By this time night had fallen, a pleasant night with a clear sky thick-set with stars, and Maurice and Jean, who had regained the shelter of their little wood, presently perceived Lapoulle wandering up and down the river bank.  The two others had vanished, had doubtless returned to the encampment by the canal, their mind troubled by reason of the corpse they left behind them.  He, on the other hand, seemed to dread going to rejoin the comrades.  When he was more himself and his brutish, sluggish intellect showed him the full extent of his crime, he had evidently experienced a twinge of anguish that made motion a necessity, and not daring to return to the interior of the peninsula, where he would have to face the body of his victim, had sought the bank of the stream, where he was now tramping to and fro with uneven, faltering steps.  What was going on within the recesses of that darkened mind that guided the actions of that creature, so degraded as to be scarce higher than the animal?  Was it the awakening of remorse? or only the fear lest his crime might be discovered?  He could not remain there; he paced his beat as a wild beast shambles up and down its cage, with a sudden and ever-increasing longing to fly, a longing that ached and pained like a physical hurt, from which he felt he should die, could he do nothing to satisfy it.  Quick, quick, he must fly, must fly at once, from that prison where he had slain a fellow-being.  And yet, the coward in him, it may be, gaining the supremacy, he threw himself on the ground, and for a long time lay crouched among the herbage.

And Maurice said to Jean in his horror and disgust: 

“See here, I cannot remain longer in this place; I tell you plainly I should go mad.  I am surprised that the physical part of me holds out as it does; my bodily health is not so bad, but the mind is going; yes! it is going, I am certain of it.  If you leave me another day in this hell I am lost.  I beg you, let us go away, let us start at once!”

And he went on to propound the wildest schemes for getting away.  They would swim the Meuse, would cast themselves on the sentries and strangle them with a cord he had in his pocket, or would beat out their brains with rocks, or would buy them over with the money they had left and don their uniform to pass through the Prussian lines.

“My dear boy, be silent!” Jean sadly answered; “it frightens me to hear you talk so wildly.  Is there any reason in what you say, are any of your plans feasible?  Wait; to-morrow we’ll see about it.  Be silent!”

He, although his heart, no less than his friend’s, was wrung by the horrors that surrounded them on every side, had preserved his mental balance amid the debilitating effects of famine, among the grisly visions of that existence than which none could approach more nearly the depth of human misery.  And as his companion’s frenzy continued to increase and he talked of casting himself into the Meuse, he was obliged to restrain him, even to the point of using violence, scolding and supplicating, tears standing in his eyes.  Then suddenly he said: