kets by the barrel and smashed them
against a wall, while there were artillerymen who removed the mechanism
from the mitrailleuses and flung it into the sewer. Some there were who
buried or burned the regimental standards. In the Place Turenne an old
sergeant climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the throng as if he had
suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the leaders, stigmatizing
them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed as if dazed, shedding
big tears in silence, and others also, it must be confessed (and it is
probable that they were in the majority), betrayed by their laughing
eyes and pleased expression the satisfaction they felt at the change
in affairs. There was an end to their suffering at last; they were
prisoners of war, they could not be obliged to fight any more! For so
many days they had been distressed by those long, weary marches, with
never food enough to satisfy their appetite! And then, too, they were
the weaker; what use was there in fighting? If their chiefs had betrayed
them, had sold them to the enemy, so much the better; it would be the
sooner ended! It was such a delicious thing to think of, that they were
to have white bread to eat, were to sleep between sheets!

As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in company with Maurice
and Jean, his mother called to him from above.

"Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel."

M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly of
the subject that filled his bewildered brain.

"The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what matters it! See,
they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of Donchery;
soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank us there,
while more of them are coming up along the valley of the Givonne. The
frontier is behind us; let us kill as many of them as we can and cross
it at a bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have advised--"

At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. He recognized
him; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel the hallucination under
which he was laboring, and coming back to the terrible reality, he asked
for the third time:

"It is all over, is it not?"

The manufacturer explosively blurted out the expression of his
satisfaction; he could not restrain it.

"Ah, yes, God be praised! it is all over, completely over. The
capitulation must be signed by this time."

The colonel raised himself at a bound