His thoughts kept him wakeful all night.  This, then, was the retreat of which the people of Paris were talking, but in which many wished not to believe—­the retreat reaching even there and continuing its indefinite retirement, since nobody knew what its end might be. . . .  His optimism aroused a ridiculous hope.  Perhaps this was only the retreat of the hospitals and stores which always follows an army.  The troops, wishing to be rid of impedimenta, were sending them forward by railway and highway.  That must be it.  So all through the night, he interpreted the incessant bustle as the passing of vehicles filled with the wounded, with munitions and eatables, like those which had filed by in the afternoon.

Toward morning he fell asleep through sheer weariness, and when he awoke late in the day his first glance was toward the road.  He saw it filled with men and horses dragging some rolling objects.  But these men were carrying guns and were formed in battalions and regiments.  The animals were pulling the pieces of artillery.  It was an army. . . .  It was the retreat!

Desnoyers ran to the edge of the road to be more convinced of the truth.

Alas, they were regiments such as he had seen leaving the stations of Paris. . . .  But with what a very different aspect!  The blue cloaks were now ragged and yellowing garments, the trousers faded to the color of a half-baked brick, the shoes great cakes of mud.  The faces had a desperate expression, with layers of dust and sweat in all their grooves and openings, with beards of recent growth, sharp as spikes, with an air of great weariness showing the longing to drop down somewhere forever, killing or dying, but without going a step further.  They were tramping . . . tramping . . . tramping!  Some marches had lasted thirty hours at a stretch.  The enemy was on their tracks, and the order was to go on and not to fight, freeing themselves by their fleet-footedness from the involved movements of the invader.

The chiefs suspected the discouraged exhaustion of their men.  They might exact of them complete sacrifice of life—­but to order them to march day and night, forever fleeing before the enemy when they did not consider themselves vanquished, when they were animated by that ferocious wrath which is the mother of heroism! . . .  Their despairing expressions mutely sought the nearest officers, the leaders, even the colonel.  They simply could go no further!  Such a long, devastating march in such a few days, and what for? . . .  The superior officers, who knew no more than their men, seemed to be replying with their eyes, as though they possessed a secret—­“Courage!  One more effort! . . .  This is going to come to an end very soon.”