wo divisions for duty, for the 1st had participated in the
defeat at Froeschwiller, had been swept away in the general rout, and as
yet no one had learned where it had been stranded by the current. After
a week of this abandonment, of this entire separation from the rest of
France, a telegram came bringing them the order to march. The news was
well received, for anything was preferable to the prison life they were
leading in Belfort. And while they were getting themselves in readiness
conjecture and surmise were the order of the day, for no one as yet knew
what their destination was to be, some saying that they were to be sent
to the defense of Strasbourg, while others spoke with confidence of a
bold dash into the Black Forest that was to sever the Prussian line of
communication.

Early the next morning the 106th was bundled into cattle-cars and
started off among the first. The car that contained Jean's squad was
particularly crowded, so much so that Loubet declared there was not even
room in it to sneeze. It was a load of humanity, sent off to the war
just as a load of sacks would have been dispatched to the mill, crowded
in so as to get the greatest number into the smallest space, and as
rations had been given out in the usual hurried, slovenly manner and the
men had received in brandy what they should have received in food, the
consequence was that they were all roaring drunk, with a drunkenness
that vented itself in obscene songs, varied by shrieks and yells. The
heavy train rolled slowly onward; pipes were alight and men could no
longer see one another through the dense clouds of smoke; the heat
and odor that emanated from that mass of perspiring human flesh were
unendurable, while from the jolting, dingy van came volleys of shouts
and laughter that drowned the monotonous rattle of the wheels and were
lost amid the silence of the deserted fields. And it was not until they
reached Langres that the troops learned that they were being carried
back to Paris.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_" exclaimed Chouteau, who already, by virtue of his
oratorical ability, was the acknowledged sovereign of his corner, "they
will station us at Charentonneau, sure, to keep old Bismarck out of the
Tuileries."

The others laughed loud and long, considering the joke a very good one,
though no one could say why. The most trivial incidents of the journey,
however, served to elicit a storm of yells, cat-calls, and laughter: a
group of peasants stan