rniture,
condemned to the irony of dragging behind him in his suite his imperial
household, cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver stew-pans and
cases of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle, embroidered with
the Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of the highways of his
retreat.

At midnight Maurice was not asleep; he was feverishly wakeful, and
his gloomy reflections kept him tossing and tumbling on his pallet. He
finally arose and went outside, where he found comfort and refreshment
in the cool night air. The sky was overspread with clouds, the darkness
was intense; along the front of the line the expiring watch-fires
gleamed with a red and sullen light at distant intervals, and in the
deathlike, boding silence could be heard the long-drawn breathing of
the hundred thousand men who slumbered there. Then Maurice became more
tranquil, and there descended on him a sentiment of brotherhood, full
of compassionate kindness for all those slumbering fellow-creatures, of
whom thousands would soon be sleeping the sleep of death. Brave fellows!
True, many of them were thieves and drunkards, but think of what
they had suffered and the excuse there was for them in the universal
demoralization! The glorious veterans of Solferino and Sebastopol were
but a handful, incorporated in the ranks of the newly raised troops, too
few in number to make their example felt. The four corps that had been
got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid of every element of
cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the expiatory band that their rulers
were sending to the sacrifice in the endeavor to avert the wrath of
destiny. They would bear their cross to the bitter end, atoning with
their life's blood for the faults of others, glorious amid disaster and
defeat.

And then it was that Maurice, there in the darkness that was instinct
with life, became conscious that a great duty lay before him. He ceased
to beguile himself with the illusive prospect of great victories to be
gained; the march to Verdun was a march to death, and he so accepted it,
since it was their lot to die, with brave and cheerful resignation.

IV.

On Tuesday, the 23d of August, at six o'clock in the morning, camp
was broken, and as a stream that has momentarily expanded into a lake
resumes its course again, the hundred and odd thousand men of the army
of Chalons put themselves in motion and soon were pouring onward in a
resistless torrent; and notwithstandin