And Lapoulle rolled his eyes and stared, placing his finger before his nose, while Pache fingered the scapular he wore and wished it was large enough to shield his entire person.

Rochas, who had remained on his feet, spoke up and said jocosely: 

“Children, there is no objection to your ducking to the shells when you see them coming.  As for the bullets, it is useless; they are too numerous!”

At that very instant a soldier in the front rank was struck on the head by a fragment of an exploding shell.  There was no outcry; simply a spurt of blood and brain, and all was over.

“Poor devil!” tranquilly said Sergeant Sapin, who was quite cool and exceedingly pale.  “Next!”

But the uproar had by this time become so deafening that the men could no longer hear one another’s voice; Maurice’s nerves, in particular, suffered from the infernal charivari.  The neighboring battery was banging away as fast as the gunners could load the pieces; the continuous roar seemed to shake the ground, and the mitrailleuses were even more intolerable with their rasping, grating, grunting noise.  Were they to remain forever reclining there among the cabbages?  There was nothing to be seen, nothing to be learned; no one had any idea how the battle was going.  And was it a battle, after all—­a genuine affair?  All that Maurice could make out, projecting his eyes along the level surface of the fields, was the rounded, wood-clad summit of Hattoy in the remote distance, and still unoccupied.  Neither was there a Prussian to be seen anywhere on the horizon; the only evidence of life were the faint, blue smoke-wreaths that rose and floated an instant in the sunlight.  Chancing to turn his head, he was greatly surprised to behold at the bottom of a deep, sheltered valley, surrounded by precipitous heights, a peasant calmly tilling his little field, driving the plow through the furrow with the assistance of a big white horse.  Why should he lose a day?  The corn would keep growing, let them fight as they would, and folks must live.

Unable longer to control his impatience, the young man jumped to his feet.  He had a fleeting vision of the batteries of Saint-Menges, crowned with tawny vapors and spewing shot and shell upon them; he had also time to see, what he had seen before and had not forgotten, the road from Saint-Albert’s pass black with minute moving objects—­the swarming hordes of the invader.  Then Jean seized him by the legs and pulled him violently to his place again.

“Are you crazy?  Do you want to leave your bones here?”

And Rochas chimed in: 

“Lie down, will you!  What am I to do with such d——­d rascals, who get themselves killed without orders!”

“But you don’t lie down, lieutenant,” said Maurice.

“That’s a different thing.  I have to know what is going on.”

Captain Beaudoin, too, kept his legs like a man, but never opened his lips to say an encouraging word to his men, having nothing in common with them.  He appeared nervous and unable to remain long in one place, striding up and down the field, impatiently awaiting orders.