Exhausted, bespattered, in rags, they were dolefully crouched around
their meagre green-wood fires; the poor creatures were to be pitied.
Underneath their misshapen caps they all showed yellow, wrinkled, and
unshaven faces. The bitter, cold wind that swept over the plain
made their thin shoulders, stooping from fatigue, shiver, and their
shoulder-blades protruded under their faded capes. Some of them were
wounded, too slightly to be sent away in the ambulance, and wore about
their wrists and foreheads bands of bloody linen. When an officer passed
with his head bent and a humiliated air, nobody saluted him. These
men had suffered too much, and one could divine an angry and insolent
despair in their gloomy looks, ready to burst out and tell of their
injuries. They would have disgusted one if they had not excited one's
pity. Alas, they were vanquished!

The Parisians were eager for news as to recent military operations, for
they had only read in the morning papers--as they always did during
this frightful siege--enigmatical despatches and bulletins purposely
bristling with strategic expressions not comprehensible to the outsider.
But all, or nearly all, had kept their patriotic hopes intact, or, to
speak more plainly, their blind fanatical patriotism, and were certain
against all reason of a definite victory; they walked along the road in
little groups, and drew near the red pantaloons to talk a little.

"Well, it was a pretty hot affair on the thirtieth, wasn't it? Is it
true that you had command of the Marne? You know what they say in Paris,
my children? That Trochu knows something new, that he is going to make
his way through the Prussian lines and join hands with the helping
armies--in a word that we are going to strike the last blow."

At the sight of these spectres of soldiers, these unhappy men broken
down with hunger and fatigue, the genteel National Guards, warmly clad
and wrapped up for the winter, commenced to utter foolish speeches and
big hopes which had been their daily food for several months: "Break
the iron circle;" "not one inch, not a stone;" "war to the knife;" "one
grand effort," etc. But the very best talkers were speedily discouraged
by the shrugging of shoulders and ugly glances of the soldiers, that
were like those of a snarling cur.

Meanwhile, a superb sergeant-major of the National Guard, newly
equipped, a big, full-blooded fellow, with a red beard, the husband of
a fashionable dressmaker,