“It must have fallen about three hundred yards away,” said Rene cheerfully.

The senator, impressionable soul, felt suddenly filled with heroic confidence.  It was not worth while to bother about his personal safety when other men—­just like him, only differently dressed—­were not paying the slightest attention to the danger.

And as the other projectiles soared over his head to lose themselves in the woods with the explosions of a volcano, he remained by his son’s side, with no other sign of tension than a slight trembling of the knees.  It seemed to him now that it was only the French missiles—­because they were on his side—­that were hitting the bull’s eye.  The others must be going up in the air and losing themselves in useless noise.  Of just such illusions is valor often compounded! . . .  “And is that all?” his eyes seemed to be asking.

He now recalled rather shamefacedly his retreat to the shelter; he was beginning to feel that he could live in the open, the same as Rene.

The German missiles were getting considerably more frequent.  They were no longer lost in the wood, and their detonations were sounding nearer and nearer.  The two officials exchanged glances.  They were responsible for the safety of their distinguished charge.

“Now they are warming up,” said one of them.

Rene, as though reading their thoughts, prepared to go.  “Good-bye, father!” They were needing him in his battery.  The senator tried to resist; he wished to prolong the interview, but found that he was hitting against something hard and inflexible that repelled all his influence.  A senator amounted to very little with people accustomed to discipline.  “Farewell, my boy! . . .  All success to you! . . .  Remember who you are!”

The father wept as he embraced his son, lamenting the brevity of the interview, and thinking of the dangers awaiting him.

When Rene had disappeared, the captains again recommended their departure.  It was getting late; they ought to reach a certain cantonment before nightfall.  So they went down the hill in the shelter of a cut in the mountain, seeing the enemy’s shells flying high above them.

In a hollow, they came upon several groups of the famed seventy-fives spread about through the woods, hidden by piles of underbrush, like snapping dogs, howling and sticking up their gray muzzles.  The great cannon were roaring only at intervals, while the steel pack of hounds were yelping incessantly without the slightest break in their noisy wrath—­like the endless tearing of a piece of cloth.  The pieces were many, the volleys dizzying, and the shots uniting in one prolonged shriek, as a series of dots unite to form a single line.

The chiefs, stimulated by the din, were giving their orders in yells, and waving their arms from behind the pieces.  The cannon were sliding over the motionless gun carriages, advancing and receding like automatic pistols.  Each charge dropped an empty shell, and introduced a fresh one into the smoking chamber.