nearly ten o'clock up on the Plateau de l'Algerie, and still the
men of Beaudoin's company were resting supine, among the cabbages, in
the field whence they had not budged since early morning. The cross fire
from the batteries on Hattoy and the peninsula of Iges was hotter than
ever; it had just killed two more of their number, and there were no
orders for them to advance. Were they to stay there and be shelled all
day, without a chance to see anything of the fighting?

They were even denied the relief of discharging their chassepots.
Captain Beaudoin had at last put his foot down and stopped the firing,
that senseless fusillade against the little wood in front of them, which
seemed entirely deserted by the Prussians. The heat was stifling; it
seemed to them that they should roast, stretched there on the ground
under the blazing sky.

Jean was alarmed,