d, had no more prestige than a
policeman in a public square, one of those old fellows who chase
children off the grass, threatening them with their canes.

"When I say that the German artillery will not reach there," murmured
the head general, "I am not sure of it. But you are right, Colonel. We
must see. Send two of your men."

"With your permission, General," said Pere Lantz, "I will go myself."
Maurice bravely added at once:

"Not without me, Colonel!"

"As you please," said the General, who had already pointed his glass
upon another point of the battlefield.

Followed by the only son of his companion in arms in Africa and the
Crimea, this office clerk and dauber in watercolors walked to the front
as tranquilly as he would have gone to the minister's office with his
umbrella under his arm. At the very moment when the two officers reached
the plateau, a projectile from the Prussian batteries fell upon a chest
and blew it up with a frightful uproar. The dead and wounded were heaped
upon the ground. Pere Lantz saw the foot-soldiers fleeing, and the
artillery men harnessing their wagons.

"What!" exclaimed he, rising up to his full height, "do they abandon the
position?"

The Colonel's face was transfigured; opening wide his long cloak and
showing his black velvet plastron upon which shone his commander's
cross, he drew his sword, and, putting his cap upon the tip of it,
bareheaded, with his gray hair floating in the wind, with open arms he
threw himself before the runaways.

"Halt!" he commanded, in a thundering tone. "Turn about, wretches, turn
about! You are here at a post of honor. Form again, my men! Gunners, to
your places! Long life to France!"

Just then a new shell burst at the feet of the Colonel and of Maurice,
and they both fell to the ground.

Amedee, staggering with emotion and a heart bursting with grief and
fear, entered the hospital behind the two litters.

"Put them in the dining-room," said one of the brothers. "There is
nobody there. The doctor will come immediately."

The young man with the bloody apron came in at once, and after a look at
the wounded man he gave a despairing shake of the head, and, shrugging
his shoulders, said:

"There is nothing to be done they will not last long."

In fact, the Colonel was dying. They had thrown an old woollen covering
over him through which the hemorrhage showed itself by large stains of
blood which were constantly increasing and penetrating th