of all, near the frontier, Chapelle.  All about him, far as he could see, the land was his; he could direct the movements of the quarter of a million of men and the eight hundred guns that constituted his army, could master at a glance every detail of the operations of his invading host.  Even then the XIth corps was pressing forward toward Saint-Menges, while the Vth was at Vrigne-aux-Bois, and the Wurtemburg division was near Donchery, awaiting orders.  This was what he beheld to the west, and if, turning to the east, he found his view obstructed in that quarter by tree-clad hills, he could picture to himself what was passing, for he had seen the XIIth corps entering the wood of Chevalier, he knew that by that time the Guards were at Villers-Cernay.  There were the two arms of the gigantic vise, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, the Saxon Prince’s army on the right, slowly, irresistibly closing on each other, while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.

Underneath the King’s position the long line of batteries, stretching with hardly an interval from Remilly to Frenois, kept up an unintermittent fire, pouring their shells into Daigny and la Moncelle, sending them hurtling over Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus.  It was barely eight o’clock, and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board he directed the movements of the game, awaiting the inevitable end, calmly controlling the black cloud of men that beneath him swept, an array of pigmies, athwart the smiling landscape.

II.

In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the bugler, sounded reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was 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.