Then, as he saw Jean looking at him inquiringly, he added with calm
conviction, his eyes bent upon the blackness of the night, as if
reading there the destiny that he predicted:

"It will be mine; I shall be killed to-morrow."

It was nine o'clock, with promise of a chilly, uncomfortable night,
for a dense mist had risen from the surface of the river, so that the
stars were no longer visible. Maurice shivered, where he lay with Jean
beneath a hedge, and said they would do better to go and seek the
shelter of the tent; the rest they had taken that day had left them
wakeful, their joints seemed stiffer and their bones sorer than
before; neither could sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who,
stretched on the damp ground and wrapped in his blanket, was snoring
like a trooper, not far away. For a long time after that they watched
with interest the feeble light of a candle that was burning in a large
tent where the colonel and some officers were in consultation. All
that evening M. de Vineuil had manifested great uneasiness that he had
received no instructions to guide him in the morning. He felt that his
regiment was too much "in the air," too much advanced, although it
had already fallen back from the exposed position that it had
occupied earlier in the day. Nothing had been seen of General
Bourgain-Desfeuilles, who was said to be ill in bed at the Hotel of
the Golden Cross, and the colonel decided to send one of his officers
to advise him of the danger of their new position in the too extended
line of the 7th corps, which had to cover the long stretch from the
bend in the Meuse to the wood of la Garenne. There could be no doubt
that the enemy would attack with the first glimpse of daylight; only
for seven or eight hours now would that deep tranquillity remain