But Lieutenant Rochas, passing by just then, made them be silent.  It was scandalous, never to think of anything but their stomachs!  When he was hungry he tightened up the buckle of his trousers.  Now that things were becoming decidedly squally and the popping of rifles was to be heard occasionally in the distance, he had recovered all his old serene confidence:  it was all plain enough, now; the Prussians were there—­well, all they had to do was, go out and lick ’em.  And he gave a significant shrug of the shoulders, standing behind Captain Beaudoin, the very young man, as he called him, with his pale face and pursed up lips, whom the loss of his baggage had afflicted so grievously that he had even ceased to fume and scold.  A man might get along without eating, at a pinch, but that he could not change his linen was a circumstance productive of sorrow and anger.

Maurice awoke to a sensation of despondency and physical discomfort.  Thanks to his easy shoes the inflammation in his foot had gone down, but the drenching he had received the day before, from the effects of which his greatcoat seemed to weigh a ton, had left him with a distinct and separate ache in every bone of his body.  When he was sent to the spring to get water for the coffee he took a survey of the plain on the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated:  forests rise to the west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad, level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional shallow depression concealing a small cluster of cottages.  Was it from that direction that they were to expect the enemy?  As he was returning from the stream with his bucket filled with water, the father of a family of wretched peasants hailed him from the door of his hovel, and asked him if the soldiers were this time going to stay and defend them.  In the confusion of conflicting orders the 5th corps had already traversed the region no less than three times.  The sound of cannonading had reached them the day before from the direction of Bar; the Prussians could not be more than a couple of leagues away.  And when Maurice made answer to the poor folks that doubtless the 7th corps would also be called away after a time, their tears flowed afresh.  Then they were to be abandoned to the enemy, and the soldiers had not come there to fight, whom they saw constantly vanishing and reappearing, always on the run?

“Those who like theirs sweet,” observed Loubet, as he poured the coffee, “have only to stick their thumb in it and wait for it to melt.”

Not a man of them smiled.  It was too bad, all the same, to have to drink their coffee without sugar; and then, too, if they only had some biscuit!  Most of them had devoured what eatables they had in their knapsacks, to the very last crumb, to while away their time of waiting, the day before, on the plateau of Quatre-Champs.  Among them, however, the members of the squad managed to collect a dozen potatoes, which they shared equally.