He remained near the barricade in a solitude of intense silence, as though the world were suddenly depopulated.  Two dogs, abandoned by the flight of their masters, leaped and sniffed around him, coaxing him for protection.  They were unable to get the desired scent in that land trodden down and disfigured by the transit of thousands of men.  A family cat was watching the birds that were beginning to return to their haunts.  With timid flutterings they were picking at what the horses had left, and an ownerless hen was disputing the banquet with the winged band, until then hidden in the trees and roofs.  The silence intensified the rustling of the leaves, the hum of the insects, the summer respiration of the sunburnt soil which appeared to have contracted timorously under the weight of the men in arms.

Desnoyers was losing exact track of the passing of time.  He was beginning to believe that all which had gone before must have been a bad dream.  The calm surrounding him made what had been happening here seem most improbable.

Suddenly he saw something moving at the far end of the road, at the very highest point where the white ribbon of the highway touched the blue of the horizon.  There were two men on horseback, two little tin soldiers who appeared to have escaped from a box of toys.  He had brought with him a pair of field glasses that had often surprised marauders on his property, and by their aid he saw more clearly the two riders clad in greenish gray!  They were carrying lances and wearing helmets ending in a horizontal plate . . .  They!  He could not doubt it:  before his eyes were the first Uhlans!

For some time they remained motionless, as though exploring the horizon.  Then, from the obscure masses of vegetation that bordered the roadside, others and still others came sallying forth in groups.  The little tin soldiers no longer were showing their silhouettes against the horizon’s blue; the whiteness of the highway was now making their background, ascending behind their heads.  They came slowly down, like a band that fears ambush, examining carefully everything around.

The advisability of prompt retirement made Don Marcelo bring his investigations to a close.  It would be most disastrous for him if they surprised him here.  But on lowering his glasses something extraordinary passed across his field of vision.  A short distance away, so that he could almost touch them with his hand, he saw many men skulking along in the shadow of the trees on both sides of the road.  His surprise increased as he became convinced that they were Frenchmen, wearing kepis.  Where were they coming from? . . .  He examined more closely with his spy glass.  They were stragglers in a lamentable state of body and a picturesque variety of uniforms—­infantry, Zouaves, dragoons without their horses.  And with them were forest guards and officers from the villages that had received too late the news of the retreat—­altogether about fifty.  A few were fresh and vigorous, others were keeping themselves up by supernatural effort.  All were carrying arms.