On a Sunday toward the end of September Maurice was detailed to carry a message to the further end of the city, and what he witnessed along the streets he passed through filled him with new hope. Ever since the defeat of Chatillon it had seemed to him that the courage of the people was rising to a level with the great task that lay before them. Ah! that Paris that he had known so thoughtless, so wayward, so keen in the pursuit of pleasure; he found it now quite changed, simple, earnest, cheerfully brave, ready for every sacrifice. Everyone was in uniform; there was scarce a head that was not decorated with the kepi of the National Guard. Business of every sort had come to a sudden standstill, as the hands of a watch cease to move when the mainspring snaps, and at the public meetings, among the soldiers in the guard-room, or where the crowds collected in the streets, there was but one subject of conversation, inflaming the hearts and minds of all-the determination to conquer. The contagious influence of illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds; the people were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath of suspicion. And Maurice was witness to a scene in the Rue des Martyrs that produced a profound impression on him, the assault made by a band of infuriated men on a house from which, at one of the upper windows, a bright light had been displayed all through the night, a signal, evidently, intended to reach the Prussians at Bellevue over the roofs of Paris. There were jealous citizens who spent all their nights on their house-tops, watching what was going on around them. The day before a poor wretch had had a narrow escape from drowning at the hands of the mob, merely because he had opened a map of the city on a bench in the Tuileries gardens and consulted it.
And that epidemic of suspicion Maurice, who had always hitherto been so liberal and fair-minded, now began to feel the influence of in the altered views he was commencing to entertain concerning men and things. He had ceased to give way to despair, as he had done after the rout at Chatillon, when he doubted whether the French army would ever muster up sufficient manhood to fight again: the sortie of the 30th of September on l'Hay and Chevilly, that of the 13th of October, in which the mobiles gained possession of Bagneux, and finally that of October 21, when his regiment captured and held for some time the park of la Malmaison, had restored to him all his confidence, that flame of hope that a spark sufficed to light and was extinguished as quickly. It was true the Prussians had repulsed them in every direction, but for all that the troops had fought bravely; they might yet be victorious in the end. It was Paris now that was responsible for the young man's gloomy forebodings, that great fickle city that at one moment was cheered by bright illusions and the next was sunk in deepest despair, ever haunted by the fear of treason in its thirst for victory. Did it not seem as if Trochu and Ducrot were treading in the footsteps of the Emperor and Marshal MacMahon and about to prove themselves incompetent leaders, the unconscious instruments of their country's ruin? The same movement that had swept away the Empire was now threatening the Government of National Defense, a fierce longing of the extremists to place themselves in control in order that they might save France by the methods of '92; even now Jules Favre and his co-members were more unpopular than the old ministers of Napoleon III. had ever been. Since they would not fight the Prussians, they would do well to make way for others, for those revolutionists who saw an assurance of victory in decreeing the levee en masse, in lending an ear to those visionaries who proposed to mine the earth beneath the Prussians' feet, or annihilate them all by means of a new fashioned Greek fire.
