"The dyehouse will be well defended," said Delaherche. "I have a whole section in it. Come and see."
It was true; forty and odd men of the infanterie de marine had been posted there under the command of a lieutenant, a tall, light-haired young fellow, scarcely more than a boy, but with an expression of energy and determination on his face. His men had already taken full possession of the building, some of them being engaged in loopholing the shutters of the ground-floor windows that commanded the street, while others, in the courtyard that overlooked the meadows in the rear, were breaching the wall for musketry. It was in this courtyard that Delaherche and Weiss found the young officer, straining his eyes to discover what was hidden behind the impenetrable mist.
"Confound this fog!" he murmured. "We can't fight when we don't know where the enemy is." Presently he asked, with no apparent change of voice or manner: "What day of the week is this?"
"Thursday," Weiss replied.
"Thursday, that's so. Hanged if I don't think the world might come to an end and we not know it!"
But just at that moment the uninterrupted roar of the artillery was diversified by a brisk rattle of musketry proceeding from the edge of the meadows, at a distance of two or three hundred yards. And at the same time there was a transformation, as rapid and startling, almost, as the stage effect in a fairy spectacle: the sun rose, the exhalations of the Meuse were whirled away like bits of finest, filmiest gauze, and the blue sky was revealed, in serene limpidity, undimmed by a single cloud. It was the exquisite morning of a faultless summer day.
"Ah!" exclaimed Delaherche, "they are crossing the railway bridge. See, they are making their way along the track. How stupid of us not to have blown up the bridge!"
The officer's face bore an expression of dumb rage. The mines had been prepared and charged, he averred, but they had fought four hours the day before to regain possession of the bridge and then had forgot to touch them off.
"It is just our luck," he curtly said.
Weiss was silent, watching the course of events and endeavoring to form some idea of the true state of affairs. The position of the French in Bazeilles was a very strong one. The village commanded the meadows, and was bisected by the Douzy road, which, turning sharp to the left, passed under the walls of the Chateau, while another road, the one that led to the railway bridge, bent around to the right and forked at the Place de l'Eglise. There was no cover for any force advancing by these two approaches; the Germans would be obliged to traverse the meadows and the wide, bare level that lay between the outskirts of the village and the Meuse and the railway. Their prudence in avoiding unnecessary risks was notorious, hence it seemed improbable that the real attack would come from that quarter. They kept coming across the bridge, however, in deep masses, and that notwithstanding the slaughter that a battery of mitrailleuses, posted at the edge of the village, effected in their ranks, and all at once those who had crossed rushed forward in open order, under cover of the straggling willows, the columns were re-formed and began to advance. It was from there that the musketry fire, which was growing hotter, had proceeded.
"Oh, those are Bavarians," Weiss remarked. "I recognize them by the braid on their helmets."
But there were other columns, moving to the right and partially concealed by the railway embankment, whose object, it seemed to him, was to gain the cover of some trees in the distance, whence they might descend and take Bazeilles in flank and rear. Should they succeed in effecting a lodgment in the park of Montivilliers, the village might become untenable. This was no more than a vague, half-formed idea, that flitted through his mind for a moment and faded as rapidly as it had come; the attack in front was becoming more determined, and his every faculty was concentrated on the struggle that was assuming, with every moment, larger dimensions.
Suddenly he turned his head and looked away to the north, over the city of Sedan, where the heights of Floing were visible in the distance. A battery had just commenced firing from that quarter; the smoke rose in the bright sunshine in little curls and wreaths, and the reports came to his ears very distinctly. It was in the neighborhood of five o'clock.
"Well, well," he murmured, "they are all going to have a hand in the business, it seems."
The lieutenant of marines, who had turned his eyes in the same direction, spoke up confidently:
"Oh! Bazeilles is the key of the position. This is the spot where the battle will be won or lost."
"Do you think so?" Weiss exclaimed.
"There is not the slightest doubt of it. It is certainly the marshal's opinion, for he was here last night and told us that we must hold the village if it cost the life of every man of us."
Weiss slowly shook his head, and swept the horizon with a glance; then in a low, faltering voice, as if speaking to himself, he said:
"No-no! I am sure that is a mistake. I fear the danger lies in another quarter-where, or what it is, I dare not say-"
He said no more. He simply opened wide his arms, like the jaws of a vise, then, turning to the north, brought his hands together, as if the vise had closed suddenly upon some object there.
This was the fear that had filled his mind for the last twenty-four hours, for he was thoroughly acquainted with the country and had watched narrowly every movement of the troops during the previous day, and now, again, while the broad valley before him lay basking in the radiant sunlight, his gaze reverted to the hills of the left bank, where, for the space of all one day and all one night, his eyes had beheld the black swarm of the Prussian hosts moving steadily onward to some appointed end. A battery had opened fire from Remilly, over to the left, but the one from which the shells were now beginning to reach the French position was posted at Pont-Maugis, on the river bank. He adjusted his binocle by folding the glasses over, the one upon the other, to lengthen its range and enable him to discern what was hidden among the recesses of the wooded slopes, but could distinguish nothing save the white smoke-wreaths that rose momentarily on the tranquil air and floated lazily away over the crests. That human torrent that he had seen so lately streaming over those hills, where was it now-where were massed those innumerable hosts? At last, at the corner of a pine wood, above Noyers and Frenois, he succeeded in making out a little cluster of mounted men in uniform-some general, doubtless, and his staff. And off there to the west the Meuse curved in a great loop, and in that direction lay their sole line of retreat on Mezieres, a narrow road that traversed the pass of Saint-Albert, between that loop and the dark forest of Ardennes. While reconnoitering the day before he had met a general officer who, he afterward learned, was Ducrot, commanding the 1st corps, on a by-road in the valley of Givonne, and had made bold to call his attention to the importance of that, their only line of retreat. If the army did not retire at once by that road while it was still open to them, if it waited until the Prussians should have crossed the Meuse at Donchery and come up in force to occupy the pass, it would be hemmed in and driven back on the Belgian frontier. As early even as the evening of that day the movement would have been too late. It was asserted that the uhlans had possession of the bridge, another bridge that had not been destroyed, for the reason, this time, that some one had neglected to provide the necessary powder. And Weiss sorrowfully acknowledged to himself that the human torrent, the invading horde, could now be nowhere else than on the plain of Donchery, invisible to him, pressing onward to occupy Saint-Albert pass, pushing forward its advanced guards to Saint-Menges and Floing, whither, the day previous, he had conducted Jean and Maurice. In the brilliant sunshine the steeple of Floing church appeared like a slender needle of dazzling whiteness.