possessed of, but the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the
damp, heavy air, and the men, who had not had courage even to erect
their tents and had thrown themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon
the muddy ground, did not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their
ashen features set and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion. To
arouse them from their trance-like sleep they had to be shaken, one by
one, and, with ghastly faces and haggard eyes, they rose to their
feet, like beings summoned, against their will, back from another
world. It was Jean who awoke Maurice.

"What is it? Where are we!" asked the younger man. He looked
affrightedly around him, and beheld only that gray waste, in which
were floating the unsubstantial forms of his comrades. Objects twenty
yards away were undistinguishable; his knowledge of the country
availed him not; he could not even have indicated in which direction
lay Sedan. Just then, however, the boom of cannon, somewhere in the
distance, fell upon his ear. "Ah! I remember; the battle is for
to-day; they are fighting. So much the better; there will be an end to
our suspense!"

He heard other voices around him expressing the same idea. There was a
feeling of stern satisfaction that at last their long nightmare was to
be dispelled, that at last they were to have a sight of those
Prussians whom they had come out to look for, and before whom they had
been retreating so many weary days; that they were to be given a
chance to try a shot at them, and lighten the load of cartridges that
had been tugging at their belts so long, with never an opportunity to
burn a single one of them. Everyone felt that, this time, the battle
would not, could not be avoided.