It was a splendid spectacle of heroism and endurance while it lasted; the numerous casualties did not check the ardor of the survivors, nearly five hundred yards were traversed with a courage and nerve that seemed almost like madness; but soon there were great gaps in the ranks, the bravest began to fall back.  What could they do against overwhelming numbers?  It was a mad attempt, anyway; the desperate effort of a commander who could not bring himself to acknowledge that he was defeated.  And it ended by General de Wimpffen finding himself and General Lebrun alone together on the Bazeilles road, which they had to make up their mind to abandon to the enemy, for good and all.  All that remained for them to do was to retreat and seek security under the walls of Sedan.

Upon losing sight of the general at the Minil gate Delaherche had hurried back to the factory at the best speed he was capable of, impelled by an irresistible longing to have another look from his observatory at what was going on in the distance.  Just as he reached his door, however, his progress was arrested a moment by encountering Colonel de Vineuil, who, with his blood-stained boot, was being brought in for treatment in a condition of semi-consciousness, upon a bed of straw that had been prepared for him on the floor of a market-gardener’s wagon.  The colonel had persisted in his efforts to collect the scattered fragments of his regiment until he dropped from his horse.  He was immediately carried upstairs and put to bed in a room on the first floor, and Bouroche, who was summoned at once, finding the injury not of a serious character, had only to apply a dressing to the wound, from which he first extracted some bits of the leather of the boot.  The worthy doctor was wrought up to a high pitch of excitement; he exclaimed, as he went downstairs, that he would rather cut off one of his own legs than continue working in that unsatisfactory, slovenly way, without a tithe of either the assistants or the appliances that he ought to have.  Below in the ambulance, indeed, they no longer knew where to bestow the cases that were brought them, and had been obliged to have recourse to the lawn, where they laid them on the grass.  There were already two long rows of them, exposed beneath the shrieking shells, filling the air with their dismal plaints while waiting for his ministrations.  The number of cases brought in since noon exceeded four hundred, and in response to Bouroche’s repeated appeals for assistance he had been sent one young doctor from the city.  Good as was his will, he was unequal to the task; he probed, sliced, sawed, sewed like a man frantic, and was reduced to despair to see his work continually accumulating before him.  Gilberte, satiated with sights of horror, unable longer to endure the sad spectacle of blood and tears, remained upstairs with her uncle, the colonel, leaving to Mme. Delaherche the care of moistening fevered lips and wiping the cold sweat from the brow of the dying.