Slowly, cautiously, Maurice picked himself up.  He felt his body, arms, and legs; nothing, not a scratch.  Why should he not look out for himself and fly, alone?  There was time left still; a few bounds would take him to the wall and he would be saved.  His horrible sensation of fear returned and made him frantic.  He was collecting his energies to break away and run, when a feeling stronger than death intervened and vanquished the base impulse.  What, abandon Jean! he could not do it.  It would be like mutilating his own being; the brotherly affection that had bourgeoned and grown between him and that rustic had struck its roots down into his life, too deep to be slain like that.  The feeling went back to the earliest days, was perhaps as old as the world itself; it was as if there were but they two upon earth, of whom one could not forsake the other without forsaking himself, and being doomed thenceforth to an eternity of solitude.  Molded of the same clay, quickened by the same spirit, duty imperiously commanded to save himself in saving his brother.

Had it not been for the crust of bread he ate an hour before under the Prussian shells Maurice could never have done what he did; how he did it he could never in subsequent days remember.  He must have hoisted Jean upon his shoulders and crawled through the brush and brambles, falling a dozen times only to pick himself up and go on again, stumbling at every rut, at every pebble.  His indomitable will sustained him, his dogged resolution would have enabled him to bear a mountain on his back.  Behind the low wall he found Rochas and the few men that were left of the squad, firing away as stoutly as ever and defending the flag, which the subaltern held beneath his arm.  It had not occurred to anyone to designate lines of retreat for the several army corps in case the day should go against them; owing to this want of foresight every general was at liberty to act as seemed to him best, and at this stage of the conflict they all found themselves being crowded back upon Sedan under the steady, unrelaxing pressure of the German armies.  The second division of the 7th corps fell back in comparatively good order, while the remnants of the other divisions, mingled with the debris of the 1st corps, were already streaming into the city in terrible disorder, a roaring torrent of rage and fright that bore all, men and beasts, before it.

But to Maurice, at that moment, was granted the satisfaction of seeing Jean unclose his eyes, and as he was running to a stream that flowed near by, for water with which to bathe his friend’s face, he was surprised, looking down on his right into a sheltered valley that lay between rugged slopes, to behold the same peasant whom he had seen that morning, still leisurely driving the plow through the furrow with the assistance of his big white horse.  Why should he lose a day?  Men might fight, but none the less the corn would keep on growing; and folks must live.