Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them. "That fellow, yonder,
looks like him," he said, under his breath. "I wonder if it is he?"

"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Jean.

"Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at Osches, you
remember."

Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a general officer
and his staff dashing down the descending road, and Maurice recognized
the general of their brigade, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, shouting and
gesticulating wildly. He had torn himself reluctantly from his
comfortable quarters at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was
evident from the horrible temper he was in that the condition of
affairs that morning was not satisfactory to him. In a tone of voice
so loud that everyone could hear he roared:

"In the devil's name, what stream is that off yonder, the Meuse or the
Moselle?"

The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest. As at Bazeilles the
effect was theatrical; the curtain rolled slowly upward to the flies,
disclosing the setting of the stage. From a sky of transparent blue
the sun poured down a flood of bright, golden light, and Maurice was
no longer at a loss to recognize their position.

"Ah!" he said to Jean, "we are on the plateau de l'Algerie. That
village that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is
Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more