Maurice’s eyes were bent on the horizon, where it was reddened with the flames of burning Falaise.  They had one consolation, however:  the train that had been believed to be lost came crawling along out of the Chene road.  Without delay the 2d division put itself in motion and struck out across the forest for Boult-aux-Bois; the 3d took post on the heights of Belleville to the left in order to keep an eye to the communications, while the 1st remained at Quatre-Champs to wait for the coming up of the train and guard its countless wagons.  Just then the rain began to come down again with increased violence, and as the 106th moved off the plateau, resuming the march that should have never been, toward the Meuse, toward the unknown, Maurice thought he beheld again his vision of the night:  the shadow of the Emperor, incessantly appearing and vanishing, so sad, so pitiful a sight, on the white curtain of good old Madame Desvallieres.  Ah! that doomed army, that army of despair, that was being driven forward to inevitable destruction for the salvation of a dynasty!  March, march, onward ever, with no look behind, through mud, through rain, to the bitter end!

VI.

“Thunder!” Chouteau ejaculated the following morning when he awoke, chilled and with aching bones, under the tent, “I wouldn’t mind having a bouillon with plenty of meat in it.”

At Boult-aux-Bois, where they were now encamped, the only ration issued to the men the night before had been an extremely slender one of potatoes; the commissariat was daily more and more distracted and disorganized by the everlasting marches and countermarches, never reaching the designated points of rendezvous in time to meet the troops.  As for the herds, no one had the faintest idea where they might be upon the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in the face.

Loubet stretched himself and plaintively replied: 

“Ah, fichtre, yes!—­No more roast goose for us now.”

The squad was out of sorts and sulky.  Men couldn’t be expected to be lively on an empty stomach.  And then there was the rain that poured down incessantly, and the mud in which they had to make their beds.

Observing Pache make the sign of the cross after mumbling his morning prayer, Chouteau captiously growled: 

“Ask that good God of yours, if he is good for anything, to send us down a couple of sausages and a mug of beer apiece.”

“Ah, if we only had a good big loaf of bread!” sighed Lapoulle, whose ravenous appetite made hunger a more grievous affliction to him than to the others.