“Who talks of patriotism!  I am more a patriot than any of them.  Would you call it patriotism to fill those bloody Prussians’ mouths gratis?  What they get from me they have to pay for.  Folks will see how it is some of these days!”

On the second day of his employment Jean remained too long on foot, and the doctor’s secret fears proved not to be unfounded; the wound opened, the leg became greatly inflamed and swollen, he was compelled to take to his bed again.  Dalichamp suspected that the mischief was due to a spicule of bone that the two consecutive days of violent exercise had served to liberate.  He explored the wound and was so fortunate as to find the fragment, but there was a shock attending the operation, succeeded by a high fever, which exhausted all Jean’s strength.  He had never in his life been reduced to a condition of such debility:  his recovery promised to be a work of time, and faithful Henriette resumed her position as nurse and companion in the little chamber, where winter with icy breath now began to make its presence felt.  It was early November, already the east wind had brought on its wings a smart flurry of snow, and between those four bare walls, on the uncarpeted floor where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press seemed to shiver with discomfort, the cold was extreme.  As there was no fireplace in the room they determined to set up a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur assisted to brighten their solitude a bit.

The days wore on, monotonously, and that first week of the relapse was to Jean and Henriette the dreariest and saddest in all their long, unsought intimacy.  Would their suffering never end? were they to hope for no surcease of misery, the danger always springing up afresh?  At every moment their thoughts sped away to Maurice, from whom they had received no further word.  They were told that others were getting letters, brief notes written on tissue paper and brought in by carrier-pigeons.  Doubtless the bullet of some hated German had slain the messenger that, winging its way through the free air of heaven, was bringing them their missive of joy and love.  Everything seemed to retire into dim obscurity, to die and be swallowed up in the depths of the premature winter.  Intelligence of the war only reached them a long time after the occurrence of events, the few newspapers that Doctor Dalichamp still continued to supply them with were often a week old by the time they reached their hands.  And their dejection was largely owing to their want of information, to what they did not know and yet instinctively felt to be the truth, to the prolonged death-wail that, spite of all, came to their ears across the frozen fields in the deep silence that lay upon the country.

One morning the doctor came to them in a condition of deepest discouragement.  With a trembling hand he drew from his pocket a Belgian newspaper and threw it on the bed, exclaiming: 

“Alas, my friends, poor France is murdered; Bazaine has played the traitor!”