Maurice, whose courage had returned to him now that he was with the comrades once more, found nothing to annoy him except the Prussian bands, which played all the afternoon beyond the canal.  Toward evening there was vocal music, and the men sang in chorus.  They could be seen outside the chain of sentries, walking to and fro in little groups and singing solemn melodies in a loud, ringing voice in honor of the Sabbath.

“Confound those bands!” Maurice at last impatiently exclaimed.  “They will drive me wild!”

Jean, whose nerves were less susceptible, shrugged his shoulders.

“Dame! they have reason to feel good; and then perhaps they think it affords us pleasure.  It hasn’t been such a bad day; don’t let’s find fault.”

As night approached, however, the rain began to fall again.  Some of the men had taken possession of what few unoccupied houses there were on the peninsula, others were provided with tents that they erected, but by far the greater number, without shelter of any sort, destitute of blankets even, were compelled to pass the night in the open air, exposed to the pouring rain.

About one o’clock Maurice, who had been sleeping soundly as a result of his fatigue, awoke and found himself in the middle of a miniature lake.  The trenches, swollen by the heavy downpour, had overflowed and inundated the ground where he lay.  Chouteau’s and Loubet’s wrath vented itself in a volley of maledictions, while Pache shook Lapoulle, who, unmindful of his ducking, slept through it all as if he was never to wake again.  Then Jean, remembering the row of poplars on the bank of the canal, collected his little band and ran thither for shelter; and there they passed the remainder of that wretched night, crouching with their backs to the trees, their legs doubled under them, so as to expose as little of their persons as might be to the big drops.

The next day, and the day succeeding it, the weather was truly detestable, what with the continual showers, that came down so copiously and at such frequent intervals that the men’s clothing had not time to dry on their backs.  They were threatened with famine, too; there was not a biscuit left in camp, and the coffee and bacon were exhausted.  During those two days, Monday and Tuesday, they existed on potatoes that they dug in the adjacent fields, and even those vegetables had become so scarce toward the end of the second day that those soldiers who had money paid as high as five sous apiece for them.  It was true that the bugles sounded the call for “distribution”; the corporal had nearly run his legs off trying to be the first to reach a great shed near the Tour a Glaire, where it was reported that rations of bread were to be issued, but on the occasion of a first visit he had waited there three hours and gone away empty-handed, and on a second had become involved in a quarrel with a Bavarian.  It was well known that the French officers were themselves in deep distress