“No, I cannot, I cannot bear to look on it!  The sight pierces my heart and drives me mad.  Take me away, oh! take me away, at once, at once!”

It was Sunday once more; the bells were pealing from the steeples of Sedan, while the music of a German military band floated on the air in the distance.  There were still no orders for their regiment to move, and Jean, alarmed to see Maurice’s deliriousness increasing, determined to attempt the execution of a plan that he had been maturing in his mind for the last twenty-four hours.  On the road before the tents of the Prussians another regiment, the 5th of the line, was drawn up in readiness for departure.  Great confusion prevailed in the column, and an officer, whose knowledge of the French language was imperfect, had been unable to complete the roster of the prisoners.  Then the two friends, having first torn from their uniform coat the collar and buttons in order that the number might not betray their identity, quietly took their place in the ranks and soon had the satisfaction of crossing the bridge and leaving the chain of sentries behind them.  The same idea must have presented itself to Loubet and Chouteau, for they caught sight of them somewhat further to the rear, peering anxiously about them with the guilty eyes of murderers.

Ah, what comfort there was for them in that first blissful moment!  Outside their prison the sunlight was brighter, the air more bracing; it was like a resurrection, a bright renewal of all their hopes.  Whatever evil fortune might have in store for them, they dreaded it not; they snapped their fingers at it in their delight at having seen the last of the horrors of Camp Misery.

III.

That morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time to the gay, ringing notes of the French bugles, and now they were on their way to Pont-a-Mousson, marching in the ranks of the convoy of prisoners, which was guarded front and rear by platoons of Prussian infantry, while a file of men with fixed bayonets flanked the column on either side.  Whenever they came to a German post they heard only the lugubrious, ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets.

Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left-hand road and would pass through Sedan; perhaps he would have an opportunity of seeing his sister Henriette.  All the pleasure, however, that he had experienced at his release from that foul cesspool where he had spent nine days of agony was dashed to the ground and destroyed during the three-mile march from the peninsula of Iges to the city.  It was but another form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners, shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock of sheep with the dog at their heels.  There is no spectacle in all the world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished troops being marched off into captivity under guard of their conquerors, without arms, their empty hands hanging idly at their sides; and these men, clad in