“Look here,” he said to Jean, “I must eat—­if I am to be killed for it the next minute, I must eat.”

He opened his knapsack and, taking out the bread with shaking hands, set his teeth in it voraciously.  The bullets were whistling above their heads, two shells exploded only a few yards away, but all was as naught to him in comparison with his craving hunger.

“Will you have some, Jean?”

The corporal was watching him with hungry eyes and a stupid expression on his face; his stomach was also twinging him.

“Yes, I don’t care if I do; this suffering is more than I can stand.”

They divided the loaf between them and each devoured his portion gluttonously, unmindful of what was going on about them so long as a crumb remained.  And it was at that time that they saw their colonel for the last time, sitting his big horse, with his blood-stained boot.  The regiment was surrounded on every side; already some of the companies had left the field.  Then, unable longer to restrain their flight, with tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above his head: 

“My children,” cried M. de Vineuil, “I commend you to the protection of God, who thus far has spared us all!”

He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugitives, and vanished from their sight.

Then, they knew not how, Maurice and Jean found themselves once more behind the hedge, with the remnant of their company.  Some forty men at the outside were all that remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their commander, and the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern who carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to save it.  They made their way along the hedge, as far as it extended, to a cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas made them halt and reopen fire.  The men, dispersed in skirmishing order and sufficiently protected, could hold their ground, the more that an important calvary movement was in preparation on their right and regiments of infantry were being brought up to support it.

It was at that moment that Maurice comprehended the full scope of that mighty, irresistible turning movement that was now drawing near completion.  That morning he had watched the Prussians debouching by the Saint-Albert pass and had seen their advanced guard pushed forward, first to Saint-Menges, then to Fleigneux, and now, behind the wood of la Garenne, he could hear the thunder of the artillery of the Guard, could behold other German uniforms arriving on the scene over the hills of Givonne.  Yet a few moments, it might be, and the circle would be complete; the Guard would join hands with the Vth corps, surrounding the French army with a living wall, girdling them about with a belt of flaming artillery.  It was with the resolve to make one supreme, desperate effort, to try to hew a passage through that advancing wall, that General Margueritte’s division of the reserve cavalry was massing behind a protecting crest preparatory to charging.  They were about to charge into the jaws of death, with no possibility of achieving any useful result, solely for the glory of France and the French army.  And Maurice, whose thoughts turned to Prosper, was a witness of the terrible spectacle.