Outside the park was the buzz of the approaching throng which was blackening the roads.  The invasion was beginning again, but with a refluent movement.  For hours at a time great strings of gray trucks went puffing by; then regiments of infantry, squadrons, rolling stock.  They were marching very slowly with a deliberation that puzzled Desnoyers, who could not make out whether this recessional meant flight or change of position.  The only thing that gave him any satisfaction was the stupefied and downcast appearance of the soldiers, the gloomy sulks of the officers.  Nobody was shouting; they all appeared to have forgotten their “Nach Paris!” The greenish gray monster still had its armed head stretched across the other side of the Marne, but its tail was beginning to uncoil with uneasy wrigglings.

After night had settled down the troops were still continuing to fall back.  The cannonading was certainly coming nearer.  Some of the thunderous claps sounded so close that they made the glass tremble in the windows.  A fugitive farmer, trying to find refuge in the park, gave Don Marcelo some news.  The Germans were in full retreat.  They had installed some of their batteries on the banks of the Marne in order to attempt a new resistance. . . .  And the new arrival remained without attracting the attention of the invaders who, a few days before, would have shot him on the slightest suspicion.

The mechanical workings of discipline were evidently out of gear.  Doctors and nurses were running from place to place, shouting orders and breaking out into a volley of curses every time a fresh ambulance load arrived.  The drivers were commanded to take their patients on ahead to another hospital near the rear-guard.  Orders had been received to evacuate the castle that very night.

In spite of this prohibition, one of the ambulances unloaded its relay of wounded men.  So deplorable was their state that the doctors accepted them, judging it useless for them to continue their journey.  They remained in the garden, lying on the same stretchers that they had occupied within the vehicle.  By the light of the lanterns Desnoyers recognized one of the dying.  It was the secretary to His Excellency, the Socialist professor who had shut him in the cellar vaults.

At the sight of the owner of the castle he smiled as though he had met a comrade.  His was the only familiar face among all those people who were speaking his language.  He was ghastly in hue, with sunken features and an impalpable glaze spreading over his eyes.  He had no visible wounds, but from under the cloak spread over his abdomen his torn intestines exhaled a fatal warning.  The presence of Don Marcelo made him guess where they had brought him, and little by little he co-ordinated his recollections.  As though the old gentleman might be interested in the whereabouts of his comrades, he told him all he knew in a weak and strained voice. . . .  Bad luck for their brigade!  They had reached the