they had just emerged, vanishing as if dissolved by the fine rain.  The truth was, probably, that they were in the way, and their leaders, not knowing what use to put them to, had packed them off the field, as had often been the case since the opening of the campaign.  They had scarcely ever been employed on scouting or reconnoitering duty, and as soon as there was prospect of a fight were trotted about for shelter from valley to valley, useless objects, but too costly to be endangered.

Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them.  “That fellow, yonder, looks like him,” he said, under his breath.  “I wonder if it is he?”

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Jean.

“Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at Osches, you remember.”

Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a general officer and his staff dashing down the descending road, and Maurice recognized the general of their brigade, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, shouting and gesticulating wildly.  He had torn himself reluctantly from his comfortable quarters at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was evident from the horrible temper he was in that the condition of affairs that morning was not satisfactory to him.  In a tone of voice so loud that everyone could hear he roared: 

“In the devil’s name, what stream is that off yonder, the Meuse or the Moselle?”

The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest.  As at Bazeilles the effect was theatrical; the curtain rolled slowly upward to the flies, disclosing the setting of the stage.  From a sky of transparent blue the sun poured down a flood of bright, golden light, and Maurice was no longer at a loss to recognize their position.

“Ah!” he said to Jean, “we are on the plateau de l’Algerie.  That village that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more distant still, a little to the right, is Fleigneux.  Then those scrubby trees on the horizon, away in the background, are the forest of the Ardennes, and there lies the frontier—­”

He went on to explain their position, naming each locality and pointing to it with outstretched hand.  The plateau de l’Algerie was a belt of reddish ground, something less than two miles in length, sloping gently downward from the wood of la Garenne toward the Meuse, from which it was separated by the meadows.  On it the line of the 7th corps had been established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were not sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly maintain his touch with the 1st corps, which was posted at right angles with his line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny.

“Oh, isn’t it grand, isn’t it magnificent!”