.

"Do you see that moving line of black upon the hilltops, that procession
of small black ants?"

Jean stared in amazement, while Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his
neck to see.

"Yes, yes!" they cried. "There is a line, there is another, and another,
and another! They are everywhere."

"Well," continued Weiss, "those are Prussians. I have been watching them
since morning, and they have been coming, coming, as if there were no
end to them! You may be sure of one thing: if our troops are waiting for
them, they have no intention of disappointing us. And not I alone, but
every soul in the city saw them; it is only the generals who persist in
being blind. I was talking with a general officer a little while ago; he
shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely
certain that he had not over seventy thousand men in his front. God
grant he may be right! But look and see for yourselves; the ground is
hid by them! they keep coming, ever coming, the black swarm!"

At this juncture Maurice threw himself back in his bed and gave way to
a violent fit of sobbing. Henriette came in, a smile on her face. She
hastened to him in alarm.

"What is it?"

But he pushed her away. "No, no! leave me, have nothing more to do with
me; I have never been anything but a burden to you. When I think that
you were making yourself a drudge, a slave, while I was attending
college--oh! to what miserable use have I turned that education! And I
was near bringing dishonor on our name; I shudder to think where I might
be now, had you not beggared yourself to pay for my extravagance and
folly."

Her smile came back to her face, together with her serenity.

"Is that all? Your sleep don't seem to have done you good, my poor
friend. But since that is all gone and past, forget it! Are you not
doing your duty now, like a good Frenchman? I am very proud of you, I
assure you, now that you are a soldier."

She had turned toward Jean, as if to ask him to come to her assistance,
and he looked at her with some surprise that she appeared to him less
beautiful than yesterday; she was paler, thinner, now that the glamour
was no longer in his drowsy eyes. The one striking point that remained
unchanged was her resemblance to her brother, and yet the difference in
their two natures was never more strongly marked than at that moment;
he, weak and nervous as a woman, swayed by the impulse of the hour,
displaying in his person all the f