t to one side where they would be protected by the wall.

"_Mon Dieu!_ we shall be killed!"

But the horses had taken the obstacle in their stride and were already
scouring away in the distance on the other side with a rumble like that
of a receding thunder-storm; striking into a sunken road they pursued
it as far as the corner of a little wood, behind which they were lost to
sight.

Silvine, when she had brought the cart back into the road, insisted that
Prosper should answer her question before they proceeded further.

"Come, where is it? You told me you could find the spot with your eyes
bandaged; where is it? We have reached the ground."

He, drawing himself up and anxiously scanning the horizon in every
direction, seemed to become more and more perplexed.

"There were three trees, I must find those three trees in the first
place. Ah, _dame_! see here, one's sight is not of the clearest when
he is fighting, and it is no such easy matter to remember afterward the
roads one has passed over!"

Then perceiving people to his left, two men and a woman, it occurred to
him to question them, but the woman ran away at his approach and the men
repulsed him with threatening gestures; and he saw others of the same
stripe, clad in sordid rags, unspeakably filthy, with the ill-favored
faces of thieves and murderers, and they all shunned him, slinking away
among the corpses like jackals or other unclean, creeping beasts. Then
he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry passed the dead behind
them were shoeless, their bare, white feet exposed, devoid of covering,
and he saw how it was: they were the tramps and thugs who followed the
German armies for the sake of plundering the dead, the detestable crew
who followed in the wake of the invasion in order that they might reap
their harvest from the field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose
in front of him and scurried away on a run, a sack slung across his
shoulder, the watches and small coins, proceeds of his robberies,
jingling in his pockets.

A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old, however, allowed Prosper to
approach him, and when the latter, seeing him to be French, rated him
soundly, the boy spoke up in his defense. What, was it wrong for a poor
fellow to earn his living? He was collecting chassepots, and received
five sous for every chassepot he brought in. He had run away from his
village that morning, having eaten nothing since the day before, and
engaged hims