It was from some of those old newspapers that Henriette read to Jean the occurrences at Metz, the Titanic struggle that was three times renewed, separated on each occasion by a day’s interval.  The story was already five weeks old, but it was new to him, and he listened with a bleeding heart to the repetition of the miserable narrative of defeat to which he was not a stranger.  In the deathly stillness of the room the incidents of the woeful tale unfolded themselves as Henriette, with the sing-song enunciation of a schoolgirl, picked out her words and sentences.  When, after Froeschwiller and Spickeren, the 1st corps, routed and broken into fragments, had swept away with it the 5th, the other corps stationed along the frontier en echelon from Metz to Bitche, first wavering, then retreating in their consternation at those reverses, had ultimately concentrated before the intrenched camp on the right bank of the Moselle.  But what waste of precious time was there, when they should not have lost a moment in retreating on Paris, a movement that was presently to be attended with such difficulty!  The Emperor had been compelled to turn over the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, to whom everyone looked with confidence for a victory.  Then, on the 14th[*] came the affair of Borny, when the army was attacked at the moment when it was at last about to cross the stream, having to sustain the onset of two German armies:  Steinmetz’s, which was encamped in observation in front of the intrenched camp, and Prince Frederick Charles’s, which had passed the river higher up and come down along the left bank in order to bar the French from access to their country; Borny, where the firing did not begin until it was three o’clock; Borny, that barren victory, at the end of which the French remained masters of their positions, but which left them astride the Moselle, tied hand and foot, while the turning movement of the second German army was being successfully accomplished.  After that, on the 16th, was the battle of Rezonville; all our corps were at last across the stream, although, owing to the confusion that prevailed at the junction of the Mars-la-Tour and Etain roads, which the Prussians had gained possession of early in the morning by a brilliant movement of their cavalry and artillery, the 3d and 4th corps were hindered in their march and unable to get up; a slow, dragging, confused battle, which, up to two o’clock, Bazaine, with only a handful of men opposed to him, should have won, but which he wound up by losing, thanks to his inexplicable fear of being cut off from Metz; a battle of immense extent, spreading over leagues of hill and plain, where the French, attacked in front and flank, seemed willing to do almost anything except advance, affording the enemy time to concentrate and to all appearances co-operating with them to ensure the success of the Prussian plan, which was to force their withdrawal to the other side of the river.  And on the 18th,