Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like Maurice’s, reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him that they might see Delaherche somewhere among the throng.  He gave his friend a nudge of the elbow.

“Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street presently, will you?”

They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, indeed, when they became aware of several pairs of eyes turned on the column from one of the tall windows of the factory, and as they drew nearer recognized Delaherche and his wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame Delaherche.  They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched with tremulous eagerness to receive them.  Maurice saw at once that his sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched the flying loaves, fearing there might none be left for them.  They both had raised their arms and were waving them frantically above their head, shouting meanwhile with all the force of their lungs: 

“Here we are!  This way, this way!”

The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst of their surprise.  Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly brightened, and they displayed by the warmth of their gestures the pleasure they experienced in the encounter.  There was one solitary loaf left, which Gilberte insisted on throwing with her own hands, and pitched it into Jean’s extended arms in such a charmingly awkward way that she gave a winsome laugh at her own expense.  Maurice, unable to stop on account of the pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted, in a tone of anxious inquiry: 

“And Henriette?  Henriette?”

Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was inaudible in the shuffling tramp of so many feet.  He seemed to understand that the young man had failed to catch his meaning, for he gesticulated like a semaphore; there was one gesture in particular that he repeated several times, extending his arm with a sweeping motion toward the south, apparently intending to convey the idea of some point in the remote distance:  Off there, away off there.  Already the head of the column was wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the facade of the factory was lost to sight, together with the kindly faces of the three Delaherches; the last the two friends saw of them was the fluttering of the white handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them a farewell.

“What did he say?” asked Jean.

Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear where there was nothing to be seen.  “I don’t know; I could not understand him; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear from her.”

And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the Prussians urging on the weary men with the brutality of conquerors; the column left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, long-drawn array, hastening their steps, like sheep at whose heels the dogs are snapping.