In rapid succession, one after the other, two more shells fell; Lieutenant Rochas had his kepi carried away by a fragment.  The men huddled closer together and began to crowd forward, the movement gathering strength as it ran from rear to front.  Inarticulate cries were heard, Lapoulle shouted furiously to go ahead.  A minute longer and there would have been a horrible catastrophe, and many men must have been crushed to death in the mad struggle to escape from the funnel-like gorge.

The colonel—­he was very pale—­turned and spoke to the soldiers: 

“My children, my children, be a little patient.  I have sent to see what is the matter—­it will only be a moment—­”

But they did not advance, and the seconds seemed like centuries.  Jean, quite cool and collected, resumed his hold of Maurice’s hand, and whispered to him that, in case their comrades began to shove, they two could leave the road, climb the hill on the left, and make their way to the stream.  He looked about to see where the francs-tireurs were, thinking he might gain some information from them regarding the roads, but was told they had vanished while the column was passing through Raucourt.  Just then the march was resumed, and almost immediately a bend in the road took them out of range of the German batteries.  Later in the day it was ascertained that it was four cuirassier regiments of Bonnemain’s division who, in the disorder of that ill-starred retreat, had thus blocked the road of the 7th corps and delayed the march.

It was nearly dark when the 106th passed through Angecourt.  The wooded hills continued on the right, but to the left the country was more level, and a valley was visible in the distance, veiled in bluish mists.  At last, just as the shades of night were descending, they stood on the heights of Remilly and beheld a ribbon of pale silver unrolling its length upon a broad expanse of verdant plain.  It was the Meuse, that Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as if victory awaited them.

Pointing to some lights in the distance that were beginning to twinkle cheerily among the trees, down in that fertile valley that lay there so peaceful in the mellow twilight, Maurice said to Jean, with the glad content of a man revisiting a country that he knows and loves: 

“Look! over that way—­that is Sedan!”

VII.

Remilly is built on a hill that rises from the left bank of the Meuse, presenting the appearance of an amphitheater; the one village street that meanders circuitously down the sharp descent was thronged with men, horses, and vehicles in dire confusion.  Half-way up the hill, in front of the church, some drivers had managed to interlock the wheels of their guns, and all the oaths and blows of the artillerymen were unavailing to get them forward.  Further down, near the woolen mill, where the Emmane tumbles noisily over the dam, the road was choked with a long line of stranded baggage wagons, while close at hand, at the inn of the Maltese Cross, a constantly increasing crowd of angry soldiers pushed and struggled, and could not obtain so much as a glass of wine.