As Maurice had foreseen, the thousands of horses that shared the captivity of the army, and for which it was impossible to provide forage, constituted a peril that grew greater day by day.  At first they had nibbled the vegetation and gnawed the bark off trees, then had attacked the fences and whatever wooden structures they came across, and now they seemed ready to devour one another.  It was a frequent occurrence to see one of them throw himself upon another and tear out great tufts from his mane or tail, which he would grind between his teeth, slavering meanwhile at the mouth profusely.  But it was at night that they became most terrible, as if they were visited by visions of terror in the darkness.  They collected in droves, and, attracted by the straw, made furious rushes upon what few tents there were, overturning and demolishing them.  It was to no purpose that the men built great fires to keep them away; the device only served to madden them the more.  Their shrill cries were so full of anguish, so dreadful to the ear, that they might have been mistaken for the howls of wild beasts.  Were they driven away, they returned, more numerous and fiercer than before.  Scarce a moment passed but out in the darkness could be heard the shriek of anguish of some unfortunate soldier whom the crazed beasts had crushed in their wild stampede.

The sun was still above the horizon when Jean and Maurice, on their way back to the camp, were astonished by meeting with the four men of the squad, lurking in a ditch, apparently for no good purpose.  Loubet hailed them at once, and Chouteau constituted himself spokesman: 

“We are considering ways and means for dining this evening.  We shall die if we go on this way; it is thirty-six hours since we have had anything to put in our stomach—­so, as there are horses plenty, and horse-meat isn’t such bad eating—­”

“You’ll join us, won’t you, corporal?” said Loubet, interrupting, “for, with such a big, strong animal to handle, the more of us there are the better it will be.  See, there is one, off yonder, that we’ve been keeping an eye on for the last hour; that big bay that is in such a bad way.  He’ll be all the easier to finish.”

And he pointed to a horse that was dying of starvation, on the edge of what had once been a field of beets.  He had fallen on his flank, and every now and then would raise his head and look about him pleadingly, with a deep inhalation that sounded like a sigh.

“Ah, how long we have to wait!” grumbled Lapoulle, who was suffering torment from his fierce appetite.  “I’ll go and kill him—­shall I?”

But Loubet stopped him.  Much obliged! and have the Prussians down on them, who had given notice that death would be the penalty for killing a horse, fearing that the carcass would breed a pestilence.  They must wait until it was dark.  And that was the reason why the four men were lurking in the ditch, waiting, with glistening, hungry eyes fixed on the dying brute.