And Maurice, revolving on his heel, made with his hand a sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon.  From their position on the plateau the whole wide field of battle lay stretched before them to the south and west:  Sedan, almost at their feet, whose citadel they could see overtopping the roofs, then Balan and Bazeilles, dimly seen through the dun smoke-clouds that hung heavily in the motionless air, and further in the distance the hills of the left bank, Liry, la Marfee, la Croix-Piau.  It was away toward the west, however, in the direction of Donchery, that the prospect was most extensive.  There the Meuse curved horseshoe-wise, encircling the peninsula of Iges with a ribbon of pale silver, and at the northern extremity of the loop was distinctly visible the narrow road of the Saint-Albert pass, winding between the river bank and a beetling, overhanging hill that was crowned with the little wood of Seugnon, an offshoot of the forest of la Falizette.  At the summit of the hill, at the carrefour of la Maison-Rouge, the road from Donchery to Vrigne-aux-Bois debouched into the Mezieres pike.

“See, that is the road by which we might retreat on Mezieres.”

Even as he spoke the first gun was fired from Saint-Menges.  The fog still hung over the bottom-lands in shreds and patches, and through it they dimly descried a shadowy body of men moving through the Saint-Albert defile.

“Ah, they are there,” continued Maurice, instinctively lowering his voice.  “Too late, too late; they have intercepted us!”

It was not eight o’clock.  The guns, which were thundering more fiercely than ever in the direction of Bazeilles, now also began to make themselves heard at the eastward, in the valley of la Givonne, which was hid from view; it was the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, debouching from the Chevalier wood and attacking the 1st corps, in front of Daigny village; and now that the XIth Prussian corps, moving on Floing, had opened fire on General Douay’s troops, the investment was complete at every point of the great periphery of several leagues’ extent, and the action was general all along the line.

Maurice suddenly perceived the enormity of their blunder in not retreating on Mezieres during the night; but as yet the consequences were not clear to him; he could not foresee all the disaster that was to result from that fatal error of judgment.  Moved by some indefinable instinct of danger, he looked with apprehension on the adjacent heights that commanded the plateau de l’Algerie.  If time had not been allowed them to make good their retreat, why had they not backed up against the frontier and occupied those heights of Illy and Saint-Menges, whence, if they could not maintain their position, they would at least have been free to cross over into Belgium?  There were two points that appeared to him especially threatening, the mamelon of Hattoy, to the north of Floing on the left, and the Calvary of Illy, a stone cross