“Good-night!” Bouroche said in conclusion.  “I am going to try to sleep a couple of hours; I need it badly.”

When left by himself Delaherche could hardly breathe.  What, could it be true that they were going to fight again, were going to burn and raze Sedan!  It was certainly to be, soon as the morrow’s sun should be high enough upon the hills to light the horror of the sacrifice.  And once again he almost unconsciously climbed the steep ladder that led to the roofs and found himself standing among the chimneys, at the edge of the narrow terrace that overlooked the city; but at that hour of the night the darkness was intense and he could distinguish absolutely nothing amid the swirling waves of the Cimmerian sea that lay beneath him.  Then the buildings of the factory below were the first objects which, one by one, disentangled themselves from the shadows and stood out before his vision in indistinct masses, which he had no difficulty in recognizing:  the engine-house, the shops, the drying rooms, the storehouses, and when he reflected that within twenty-four hours there would remain of that imposing block of buildings, his fortune and his pride, naught save charred timbers and crumbling walls, he overflowed with pity for himself.  He raised his glance thence once more to the horizon, and sent it traveling in a circuit around that profound, mysterious veil of blackness behind which lay slumbering the menace of the morrow.  To the south, in the direction of Bazeilles, a few quivering little flames that rose fitfully on the air told where had been the site of the unhappy village, while toward the north the farmhouse in the wood of la Garenne, that had been fired late in the afternoon, was burning still, and the trees about were dyed of a deep red with the ruddy blaze.  Beyond the intermittent flashing of those two baleful fires no light to be seen; the brooding silence unbroken by any sound save those half-heard mutterings that pass through the air like harbingers of evil; about them, everywhere, the unfathomable abyss, dead and lifeless.  Off there in the distance, very far away, perhaps, perhaps upon the ramparts, was a sound of someone weeping.  It was all in vain that he strained his eyes to pierce the veil, to see something of Liry, la Marfee, the batteries of Frenois, and Wadelincourt, that encircling belt of bronze monsters of which he could instinctively feel the presence there, with their outstretched necks and yawning, ravenous muzzles.  And as he recalled his glance and let it fall upon the city that lay around and beneath him, he heard its frightened breathing.  It was not alone the unquiet slumbers of the soldiers who had fallen in the streets, the blending of inarticulate sounds produced by that gathering of guns, men, and horses; what he fancied he could distinguish was the insomnia, the alarmed watchfulness of his bourgeois neighbors, who, no more than he, could sleep, quivering with feverish terrors, awaiting anxiously the coming