He waited for perhaps an hour, watching the faces round the fire increase in number and grow troubled with anxiety.  The German officers talked in low tones staring through their night-glasses down the hill, to catch the first leaping flame from the roofs of Vaudere, pushing forward their heads to listen for any alarm.  Fevrier watched them with the amusement of a spectator in a play house.  He was fully aware that he was shortly to step upon the stage himself.  He was aware too that the play was to have a tragic ending.  Meanwhile, however, here was very good comedy!  He had a Frenchman’s appreciation of the picturesque.  The dark night, the glowing fire on the one broad level of grass, the French soldiers hidden in the vines, within a stone’s throw of the Germans, the Germans looking unconsciously on over their heads for the return of those comrades who never would return.—­Lieutenant Fevrier was the dramatist who had created this striking and artistic situation.  Lieutenant Fevrier could not but be pleased.  Moreover there were better effects to follow.  One occurred to him at this very moment, an admirable one.  He fumbled in his breast and took out the flag.  A minute later he saw the Colonel of the forepost join the group, hack nervously with his naked sword at a burning log, and dispatch a subaltern down the hill to the field-watch.

The subaltern came crashing back through the vines.  Fevrier did not need to hear his words in order to guess at his report.  It could only be that the Prussian party had given the password and come safely back an hour since.  Besides, the Colonel’s act was significant.

He sent four men at once in different directions, and the rest of his soldiers he withdrew into the darkness behind the bonfire.  He did not follow them himself until he had picked up and tossed a fusee into the fire.  The fusee flared and spat and spurted, and immediately it seemed to Fevrier—­so short an interval of time was there—­that the country-side was alive with the hum of a stirring camp, and the rattle of harness-chains, as horses were yoked to guns.

For a third time that evening Fevrier laughed softly.  The deserters had roused the Prussian army round Metz to the expectation of an attack in force.  He touched his neighbour on the shoulder.

“One volley when I give the word.  Then charge.  Pass the order on!” and the word went along the line like a ripple across a pond.

He had hardly given it, the fusee had barely ceased to sputter, before a company doubled out on the open space behind the bonfire.  That company had barely formed up, before another arrived to support it.

“Load!”

As the Prussian command was uttered, Fevrier was aware of a movement at his side.  The soldier next to him was taking aim.  Fevrier reached out his hand and stopped the man.  Fevrier was going to die in five minutes, and meant to die chivalrously like a gentleman.  He waited until the German companies had loaded, until they were ordered to advance, and then he shouted,