ding beside the roadway, or the anxious faces of
the people who hung about the way-stations in the hope of picking up
some bits of news from the passing trains, epitomizing on a small
scale the breathless, shuddering alarm that pervaded all France in the
presence of invasion. And so it happened that as the train thundered by,
a fleeting vision of pandemonium, all that the good burghers obtained
in the way of intelligence was the salutations of that cargo of food
for powder as it hurried onward to its destination, fast as steam could
carry it. At a station where they stopped, however, three well-dressed
ladies, wealthy bourgeoises of the town, who distributed cups of
bouillon among the men, were received with great respect. Some of the
soldiers shed tears, and kissed their hands as they thanked them.

But as soon as they were under way again the filthy songs and the wild
shouts began afresh, and so it went on until, a little while after
leaving Chaumont, they met another train that was conveying some
batteries of artillery to Metz. The locomotives slowed down and the
soldiers in the two trains fraternized with a frightful uproar. The
artillerymen were also apparently very drunk; they stood up in their
seats, and thrusting hands and arms out of the car-windows, gave this
cry with a vehemence that silenced every other sound:

"To the slaughter! to the slaughter! to the slaughter!"

It was as if a cold wind, a blast from the charnel-house, had swept
through the car. Amid the sudden silence that descended on them Loubet's
irreverent voice was heard, shouting:

"Not very cheerful companions, those fellows!"

"But they are right," rejoined Chouteau, as if addressing some pot-house
assemblage; "it is a beastly thing to send a lot of brave boys to have
their brains blown out for a dirty little quarrel about which they don't
know the first word."

And much more in the same strain. He was the type of the Belleville
agitator, a lazy, dissipated mechanic, perverting his fellow workmen,
constantly spouting the ill-digested odds and ends of political
harangues that he had heard, belching forth in the same breath the
loftiest sentiments and the most asinine revolutionary clap-trap.
He knew it all, and tried to inoculate his comrades with his ideas,
especially Lapoulle, of whom he had promised to make a lad of spirit.

"Don't you see, old man, it's all perfectly simple. If Badinguet and
Bismarck have a quarrel, let 'em go to work