Givonne, the same sorry rabble was
streaming cityward in panic haste, and every instant brought fresh
accessions to its numbers. And who could reproach those wretched men,
who, for twelve long, mortal hours, had stood in motionless array under
the murderous artillery of an invisible enemy, against whom they could
do nothing? The batteries now were playing on them from front, flank,
and rear; as they drew nearer the city they presented a fairer mark
for the convergent fire; the guns dealt death and destruction out by
wholesale on that dense, struggling mass of men in that accursed hole,
where there was no escape from the bursting shells. Some regiments of
the 7th corps, more particularly those that had been stationed about
Floing, had left the field in tolerably good order, but in the Fond de
Givonne there was no longer either organization or command; the troops
were a pushing, struggling mob, composed of debris from regiments of
every description, zouaves, turcos, chasseurs, infantry of the line,
most of them without arms, their uniforms soiled and torn, with grimy
hands, blackened faces, bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets and
lips swollen and distorted from their yells of fear or rage. At times
a riderless horse would dash through the throng, overturning those who
were in his path and leaving behind him a long wake of consternation.
Then some guns went thundering by at breakneck speed, a retreating
battery abandoned by its officers, and the drivers, as if drunk, rode
down everything and everyone, giving no word of warning. And still the
shuffling tramp of many feet along the dusty road went on and ceased
not, the close-compacted column pressed on, breast to back, side to
side; a retreat _en masse_, where vacancies in the ranks were filled as
soon as made, all moved by one common impulse, to reach the shelter that
lay before them and be behind a wall.

Again Jean raised his head and gave an anxious glance toward the west;
through the dense clouds of dust raised by the tramp of that great
multitude the luminary still poured his scorching rays down upon the
exhausted men. The sunset was magnificent, the heavens transparently,
beautifully blue.

"It's a nuisance, all the same," he muttered, "that plaguey sun that
stays up there and won't go to roost!"

Suddenly Maurice became aware of the presence of a young woman whom the
movement of the resistless throng had jammed against a wall and who
was in danger of being