re; our positions are impregnable, the Mezieres road
is under our control--"

His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he stammered a few more
unintelligible words, while the vision of the battle that had been
born of his fever little by little grew blurred and dim and at last
was effaced by slumber. He slept, and in his sleep perhaps the honest
officer's dreams were dreams of victory.

"Does the major speak favorably of his case?" Delaherche inquired in a
whisper.

Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively.

"Those wounds in the foot are dreadful things, though," he went on. "I
suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long time, isn't he?"

She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all her faculties
were concentrated on contemplating the great calamity of their defeat.
She was of another age; she was a survivor of that strong old race of
frontier burghers who defended their towns so valiantly in the good days
gone by. The clean-cut lines of her stern, set face, with its fleshless,
uncompromising nose and thin lips, which the brilliant light of the lamp
brought out in high relief against the darkness of the room, told the
full extent of her stifled rage and grief and the wound sustained by her
antique patriotism, the revolt of which refused even to let her sleep.

About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation of isolation,
accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of physical distress. His
hunger was asserting itself again, a griping, intolerable hunger, and he
persuaded himself that it was debility alone that was thus robbing him
of courage and resolution. He tiptoed softly from the room and, with
his candle, again made his way down to the kitchen, but the spectacle
he witnessed there was even still more cheerless; the range cold and
fireless, the closets empty, the floor strewn with a disorderly litter
of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and women's aprons; as if the hurricane
of disaster had swept through that place as well, bearing away on its
wings all the charm and cheer that appertain naturally to the things we
eat and drink. At first he thought he was not going to discover so much
as a crust, what was left over of the bread having all found its way to
the ambulance in the form of soup. At last, however, in the dark corner
of a cupboard he came across the remainder of the beans from yesterday's
dinner, where they had been forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished
his luxurious re