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.

And off to the eastward the other arm of the powerful vise was slowly closing in on them.  Casting his eyes to the north, where there was a stretch of level ground between the plateaus of Illy and of Floing, he could make out the line of battle of the 7th corps, feebly supported by the 5th, which was posted in reserve under the ramparts of the city; but he could not discern what was occurring to the east, along the valley of the Givonne, where the 1st corps was stationed, its line stretching from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny village.  Now, however, the guns were beginning to thunder in that direction also; the conflict seemed to be raging in Chevalier’s wood, in front of Daigny.  His uneasiness was owing to reports that had been brought in by peasants the day previous, that the Prussian advance had reached Francheval, so that the movement which was being conducted at the west, by way of Donchery, was also in process of execution at the east, by way of Francheval, and the two jaws of the vise would come together up there at the north,