t
he found his puny strength unequal to the task, exhausted as he was by
fatigue and the emotions of the day. At the first step he took he
reeled and fell with his burden. If only he could catch sight of a
stretcher-bearer! He strained his eyes, thought he had discovered one
among the crowd of fugitives, and made frantic gestures of appeal; no
one came, they were left behind, alone. Summoning up his strength with a
determined effort of the will he seized Jean once more and succeeded in
advancing some thirty paces, when a shell burst near them and he thought
that all was ended, that he, too, was to die on the body of his comrade.

Slowly, cautiously, Maurice picked himself up. He felt his body, arms,
and legs; nothing, not a scratch. Why should he not look out for himself
and fly, alone? There was time left still; a few bounds would take
him to the wall and he would be saved. His horrible sensation of fear
returned and made him frantic. He was collecting his energies to
break away and run, when a feeling stronger than death intervened and
vanquished the base impulse. What, abandon Jean! he could not do it. It
would be like mutilating his own being; the brotherly affection that had
bourgeoned and grown between him and that rustic had struck its roots
down into his life, too deep to be slain like that. The feeling went
back to the earliest days, was perhaps as old as the world itself; it
was as if there were but they two upon earth, of whom one could
not forsake the other without forsaking himself, and being doomed
thenceforth to an eternity of solitude. Molded of the same clay,
quickened by the same spirit, duty imperiously commanded to save himself
in saving his brother.

Had it not been for the crust of bread he ate an hour before under the
Prussian shells Maurice could never have done what he did; _how_ he did
it he could never in subsequent days remember. He must have hoisted Jean
upon his shoulders and crawled through the brush and brambles, falling a
dozen times only to pick himself up and go on again, stumbling at every
rut, at every pebble. His indomitable will sustained him, his dogged
resolution would have enabled him to bear a mountain on his back. Behind
the low wall he found Rochas and the few men that were left of the
squad, firing away as stoutly as ever and defending the flag, which
the subaltern held beneath his arm. It had not occurred to anyone to
designate lines of retreat for the several army corps i