But Maurice had conceived a new scheme, which appeared to afford him great satisfaction.
"See here, the frontier is too far away; we should never succeed in reaching it without a guide. What do you say to changing our plan and going to Uncle Fouchard's, at Remilly? I am so well acquainted with every inch of the road that I'm sure I could take you there with my eyes bandaged. Don't you think it's a good idea, eh? I'll put you on this horse, and I suppose Uncle Fouchard will grumble, but he'll take us in."
Before starting he wished to take a look at the injured leg. There were two orifices; the ball appeared to have entered the limb and passed out, fracturing the tibia in its course. The flow of blood had not been great; he did nothing more than bandage the upper part of the calf tightly with his handkerchief.
"Do you fly, and leave me here," Jean said again.
"Hold your tongue; you are silly!"
When Jean was seated firmly in the saddle Maurice took the bridle and they made a start. It was somewhere about eleven o'clock, and he hoped to make the journey in three hours, even if they should be unable to proceed faster than a walk. A difficulty that he had not thought of until then, however, presented itself to his mind and for a moment filled him with consternation: how were they to cross the Meuse in order to get to the left bank? The bridge at Mouzon would certainly be guarded. At last he remembered that there was a ferry lower down the stream, at Villers, and trusting to luck to befriend him, he shaped his course for that village, striking across the meadows and tilled fields of the right bank. All went well enough at first; they had only to dodge a cavalry patrol which forced them to hide in the shadow of a wall and remain there half an hour. Then the rain began to come down in earnest and his progress became more laborious, compelled as he was to tramp through the sodden fields beside the horse, which fortunately showed itself to be a fine specimen of the equine race, and perfectly gentle. On reaching Villers he found that his trust in the blind goddess, Fortune, had not been misplaced; the ferryman, who, at that late hour, had just returned from setting a Bavarian officer across the river, took them at once and landed them on the other shore without delay or accident.
And it was not until they reached the village, where they narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of the pickets who were stationed along the entire length of the Remilly road, that their dangers and hardships really commenced; again they were obliged to take to the fields, feeling their way along blind paths and cart-tracks that could scarcely be discerned in the darkness. The most trivial obstacle sufficed to drive them a long way out of their course. They squeezed through hedges, scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches, forced a passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling rain, had sunk down crosswise on his saddle in a condition of semi-consciousness, holding on with both hands by the horse's mane, while Maurice, who had slipped the bridle over his right arm, had to steady him by the legs to keep him from tumbling to the ground. For more than a league, for two long, weary hours that seemed like an eternity, did they toil onward in this fatiguing way; floundering, stumbling, slipping in such a manner that it seemed at every moment as if men and beast must land together in a heap at the bottom of some descent. The spectacle they presented was one of utter, abject misery, besplashed with mud, the horse trembling in every limb, the man upon his back a helpless mass, as if at his last gasp, the other, wild-eyed and pale as death, keeping his feet only by an effort of fraternal love. Day was breaking; it was not far from five o'clock when at last they came to Remilly.
In the courtyard of his little farmhouse, which was situated at the extremity of the pass of Harancourt, overlooking the village, Father Fouchard was stowing away in his carriole the carcasses of two sheep that he had slaughtered the day before. The sight of his nephew, coming to him at that hour and in that sorry plight, caused him such perturbation of spirit that, after the first explanatory words, he roughly cried:
"You want me to take you in, you and your friend? and then settle matters with the Prussians afterward, I suppose. I'm much obliged to you, but no! I might as well die right straight off and have done with it."
He did not go so far, however, as to prohibit Maurice and Prosper from taking Jean from the horse and laying him on the great table in the kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster from her bed and slipped it beneath the head of the wounded man, who was still unconscious. But it irritated the old fellow to see the man lying on his table; he grumbled and fretted, saying that the kitchen was no place for him; why did they not take him away to the hospital at once? since there fortunately was a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the old schoolhouse; and there was a big room in it, with everything nice and comfortable.
"To the hospital!" Maurice hotly replied, "and have the Prussians pack him off to Germany as soon as he is well, for you know they treat all the wounded as prisoners of war. Do you take me for a fool, uncle? I did not bring him here to give him up."
Things were beginning to look dubious, the uncle was threatening to pitch them out upon the road, when someone mentioned Henriette's name.
"What about Henriette?" inquired the young man.
And he learned that his sister had been an inmate of the house at Remilly for the last two days; her affliction had weighed so heavily on her that life at Sedan, where her existence had hitherto been a happy one, was become a burden greater than she could bear. Chancing to meet with Doctor Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was acquainted, her conversation with him had been the means of bringing her to take up her abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she had a little bedroom, in order to devote herself entirely to the care of the sufferers in the neighboring hospital. That alone, she said, would serve to quiet her bitter memories. She paid her board and was the means of introducing many small comforts into the life of the farmhouse, which caused Father Fouchard to regard her with an eye of favor. The weather was always fine with him, provided he was making money.
"Ah! so my sister is here," said Maurice. "That must have been what M. Delaherche wished to tell me, with his gestures that I could not understand. Very well; if she is here, that settles it; we shall remain."
Notwithstanding his fatigue he started off at once in quest of her at the ambulance, where she had been on duty during the preceding night, while the uncle cursed his luck that kept him from being off with the carriole to sell his mutton among the neighboring villages, so long as the confounded business that he had got mixed up in remained unfinished.
When Maurice returned with Henriette they caught the old man making a critical examination of the horse, that Prosper had led away to the stable. The animal seemed to please him; he was knocked up, but showed signs of strength and endurance. The young man laughed and told his uncle he might have him as a gift if he fancied him, while Henriette, taking her relative aside, assured him Jean should be no expense to him; that she would take charge of him and nurse him, and he might have the little room behind the cow-stables, where no Prussian would ever think to look for him. And Father Fouchard, still wearing a very sulky face and but half convinced that there was anything to be made out of the affair, finally closed the discussion by jumping into his carriole and driving off, leaving her at liberty to act as she pleased.
It took Henriette but a few minutes, with the assistance of Silvine and Prosper, to put the room in order; then she had Jean brought in and they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he giving no sign of life during the operation save to mutter some unintelligible words. He opened his eyes and looked about him, but seemed not to be conscious of anyone's presence in the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to be aware how utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a glass of wine and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from the yesterday's dinner, when Doctor Dalichamp came in, as was his daily custom previous to visiting the hospital, and the young man, in his anxiety for his friend, mustered up his strength to follow him, together with his sister, to the bedside of the patient.