and his
vigorous health, for he among them all, his great strength unimpaired,
alone maintained his composure and something like a level head.

After that distressful night Jean determined to carry into execution a
plan that he had been reflecting over since the day previous.

"See here, little one, we can get nothing to eat, and everyone seems to
have forgotten us here in this beastly hole; now unless we want to die
the death of dogs, it behooves us to stir about a bit. How are your
legs?"

The sun had come out again, fortunately, and Maurice was warmed and
comforted.

"Oh, my legs are all right!"

"Then we'll start off on an exploring expedition. We've money in our
pockets, and the deuce is in it if we can't find something to buy. And
we won't bother our heads about the others; they don't deserve it. Let
them take care of themselves."

The truth was that Loubet and Chouteau had disgusted him by their
trickiness and low selfishness, stealing whatever they could lay hands
on and never dividing with their comrades, while no good was to be got
out of Lapoulle, the brute, and Pache, the sniveling devotee.

The pair, therefore, Maurice and Jean, started out by the road along the
Meuse which the former had traversed once before, on the night of his
arrival. At the Tour a Glaire the park and dwelling-house presented a
sorrowful spectacle of pillage and devastation, the trim lawns cut up
and destroyed, the trees felled, the mansion dismantled. A ragged, dirty
crew of soldiers, with hollow cheeks and eyes preternaturally bright
from fever, had taken possession of the place and were living like
beasts in the filthy chambers, not daring to leave their quarters for
a moment lest someone else might come along and occupy them. A little
further on they passed the cavalry and artillery, encamped on the
hillsides, once so conspicuous by reason of the neatness and jauntiness
of their appearance, now run to seed like all the rest, their
organization gone, demoralized by that terrible, torturing hunger that
drove the horses wild and sent the men straggling through the fields in
plundering bands. Below them, to the right, they beheld an apparently
interminable line of artillerymen and chasseurs d'Afrique defiling
slowly before the mill; the miller was selling them flour, measuring out
two handfuls into their handkerchiefs for a franc. The prospect of the
long wait that lay before them, should they take their place at the end
of th