Two hours elapsed, and still the 106th stood there watching the seemingly endless column that streamed along before their eyes.  In the end the men, standing at rest with ordered arms, began to become impatient.  Jean’s squad, whose position happened to be opposite a break in the line of poplars where the sun had a fair chance at them, felt themselves particularly aggrieved.

“Guess we must be the rear-guard,” Loubet observed with good-natured raillery.

But Chouteau scolded:  “They don’t value us at a brass farthing, and that’s why they let us wait this way.  We were here first; why didn’t we take the road while it was empty?”

And as they began to discern more clearly beyond the canal, across the wide fertile plain, along the level roads lined with hop-poles and fields of ripening grain, the movement of the troops retiring along the same way by which they had advanced but yesterday, gibes and jeers rose on the air in a storm of angry ridicule.

“Ah, we are taking the back track,” Chouteau continued.  “I wonder if that is the advance against the enemy that they have been dinning in our ears of late!  Strikes me as rather queer!  No sooner do we get into camp than we turn tail and make off, never even stopping to taste our soup.”

The derisive laughter became louder, and Maurice, who was next to Chouteau in the ranks, took sides with him.  Why could they not have been allowed to cook their soup and eat it in peace, since they had done nothing for the last two hours but stand there in the road like so many sticks?  Their hunger was making itself felt again; they had a resentful recollection of the savory contents of the kettle dumped out prematurely upon the ground, and they could see no necessity for this headlong retrograde movement, which appeared to them idiotic and cowardly.  What chicken-livers they must be, those generals!

But Lieutenant Rochas came along and blew up Sergeant Sapin for not keeping his men in better order, and Captain Beaudoin, very prim and starchy, attracted by the disturbance, appeared upon the scene.

“Silence in the ranks!”

Jean, an old soldier of the army of Italy who knew what discipline was, looked in silent amazement at Maurice, who appeared to be amused by Chouteau’s angry sneers; and he wondered how it was that a monsieur, a young man of his acquirements, could listen approvingly to things—­they might be true, all the same—­but that should not be blurted out in public.  The army would never accomplish much, that was certain, if the privates were to take to criticizing the generals and giving their opinions.