On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin had snatched a few hours' repose the day before a soldier lay outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he had looked and recognized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette's brother. He was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived, stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated, like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed on to his wife's chamber, which was the next room on the corridor. A lamp was burning on a table in a corner; the profound silence seemed to shudder. Gilberte had thrown herself crosswise on the bed, fully dressed, doubtless in order to be prepared for any catastrophe, and was sleeping peacefully, while, seated on a chair at her side with her head declined and resting lightly on the very edge of the mattress, Henriette was also slumbering, with a fitful, agitated sleep, while big tears welled up beneath her swollen eyelids. He contemplated them silently for a moment, strongly tempted to awake and question the young woman in order to ascertain what she knew. Had she succeeded in reaching Bazeilles? and why was it that she was back there? Perhaps she would be able to give him some tidings of his dyehouse were he to ask her? A feeling of compassion stayed him, however, and he was about to leave the room when his mother, ghost-like, appeared at the threshold of the open door and beckoned him to follow her.
As they were passing through the dining room he expressed his surprise.
"What, have you not been abed to-night?"
She shook her head, then said below her breath:
"I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside the colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, almost, and then plies me with questions. I don't know how to answer them. Come in and see him, you."
M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now brightly red, barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across it like a snowy avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the pillow. Mme. Delaherche had placed a newspaper before the lamp and that corner of the room was lost in semi-darkness, while all the intensity of the bright lamplight was concentrated on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her fauteuil, her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent on space, in sorrowful reverie.
"I think he must have heard you," she murmured; "he is awaking again."
It was so; the colonel, without moving his head, had reopened his eyes and bent them on Delaherche. He recognized him, and immediately asked in a voice that his exhausted condition made tremulous:
"It is all over, is it not? We have capitulated."
The manufacturer, who encountered the look his mother cast on him at that moment, was on the point of equivocating. But what good would it do? A look of discouragement passed across his face.
"What else remained to do? A single glance at the streets of the city would convince you. General de Wimpffen has just set out for Prussian general headquarters to discuss conditions."
M. de Vineuil's eyes closed again, his long frame was shaken with a protracted shiver of supremely bitter grief, and this deep, long-drawn moan escaped his lips:
"Ah! merciful God, merciful God!" And without opening his eyes he went on in faltering, broken accents: "Ah! the plan I spoke of yesterday -they should have adopted it. Yes, I knew the country; I spoke of my apprehensions to the general, but even him they would not listen to. Occupy all the heights up there to the north, from Saint-Menges to Fleigneux, with your army looking down on and commanding Sedan, able at any time to move on Vrigne-aux-Bois, mistress of Saint-Albert's pass-and there we are; our positions are impregnable, the Mezieres road is under our control-"
His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he stammered a few more unintelligible words, while the vision of the battle that had been born of his fever little by little grew blurred and dim and at last was effaced by slumber. He slept, and in his sleep perhaps the honest officer's dreams were dreams of victory.
"Does the major speak favorably of his case?" Delaherche inquired in a whisper.
Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively.
"Those wounds in the foot are dreadful things, though," he went on. "I suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long time, isn't he?"
She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all her faculties were concentrated on contemplating the great calamity of their defeat. She was of another age; she was a survivor of that strong old race of frontier burghers who defended their towns so valiantly in the good days gone by. The clean-cut lines of her stern, set face, with its fleshless, uncompromising nose and thin lips, which the brilliant light of the lamp brought out in high relief against the darkness of the room, told the full extent of her stifled rage and grief and the wound sustained by her antique patriotism, the revolt of which refused even to let her sleep.
About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation of isolation, accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of physical distress. His hunger was asserting itself again, a griping, intolerable hunger, and he persuaded himself that it was debility alone that was thus robbing him of courage and resolution. He tiptoed softly from the room and, with his candle, again made his way down to the kitchen, but the spectacle he witnessed there was even still more cheerless; the range cold and fireless, the closets empty, the floor strewn with a disorderly litter of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and women's aprons; as if the hurricane of disaster had swept through that place as well, bearing away on its wings all the charm and cheer that appertain naturally to the things we eat and drink. At first he thought he was not going to discover so much as a crust, what was left over of the bread having all found its way to the ambulance in the form of soup. At last, however, in the dark corner of a cupboard he came across the remainder of the beans from yesterday's dinner, where they had been forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished his luxurious repast without the formality of sitting down, without the accompaniment of salt and butter, for which he did not care to trouble himself to ascend to the floor above, desirous only to get away as speedily as possible from that dismal kitchen, where the blinking, smoking little lamp perfumed the air with fumes of petroleum.
It was not much more than ten o'clock, and Delaherche had no other occupation than to speculate on the various probabilities connected with the signing of the capitulation. A persistent apprehension haunted him; a dread lest the conflict might be renewed, and the horrible thought of what the consequences must be in such an event, of which he could not speak, but which rested on his bosom like an incubus. When he had reascended to his study, where he found Maurice and Jean in exactly the same position he had left them in, it was all in vain that he settled himself comfortably in his favorite easy-chair; sleep would not come to him; just as he was on the point of losing himself the crash of a shell would arouse him with a great start. It was the frightful cannonade of the day, the echoes of which were still ringing in his ears; and he would listen breathlessly for a moment, then sit and shudder at the equally appalling silence by which he was now surrounded. As he could not sleep he preferred to move about; he wandered aimlessly among the rooms, taking care to avoid that in which his mother was sitting by the colonel's bedside, for the steady gaze with which she watched him as he tramped nervously up and down had finally had the effect of disconcerting him. Twice he returned to see if Henriette had not awakened, and he paused an instant to glance at his wife's pretty face, so calmly peaceful, on which seemed to be flitting something like the faint shadow of a smile. Then, knowing not what to do, he went downstairs again, came back, moved about from room to room, until it was nearly two in the morning, wearying his ears with trying to decipher some meaning in the sounds that came to him from without.