ouses, and soon the fiery flight of
the projectiles could be traced as they tore through the darkness of
the unlighted streets. And so it was that neither of them could draw a
breath or eat a mouthful without being haunted by the image of Maurice
and those two million living beings, imprisoned in their gigantic
sepulcher.

From every quarter, moreover, from the northern as well as from the
central districts, most discouraging advices continued to arrive. In the
north the 22d army corps, composed of gardes mobiles, depot companies
from various regiments and such officers and men as had not been
involved in the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had been forced to abandon
Amiens and retreat on Arras, and on the 5th of December Rouen had also
fallen into the hands of the enemy, after a mere pretense of resistance
on the part of its demoralized, scanty garrison. In the center the
victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of November by the army of the
Loire, had resuscitated for a moment the hopes of the country: Orleans
was to be reoccupied, the Bavarians were to be put to flight, the
movement by way of Etampes was to culminate in the relief of Paris; but
on December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken Orleans and cut in
two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell back on Bourges and
Vierzon, while the remaining two, commanded by General Chanzy, retired
to Mans, fighting and falling back alternately for a whole week, most
gallantly. The Prussians were everywhere, at Dijon and at Dieppe,
at Vierzon as well as at Mans. And almost every morning came the
intelligence of some fortified place that had capitulated, unable longer
to hold out under the bombardment. Strasbourg had succumbed as early
as the 28th of September, after standing forty-six days of siege and
thirty-seven of shelling, her walls razed and her buildings riddled by
more than two hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon had
been blown into the air; Toul had surrendered; and following them, a
melancholy catalogue, came Soissons with its hundred and twenty-eight
pieces of artillery, Verdun, which numbered a hundred and thirty-six,
Neufbrisach with a hundred, La Fere with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five.
Thionville was in flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a
desperate resistance that lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all
France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing
cannonade.

One morning that Jean manifest