s gratified by beholding General de Wimpffen emerge, very
red in the face and his eyelids puffed and swollen with tears, behind
whom came two other generals and a colonel. They leaped into the saddle
and rode away over the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck eight some
time before; the inevitable capitulation was now to be accomplished,
from which there was no escape.

Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had heard and seen,
remembered that it was a long time since he had tasted food and resolved
to turn his steps homeward, but the terrific crowd that had collected
since he first came made him pause in dismay. It is no exaggeration
to say that the streets and squares were so congested, so thronged, so
densely packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would have declared
the closely compacted mass could only have been squeezed and wedged in
there thus by the effort of some gigantic mechanism. While the ramparts
were occupied by the bivouacs of such regiments as had fallen back
in good order, the city had been invaded and submerged by an angry,
surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the various corps,
stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the service, and the dammed-up
tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or hand. The wheels of
the guns, of the caissons, and the innumerable vehicles of every
description, had interlocked and were tangled in confusion worse
confounded, while the poor horses, flogged unmercifully by their drivers
and pulled, now in this direction, now in that, could only dance in
their bewilderment, unable to move a step either forward or back. And
the men, deaf to reproaches and threats alike, forced their way into the
houses, devoured whatever they could lay hands on, flung themselves down
to sleep wherever they could find a vacant space, it might be in the
best bedroom or in the cellar. Many of them had fallen in doorways,
where they blocked the vestibule; others, without strength to go
farther, lay extended on the sidewalks and slept the sleep of death, not
even rising when some by-passer trod on them and bruised an arm or leg,
preferring the risk of death to the fatigue of changing their location.

These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly conscious
of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There were some quarters in
which numerous caissons were packed so close together that they were
in contact, and a single Prussian shell alighting on one of th