“It is cold—­ Oh! it is so cold.”

And so he passed from life, peacefully, without a struggle; and on his wasted, tranquil face rested an expression of unspeakable melancholy.

Delaherche saw to it that the remains, instead of being borne away and placed among the common dead, were deposited in one of the outbuildings of the factory.  He endeavored to prevail on Gilberte, who was tearful and disconsolate, to retire to her apartment, but she declared that to be alone now would be more than her nerves could stand, and begged to be allowed to remain with her mother-in-law in the ambulance, where the noise and movement would be a distraction to her.  She was seen presently running to carry a drink of water to a chasseur d’Afrique whom his fever had made delirious, and she assisted a hospital steward to dress the hand of a little recruit, a lad of twenty, who had had his thumb shot away and come in on foot from the battlefield; and as he was jolly and amusing, treating his wound with all the levity and nonchalance of the Parisian rollicker, she was soon laughing and joking as merrily as he.

While the captain lay dying the cannonade seemed, if that were possible, to have increased in violence; another shell had landed in the garden, shattering one of the old elms.  Terror-stricken men came running in to say that all Sedan was in danger of destruction; a great fire had broken out in the Faubourg de la Cassine.  If the bombardment should continue with such fury for any length of time there would be nothing left of the city.

“It can’t be; I am going to see about it!” Delaherche exclaimed, violently excited.

“Where are you going, pray?” asked Bouroche.

“Why, to the Sous-Prefecture, to see what the Emperor means by fooling us in this way, with his talk of hoisting the white flag.”

For some few seconds the major stood as if petrified at the idea of defeat and capitulation, which presented itself to him then for the first time in the midst of his impotent efforts to save the lives of the poor maimed creatures they were bringing in to him from the field.  Rage and grief were in his voice as he shouted: 

“Go to the devil, if you will!  All you can do won’t keep us from being soundly whipped!”

On leaving the factory Delaherche found it no easy task to squeeze his way through the throng; at every instant the crowd of straggling soldiers that filled the streets received fresh accessions.  He questioned several of the officers whom he encountered; not one of them had seen the white flag on the citadel.  Finally he met a colonel, who declared that he had caught a momentary glimpse of it:  that it had been run up and then immediately hauled down.  That explained matters; either the Germans had not seen it, or seeing it appear and disappear so quickly, had inferred the distressed condition of the French and redoubled their fire in consequence.  There was a story in circulation how a general officer, enraged beyond control at the sight of the flag, had wrested it from its bearer, broken the staff, and trampled it in the mud.  And still the Prussian batteries continued to play upon the city, shells were falling upon the roofs and in the streets, houses were in flames; a woman had just been killed at the corner of the Rue Pont de Meuse and the Place Turenne.