Jean, as luck would have it, had insisted on carrying both the two loaves of bread that Delaherche had given them when they left his house.  He was somewhat surprised at the number of horses he met with, roaming about the uncultivated lands, that fell off in an easy descent from the central elevation to the Meuse, in the direction of Donchery.  Why should they have brought all those animals with them? how were they to be fed?  And now it was night in earnest, and quite dark, when he came to a small piece of woods on the water’s brink, in which he was surprised to find the cent-gardes of the Emperor’s escort, providing for their creature comforts and drying themselves before roaring fires.  These gentlemen, who had a separate encampment to themselves, had comfortable tents; their kettles were boiling merrily, there was a milch cow tied to a tree.  It did not take Maurice long to see that he was not regarded with favor in that quarter, poor devil of an infantryman that he was, with his ragged, mud-stained uniform.  They graciously accorded him permission to roast his potatoes in the ashes of their fires, however, and he withdrew to the shelter of a tree, some hundred yards away, to eat them.  It was no longer raining; the sky was clear, the stars were shining brilliantly in the dark blue vault.  He saw that he should have to spend the night in the open air and defer his researches until the morrow.  He was so utterly used up that he could go no further; the trees would afford him some protection in case it came on to rain again.

The strangeness of his situation, however, and the thought of his vast prison house, open to the winds of heaven, would not let him sleep.  It had been an extremely clever move on the part of the Prussians to select that place of confinement for the eighty thousand men who constituted the remnant of the army of Chalons.  The peninsula was approximately three miles long by one wide, affording abundant space for the broken fragments of the vanquished host, and Maurice could not fail to observe that it was surrounded on every side by water, the bend of the Meuse encircling it on the north, east and west, while on the south, at the base, connecting the two arms of the loop at the point where they drew together most closely, was the canal.  Here alone was an outlet, the bridge, that was defended by two guns; wherefore it may be seen that the guarding of the camp was a comparatively easy task, notwithstanding its great extent.  He had already taken note of the chain of sentries on the farther bank, a soldier being stationed by the waterside at every fifty paces, with orders to fire on any man who should attempt to escape by swimming.  In the rear the different posts were connected by patrols of uhlans, while further in the distance, scattered over the broad fields, were the dark lines of the Prussian regiments; a threefold living, moving wall, immuring the captive army.