Just previous to the 31st of October Maurice was more than usually a victim to this malady of distrust and barren speculation. He listened now approvingly to crude fancies that would formerly have brought a smile of contempt to his lips. Why should he not? Were not imbecility and crime abroad in the land? Was it unreasonable to look for the miraculous when his world was falling in ruins about him? Ever since the time he first heard the tidings of Froeschwiller, down there in front of Mulhausen, he had harbored a deep-seated feeling of rancor in his breast; he suffered from Sedan as from a raw sore, that bled afresh with every new reverse; the memory of their defeats, with all the anguish they entailed, was ever present to his mind; body and mind enfeebled by long marches, sleepless nights, and lack of food, inducing a mental torpor that left them doubtful even if they were alive; and the thought that so much suffering was to end in another and an irremediable disaster maddened him, made of that cultured man an unreflecting being, scarce higher in the scale than a very little child, swayed by each passing impulse of the moment. Anything, everything, destruction, extermination, rather than pay a penny of French money or yield an inch of French soil! The revolution that since the first reverse had been at work within him, sweeping away the legend of Napoleonic glory, the sentimental Bonapartism that he owed to the epic narratives of his grandfather, was now complete. He had ceased to be a believer in Republicanism, pure and simple, considering the remedy not drastic enough; he had begun to dabble in the theories of the extremists, he was a believer in the necessity of the Terror as the only means of ridding them of the traitors and imbeciles who were about to slay the country. And so it was that he was heart and soul with the insurgents when, on the 31st of October, tidings of disaster came pouring in on them in quick succession: the loss of Bourget, that had been captured from the enemy only a few days before by a dashing surprise; M. Thiers' return to Versailles from his visit to the European capitals, prepared to treat for peace, so it was said, in the name of Napoleon III.; and finally the capitulation of Metz, rumors of which had previously been current and which was now confirmed, the last blow of the bludgeon, another Sedan, only attended by circumstances of blacker infamy. And when he learned next day the occurrences at the Hotel de Ville-how the insurgents had been for a brief time successful, how the members of the Government of National Defense had been made prisoners and held until four o'clock in the morning, how finally the fickle populace, swayed at one moment by detestation for the ministers and at the next terrified by the prospect of a successful revolution, had released them-he was filled with regret at the miscarriage of the attempt, at the non-success of the Commune, which might have been their salvation, calling the people to arms, warning them of the country's danger, arousing the cherished memories of a nation that wills it will not perish. Thiers did not dare even to set his foot in Paris, where there was some attempt at illumination to celebrate the failure of the negotiations.
The month of November was to Maurice a period of feverish expectancy. There were some conflicts of no great importance, in which he had no share. His regiment was in cantonments at the time in the vicinity of Saint-Ouen, whence he made his escape as often as he could to satisfy his craving for news. Paris, like him, was awaiting the issue of events in eager suspense. The election of municipal officers seemed to have appeased political passion for the time being, but a circumstance that boded no good for the future was that those elected were rabid adherents of one or another party. And what Paris was watching and praying for in that interval of repose was the grand sortie that was to bring them victory and deliverance. As it had always been, so it was now; confidence reigned everywhere: they would drive the Prussians from their position, would pulverize them, annihilate them. Great preparations were being made in the peninsula of Gennevilliers, the point where there was most likelihood of the operation being attended with success. Then one morning came the joyful tidings of the victory at Coulmiers; Orleans was recaptured, the army of the Loire was marching to the relief of Paris, was even then, so it was reported, in camp at Etampes. The aspect of affairs was entirely changed: all they had to do now was to go and effect a junction with it beyond the Marne. There had been a general reorganization of the forces; three armies had been created, one composed of the battalions of National Guards and commanded by General Clement Thomas, another, comprising the 13th and 14th corps, to which were added a few reliable regiments, selected indiscriminately wherever they could be found, was to form the main column of attack under the lead of General Ducrot, while the third, intended to act as a reserve, was made up entirely of mobiles and turned over to General Vinoy. And when Maurice laid him down to sleep in the wood of Vincennes on the night of the 28th of November, with his comrades of the 115th, he was without a doubt of their success. The three corps of the second army were all there, and it was common talk that their junction with the army of the Loire had been fixed for the following day at Fontainebleau. Then ensued a series of mischances, the usual blunders arising from want of foresight; a sudden rising of the river, which prevented the engineers from laying the pontoon bridge; conflicting orders, which delayed the movement of the troops. The 115th was among the first regiments to pass the river on the following night, and in the neighborhood of ten o'clock, with Maurice in its ranks, it entered Champigny under a destructive fire. The young man was wild with excitement; he fired so rapidly that his chassepot burned his fingers, notwithstanding the intense cold. His sole thought was to push onward, ever onward, surmounting every obstacle until they should join their brothers from the provinces over there across the river. But in front of Champigny and Bry the army fell up against the park walls of Coeuilly and Villiers, that the Prussians had converted into impregnable fortresses, more than a quarter of a mile in length. The men's courage faltered, and after that the action went on in a half-hearted way; the 3d corps was slow in getting up, the 1st and 2d, unable to advance, continued for two days longer to hold Champigny, which they finally abandoned on the night of December 2, after their barren victory. The whole army retired to the wood of Vincennes, where the men's only shelter was the snow-laden branches of the trees, and Maurice, whose feet were frost-bitten, laid his head upon the cold ground and cried.