Maurice, seated with Jean against a wall, pointed to the north, as he had done before. "There is Sedan in the distance. And look! Bazeilles is over yonder-and then comes Douzy, and then Carignan, more to the right. We shall concentrate at Carignan, I feel sure we shall. Ah! there is plenty of room, as you would see if it were daylight!"
And his sweeping gesture embraced the entire valley that lay beneath them, enfolded in shadow. There was sufficient light remaining in the sky that they could distinguish the pale gleam of the river where it ran its course among the dusky meadows. The scattered trees made clumps of denser shade, especially a row of poplars to the left, whose tops were profiled on the horizon like the fantastic ornaments on some old castle gateway. And in the background, behind Sedan, dotted with countless little points of brilliant light, the shadows had mustered, denser and darker, as if all the forests of the Ardennes had collected the inky blackness of their secular oaks and cast it there.
Jean's gaze came back to the bridge of boats beneath them.
"Look there! everything is against us. We shall never get across."
The fires upon both banks blazed up more brightly just then, and their light was so intense that the whole fearful scene was pictured on the darkness with vivid distinctness. The boats on which the longitudinal girders rested, owing to the weight of the cavalry and artillery that had been crossing uninterruptedly since morning, had settled to such an extent that the floor of the bridge was covered with water. The cuirassiers were passing at the time, two abreast, in a long unbroken file, emerging from the obscurity of the hither shore to be swallowed up in the shadows of the other, and nothing was to be seen of the bridge; they appeared to be marching on the bosom of the ruddy stream, that flashed and danced in the flickering firelight. The horses snorted and hung back, manifesting every indication of terror as they felt the unstable pathway yielding beneath their feet, and the cuirassiers, standing erect in their stirrups and clutching at the reins, poured onward in a steady, unceasing stream, wrapped in their great white mantles, their helmets flashing in the red light of the flames. One might have taken them for some spectral band of knights, with locks of fire, going forth to do battle with the powers of darkness.
Jean's suffering wrested from him a deep-toned exclamation:
"Oh! I am hungry!"
On every side, meantime, the men, notwithstanding the complainings of their empty stomachs, had thrown themselves down to sleep. Their fatigue was so great that it finally got the better of their fears and struck them down upon the bare earth, where they lay on their back, with open mouth and arms outstretched, like logs beneath the moonless sky. The bustle of the camp was stilled, and all along the naked range, from end to end, there reigned a silence as of death.
"Oh! I am hungry; I am so hungry that I could eat dirt!"
Jean, patient as he was and inured to hardship, could not restrain the cry; he had eaten nothing in thirty-six hours, and it was torn from him by sheer stress of physical suffering. Then Maurice, knowing that two or three hours at all events must elapse before their regiment could move to pass the stream, said:
"See here, I have an uncle not far from here-you know, Uncle Fouchard, of whom you have heard me speak. His house is five or six hundred yards from here; I didn't like the idea, but as you are so hungry-The deuce! the old man can't refuse us bread!"
His comrade made no objection and they went off together. Father Fouchard's little farm was situated just at the mouth of Harancourt pass, near the plateau where the artillery was posted. The house was a low structure, surrounded by quite an imposing cluster of dependencies; a barn, a stable, and cow-sheds, while across the road was a disused carriage-house which the old peasant had converted into an abattoir, where he slaughtered with his own hands the cattle which he afterward carried about the country in his wagon to his customers.
Maurice was surprised as he approached the house to see no light.
"Ah, the old miser! he has locked and barred everything tight and fast. Like as not he won't let us in."
But something that he saw brought him to a standstill. Before the house a dozen soldiers were moving to and fro, hungry plunderers, doubtless, on the prowl in quest of something to eat. First they had called, then had knocked, and now, seeing that the place was dark and deserted, they were hammering at the door with the butts of their muskets in an attempt to force it open. A growling chorus of encouragement greeted them from the outsiders of the circle.
"Nom de Dieu! go ahead! smash it in, since there is no one at home!"
All at once the shutter of a window in the garret was thrown back and a tall old man presented himself, bare-headed, wearing the peasant's blouse, with a candle in one hand and a gun in the other. Beneath the thick shock of bristling white hair was a square face, deeply seamed and wrinkled, with a strong nose, large, pale eyes, and stubborn chin.
"You must be robbers, to smash things as you are doing!" he shouted in an angry tone. "What do you want?"
The soldiers, taken by surprise, drew back a little way.
"We are perishing with hunger; we want something to eat."
"I have nothing, not a crust. Do you suppose that I keep victuals in my house to fill a hundred thousand mouths? Others were here before you; yes, General Ducrot's men were here this morning, I tell you, and they cleaned me out of everything."
The soldiers came forward again, one by one.
"Let us in, all the same; we can rest ourselves, and you can hunt up something-"
And they were commencing to hammer at the door again, when the old fellow, placing his candle on the window-sill, raised his gun to his shoulder.
"As true as that candle stands there, I'll put a hole in the first man that touches that door!"
The prospect looked favorable for a row. Oaths and imprecations resounded, and one of the men was heard to shout that they would settle matters with the pig of a peasant, who was like all the rest of them and would throw his bread in the river rather than give a mouthful to a starving soldier. The light of the candle glinted on the barrels of the chassepots as they were brought to an aim; the angry men were about to shoot him where he stood, while he, headstrong and violent, would not yield an inch.
"Nothing, nothing! Not a crust! I tell you they cleaned me out!"
Maurice rushed in in affright, followed by Jean.
"Comrades, comrades-"
He knocked up the soldiers' guns, and raising his eyes, said entreatingly:
"Come, be reasonable. Don't you know me? It is I."
"Who, I?"
"Maurice Levasseur, your nephew."
Father Fouchard took up his candle. He recognized his nephew, beyond a doubt, but was firm in his resolve not to give so much as a glass of water.
"How can I tell whether you are my nephew or not in this infernal darkness? Clear out, everyone of you, or I will fire!"
And amid an uproar of execration, and threats to bring him down and burn the shanty, he still had nothing to say but: "Clear out, or I'll fire!" which he repeated more than twenty times.
Suddenly a loud clear voice was heard rising above the din:
"But not on me, father?"
The others stood aside, and in the flickering light of the candle a man appeared, wearing the chevrons of a quartermaster-sergeant. It was Honore, whose battery was a short two hundred yards from there and who had been struggling for the last two hours against an irresistible longing to come and knock at that door. He had sworn never to set foot in that house again, and in all his four years of army life had not exchanged a single letter with that father whom he now addressed so curtly. The marauders had drawn apart and were conversing excitedly among themselves; what, the old man's son, and a "non-com."! it wouldn't answer; better go and try their luck elsewhere! So they slunk away and vanished in the darkness.