ying with their eyes, as though they
possessed a secret--"Courage! One more effort! . . . This is going to
come to an end very soon."

The vigorous beasts, having no imagination, were resisting less than the
men, but their aspect was deplorable. How could these be the same strong
horses with glossy coats that he had seen in the Paris processions at
the beginning of the previous month? A campaign of twenty days had aged
and exhausted them; their dull gaze seemed to be imploring pity. They
were weak and emaciated, the outline of their skeletons so plainly
apparent that it made their eyes look larger. Their harness, as they
moved, showed the skin raw and bleeding. Yet they were pushing on with a
mighty effort, concentrating their last powers, as though human demands
were beyond their obscure instincts. Some could go no further and
suddenly collapsed from sheer fatigue. Desnoyers noticed that the
artillerymen rapidly unharnessed them, pushing them out of the road
so as to leave the way open for the rest. There lay the skeleton-like
frames with stiffened legs and glassy eyes staring fixedly at the first
flies already attracted by their miserable carrion.

The cannons painted gray, the gun-carriages, the artillery equipment,
all that Don Marcelo had seen clean and shining with the enthusiastic
friction that man has given to arms from remote epochs--even more
persistent than that which woman gives to household utensils--were now
dirty, overlaid with the marks of endless use, with the wreckage of
unavoidable neglect. The wheels were deformed with mud, the metal
darkened by the smoke of explosion, the gray paint spotted with mossy
dampness.

In the free spaces in this file, in the parentheses opened between
battery and regiment, were sandwiched crowds of civilians--miserable
groups driven on by the invasion, populations of entire towns that had
disintegrated, following the army in its retreat. The approach of a new
division would make them leave the road temporarily, continuing their
march in the adjoining fields. Then at the slightest opening in the
troops they would again slip along the white and even surface of the
highway. They were mothers who were pushing hand-carts heaped high with
pyramids of furniture and tiny babies, the sick who could hardly drag
themselves along, old men carried on the shoulders of their grandsons,
old women with little children clinging to their skirts--a pitiful,
silent brood.

Nobody now oppo