The vigorous beasts, having no imagination, were resisting less than the men, but their aspect was deplorable.  How could these be the same strong horses with glossy coats that he had seen in the Paris processions at the beginning of the previous month?  A campaign of twenty days had aged and exhausted them; their dull gaze seemed to be imploring pity.  They were weak and emaciated, the outline of their skeletons so plainly apparent that it made their eyes look larger.  Their harness, as they moved, showed the skin raw and bleeding.  Yet they were pushing on with a mighty effort, concentrating their last powers, as though human demands were beyond their obscure instincts.  Some could go no further and suddenly collapsed from sheer fatigue.  Desnoyers noticed that the artillerymen rapidly unharnessed them, pushing them out of the road so as to leave the way open for the rest.  There lay the skeleton-like frames with stiffened legs and glassy eyes staring fixedly at the first flies already attracted by their miserable carrion.

The cannons painted gray, the gun-carriages, the artillery equipment, all that Don Marcelo had seen clean and shining with the enthusiastic friction that man has given to arms from remote epochs—­even more persistent than that which woman gives to household utensils—­were now dirty, overlaid with the marks of endless use, with the wreckage of unavoidable neglect.  The wheels were deformed with mud, the metal darkened by the smoke of explosion, the gray paint spotted with mossy dampness.

In the free spaces in this file, in the parentheses opened between battery and regiment, were sandwiched crowds of civilians—­miserable groups driven on by the invasion, populations of entire towns that had disintegrated, following the army in its retreat.  The approach of a new division would make them leave the road temporarily, continuing their march in the adjoining fields.  Then at the slightest opening in the troops they would again slip along the white and even surface of the highway.  They were mothers who were pushing hand-carts heaped high with pyramids of furniture and tiny babies, the sick who could hardly drag themselves along, old men carried on the shoulders of their grandsons, old women with little children clinging to their skirts—­a pitiful, silent brood.

Nobody now opposed the liberality of the owner of the castle.  His entire vintage seemed to be overflowing on the highway.  Casks from the last grape-gathering were rolled out to the roadside, and the soldiers filled the metal ladles hanging from their belts with the red stream.  Then the bottled wine began making its appearance by order of date, and was instantly lost in the river of men continually flowing by.  Desnoyers observed with much satisfaction the effects of his munificence.  The smiles were reappearing on the despairing faces, the French jest was leaping from row to row, and on resuming their march the groups began to sing.