e line, determined them to pass on, in the hope that some better
opportunity would present itself at the village of Iges; but great was
their consternation when they reached it to find the little place as
bare and empty as an Algerian village through which has passed a swarm
of locusts; not a crumb, not a fragment of anything eatable, neither
bread, nor meat, nor vegetables, the wretched inhabitants utterly
destitute. General Lebrun was said to be there, closeted with the mayor.
He had been endeavoring, ineffectually, to arrange for an issue of
bonds, redeemable at the close of the war, in order to facilitate the
victualing of the troops. Money had ceased to have any value when there
was nothing that it could purchase. The day before two francs had been
paid for a biscuit, seven francs for a bottle of wine, a small glass of
brandy was twenty sous, a pipeful of tobacco ten sous. And now officers,
sword in hand, had to stand guard before the general's house and the
neighboring hovels, for bands of marauders were constantly passing,
breaking down doors and stealing even the oil from the lamps and
drinking it.

Three zouaves invited Maurice and Jean to join them. Five would do the
work more effectually than three.

"Come along. There are horses dying in plenty, and if we can but get
some dry wood--"

Then they fell to work on the miserable cabin of a poor peasant,
smashing the closet doors, tearing the thatch from the roof. Some
officers, who came up on a run, threatened them with their revolvers and
put them to flight.

Jean, who saw that the few villagers who had remained at Iges were no
better off than the soldiers, perceived he had made a mistake in passing
the mill without buying some flour.

"There may be some left; we had best go back."

But Maurice was so reduced from inanition and was beginning to suffer
so from fatigue that he left him behind in a sheltered nook among the
quarries, seated on a fragment of rock, his face turned upon the wide
horizon of Sedan. He, after waiting in line for two long hours, finally
returned with some flour wrapped in a piece of rag. And they ate it
uncooked, dipping it up in their hands, unable to devise any other way.
It was not so very bad; It had no particular flavor, only the insipid
taste of dough. Their breakfast, such as it was, did them some good,
however. They were even so fortunate as to discover a little pool of
rain-water, comparatively pure, in a hollow of a rock,