sat upright in bed.  The firing continued.  Where was she?  The place seemed strange to her; she could not distinguish the objects in her chamber, which appeared to be filled with dense clouds of smoke.  Then she remembered:  the fog must have rolled in from the near-by river and entered the room through the window.  Without, the distant firing was growing fiercer.  She leaped from her bed and ran to the casement to listen.

Four o’clock was striking from a steeple in Sedan, and day was breaking, tingeing the purplish mists with a sickly, sinister light.  It was impossible to discern objects; even the college buildings, distant but a few yards, were undistinguishable.  Where could the firing be, mon Dieu!  Her first thought was for her brother Maurice; for the reports were so indistinct that they seemed to her to come from the north, above the city; then, listening more attentively, her doubt became certainty; the cannonading was there, before her, and she trembled for her husband.  It was surely at Bazeilles.  For a little time, however, she suffered herself to be cheered by a ray of hope, for there were moments when the reports seemed to come from the right.  Perhaps the fighting was at Donchery, where she knew that the French had not succeeded in blowing up the bridge.  Then she lapsed into a condition of most horrible uncertainty; it seemed to be now at Donchery, now at Bazeilles; which, it was impossible to decide, there was such a ringing, buzzing sensation in her head.  At last the feeling of suspense became so acute that she felt she could not endure it longer; she must know; every nerve in her body was quivering with the ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders and left the house in quest of news.

When she had descended and was in the street Henriette hesitated a brief moment, for the little light that was in the east had not yet crept downward along the weather-blackened house-fronts to the roadway, and in the old city, shrouded in opaque fog, the darkness still reigned impenetrable.  In the tap-room of a low pot-house in the Rue au Beurre, dimly lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken Turcos and a woman.  It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua that she encountered any signs of life:  soldiers slinking furtively along the sidewalk and hugging the walls, deserters probably, on the lookout for a place in which to hide; a stalwart trooper with despatches, searching for his captain and knocking thunderously at every door; a group of fat burghers, trembling with fear lest they had tarried there too long, and preparing to crowd themselves into one small carriole if so be they might yet reach Bouillon, in Belgium, whither half the population of Sedan had emigrated within the last two days.  She instinctively turned her steps toward the Sous-Prefecture, where she might depend on receiving information, and her desire to avoid meeting acquaintances determined her to take a short cut through lanes and by-ways.