illes, in
whose command the 106th was, was certain to be there, brawling as loud
as ever, and trundling his fat body about on his short, pudgy legs, with
his red nose and rubicund face, vouchers for the good dinners he had
eaten, and not likely ever to become top-heavy by reason of excessive
weight in his upper story. There was a stir and movement about the
farmhouse that seemed to be momentarily increasing; couriers and
orderlies were arriving and departing every minute; they were awaiting
there, with feverish anxiety of impatience, the belated dispatches which
should advise them of the result of the battle that everyone, all that
long August day, had felt to be imminent. Where had it been fought? what
had been the issue? As night closed in and darkness shrouded the scene,
a foreboding sense of calamity seemed to settle down upon the orchard,
upon the scattered stacks of grain about the stables, and spread, and
envelop them in waves of inky blackness. It was said, also, that a
Prussian spy had been caught roaming about the camp, and that he had
been taken to the house to be examined by the general. Perhaps Colonel
de Vineuil had received a telegram of some kind, that he was in such
great haste.

Meantime Maurice had resumed his conversation with his brother-in-law
Weiss and his cousin Honore Fouchard, the quartermaster-sergeant.
Retreat, commencing in the remote distance, then gradually swelling in
volume as it drew near with its blare and rattle, reached them, passed
them, and died away in the solemn stillness of the twilight; they seemed
to be quite unconscious of it. The young man was grandson to a hero of
the Grand Army, and had first seen the light at Chene-Populeux, where
his father, not caring to tread the path of glory, had held an ill-paid
position as collector of taxes. His mother, a peasant, had died in
giving him birth, him and his twin sister Henriette, who at an early age
had become a second mother to him, and that he was now what he was,
a private in the ranks, was owing entirely to his own imprudence,
the headlong dissipation of a weak and enthusiastic nature, his money
squandered and his substance wasted on women, cards, the thousand
follies of the all-devouring minotaur, Paris, when he had concluded his
law studies there and his relatives had impoverished themselves to make
a gentleman of him. His conduct had brought his father to the grave;
his sister, when he had stripped her of her little all, had