Rapidly climbing the stairs to his terrace, Delaherche endeavored to form some idea for himself of how matters stood.  The city had suffered less injury than was generally supposed; there was one great conflagration, however, over in the Faubourg de la Cassine, from which dense volumes of smoke were rising.  Fort Palatinat had discontinued its fire, doubtless because the ammunition was all expended; the guns mounted on the Porte de Paris alone continued to make themselves heard at infrequent intervals.  But something that he beheld presently had greater interest for his eyes than all beside; they had run up the white flag on the citadel again, but it must be that it was invisible from the battlefield, for there was no perceptible slackening of the fire.  The Balan road was concealed from his vision by the neighboring roofs; he was unable to make out what the troops were doing in that direction.  Applying his eye to the telescope, however, which remained as he had left it, directed on la Marfee, he again beheld the cluster of officers that he had seen in that same place about midday.  The master of them all, that miniature toy-soldier in lead, half finger high, in whom he had thought to recognize the King of Prussia, was there still, erect in his plain, dark uniform before the other officers, who, in their showy trappings, were for the most part reclining carelessly on the grass.  Among them were officers from foreign lands, aides-de-camp, generals, high officials, princes; all of them with field glasses in their hands, with which, since early morning, they had been watching every phase of the death-struggle of the army of Chalons, as if they were at the play.  And the direful drama was drawing to its end.

From among the trees that clothed the summit of la Marfee King William had just witnessed the junction of his armies.  It was an accomplished fact; the third army, under the leadership of his son, the Crown Prince, advancing by the way of Saint-Menges and Fleigneux, had secured possession of the plateau of Illy, while the fourth, commanded by the Crown Prince of Saxony, turning the wood of la Garenne and, coming up through Givonne and Daigny, had also reached its appointed rendezvous.  There, too, the XIth and Vth corps had joined hands with the XIIth corps and the Guards.  The gallant but ineffectual charge of Margueritte’s division in its supreme effort to break through the hostile lines at the very moment when the circle was being rounded out had elicited from the king the exclamation:  “Ah, the brave fellows!” Now the great movement, inexorable as fate, the details of which had been arranged with such mathematical precision, was complete, the jaws of the vise had closed, and stretching on his either hand far in the distance, a mighty wall of adamant surrounding the army of the French, were the countless men and guns that called him master.  At the north the contracting lines maintained a constantly increasing pressure on the vanquished, forcing them back upon Sedan under the