g of despair
that had overwhelmed him the day before while lying on Delaherche's
sofa. And that which, intensifying the suffering of his wounded pride,
now harassed and tortured him, was the question of the morrow, the
feverish longing to know how deep had been their fall, how great the
wreck and ruin sustained by their world of yesterday. The Emperor
had surrendered his sword to King William; was not, therefore, the
abominable war ended? But he recalled the remark he had heard made by
two of the Bavarians of the guard who had escorted the prisoners
to Iges: "We're all in France, we're all bound for Paris!" In his
semi-somnolent, dreamy state the vision of what was to be suddenly rose
before his eyes: the empire overturned and swept away amid a howl
of universal execration, the republic proclaimed with an outburst of
patriotic fervor, while the legend of '92 would incite men to emulate
the glorious past, and, flocking to the standards, drive from the
country's soil the hated foreigner with armies of brave volunteers. He
reflected confusedly upon all the aspects of the case, and speculations
followed one another in swift succession through his poor wearied brain:
the harsh terms imposed by the victors, the bitterness of defeat, the
determination of the vanquished to resist even to the last drop of
blood, the fate of those eighty thousand men, his companions, who were
to be captives for weeks, months, years, perhaps, first on the peninsula
and afterward in German fortresses. The foundations were giving way, and
everything was going down, down to the bottomless depths of perdition.

The call of the sentinels, now loud, now low, seemed to sound more
faintly in his ears and to be receding in the distance, when suddenly,
as he turned on his hard couch, a shot rent the deep silence. A hollow
groan rose on the calm air of night, there was a splashing in the water,
the brief struggle of one who sinks to rise no more. It was some
poor wretch who had attempted to escape by swimming the Meuse and had
received a bullet in his brain.

The next morning Maurice was up and stirring with the sun. The sky was
cloudless; he was desirous to rejoin Jean and his other comrades of the
company with the least possible delay. For a moment he had an idea
of going to see what there was in the interior of the peninsula, then
resolved he would first complete its circuit. And on reaching the canal
his eyes were greeted with the sight of the 106th--or