ject they set eyes on was an officer who had reined in his
smoking, steaming charger before a farm-yard gate and was venting
his towering rage in a volley of Billingsgate. It was General
Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, covered with dust
and looking as if he was about to tumble from his horse with fatigue.
The chagrin on his gross, high-colored, animal face told how deeply he
took to heart the disaster that he regarded in the light of a personal
misfortune. His command had seen nothing of him since morning. Doubtless
he was somewhere on the battlefield, striving to rally the remnants of
his brigade, for he was not the man to look closely to his own safety
in his rage against those Prussian batteries that had at the same time
destroyed the empire and the fortunes of a rising officer, the favorite
of the Tuileries.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" he shouted, "is there no one of whom one can ask a
question in this d-----d country?"

The farmer's people had apparently taken to the woods. At last a very
old woman appeared at the door, some servant who had been forgotten, or
whose feeble legs had compelled her to remain behind.

"Hallo, old lady, come here! Which way from here is Belgium?"

She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his meaning. Then
he lost all control of himself and effervesced, forgetful that the woman
was only a poor peasant, bellowing that he had no idea of going back to
Sedan to be caught like a rat in a trap; not he! he was going to make
tracks for foreign parts, he was, and d-----d quick, too! Some soldiers
had come up and stood listening.

"But you won't get through, General," spoke up a sergeant; "the
Prussians are everywhere. This morning was the time for you to cut
stick."

There were stories even then in circulation of companies that had become
separated from their regiments and crossed the frontier without any
intention of doing so, and of others that, later in the day, had
succeeded in breaking through the enemy's lines before the armies had
effected their final junction.

The general shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "What, with a few daring
fellows of your stripe, do you mean to say we couldn't go where we
please? I think I can find fifty daredevils to risk their skin in the
attempt." Then, turning again to the old peasant: "_Eh!_ you old mummy,
answer, will you, in the devil's name! where is the frontier?"

She understood him this time. She extended her ski