bright from fever, had taken possession of the place and were living like beasts in the filthy chambers, not daring to leave their quarters for a moment lest someone else might come along and occupy them.  A little further on they passed the cavalry and artillery, encamped on the hillsides, once so conspicuous by reason of the neatness and jauntiness of their appearance, now run to seed like all the rest, their organization gone, demoralized by that terrible, torturing hunger that drove the horses wild and sent the men straggling through the fields in plundering bands.  Below them, to the right, they beheld an apparently interminable line of artillerymen and chasseurs d’Afrique defiling slowly before the mill; the miller was selling them flour, measuring out two handfuls into their handkerchiefs for a franc.  The prospect of the long wait that lay before them, should they take their place at the end of the line, determined them to pass on, in the hope that some better opportunity would present itself at the village of Iges; but great was their consternation when they reached it to find the little place as bare and empty as an Algerian village through which has passed a swarm of locusts; not a crumb, not a fragment of anything eatable, neither bread, nor meat, nor vegetables, the wretched inhabitants utterly destitute.  General Lebrun was said to be there, closeted with the mayor.  He had been endeavoring, ineffectually, to arrange for an issue of bonds, redeemable at the close of the war, in order to facilitate the victualing of the troops.  Money had ceased to have any value when there was nothing that it could purchase.  The day before two francs had been paid for a biscuit, seven francs for a bottle of wine, a small glass of brandy was twenty sous, a pipeful of tobacco ten sous.  And now officers, sword in hand, had to stand guard before the general’s house and the neighboring hovels, for bands of marauders were constantly passing, breaking down doors and stealing even the oil from the lamps and drinking it.

Three zouaves invited Maurice and Jean to join them.  Five would do the work more effectually than three.

“Come along.  There are horses dying in plenty, and if we can but get some dry wood—­”

Then they fell to work on the miserable cabin of a poor peasant, smashing the closet doors, tearing the thatch from the roof.  Some officers, who came up on a run, threatened them with their revolvers and put them to flight.

Jean, who saw that the few villagers who had remained at Iges were no better off than the soldiers, perceived he had made a mistake in passing the mill without buying some flour.

“There may be some left; we had best go back.”