“Ah, I have seen enough, I am going,” stammered Delaherche.  “Come, if you are coming; if not, I shall go without you.”

The lieutenant, whom their presence made uneasy, spoke up: 

“It will certainly be best for you to go, gentlemen.  The enemy may attempt to carry the place at any moment.”

Then at last, casting a parting glance at the meadows, where the Bavarians were still gaining ground, Weiss gave in and followed Delaherche, but when they had gained the street he insisted upon going to see if the fastening of his door was secure, and when he came back to his companion there was a fresh spectacle, which brought them both to a halt.

At the end of the street, some three hundred yards from where they stood, a strong Bavarian column had debouched from the Douzy road and was charging up the Place de l’Eglise.  The square was held by a regiment of sailor-boys, who appeared to slacken their fire for a moment as if with the intention of drawing their assailants on; then, when the close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most surprising maneuver was swiftly executed:  the men abandoned their formation, some of them stepping from the ranks and flattening themselves against the house fronts, others casting themselves prone upon the ground, and down the vacant space thus suddenly formed the mitrailleuses that had been placed in battery at the farther end poured a perfect hailstorm of bullets.  The column disappeared as if it had been swept bodily from off the face of the earth.  The recumbent men sprang to their feet with a bound and charged the scattered Bavarians with the bayonet, driving them and making the rout complete.  Twice the maneuver was repeated, each time with the same success.  Two women, unwilling to abandon their home, a small house at the corner of an intersecting lane, were sitting at their window; they laughed approvingly and clapped their hands, apparently glad to have an opportunity to behold such a spectacle.

“There, confound it!” Weiss suddenly said, “I forgot to lock the cellar door!  I must go back.  Wait for me; I won’t be a minute.”

There was no indication that the enemy contemplated a renewal of their attack, and Delaherche, whose curiosity was reviving after the shock it had sustained, was less eager to get away.  He had halted in front of his dyehouse and was conversing with the concierge, who had come for a moment to the door of the room she occupied in the rez-de-chaussee.

“My poor Francoise, you had better come along with us.  A lone woman among such dreadful sights—­I can’t bear to think of it!”

She raised her trembling hands.  “Ah, sir, I would have gone when the others went, indeed I would, if it had not been for my poor sick boy.  Come in, sir, and look at him.”

He did not enter, but glanced into the apartment from the threshold, and shook his head sorrowfully at sight of the little fellow in his clean, white bed, his face exhibiting the scarlet hue of the disease, and his glassy, burning eyes bent wistfully on his mother.