Prussians on that account were unable to hold it.

He led his fifty soldiers then northwestward from his camp, skirted
the Bois de Grimont, and marched into the village. The night was dark,
and the sky so overhung with clouds that not a star was visible. The
one street of Vaudère was absolutely silent. The glimmering white
cottages showed their black rents on either side, but never the light
of a candle behind any shutter. Lieutenant Fevrier left his men at the
western or Frenchward end of the street, and went forward alone.

The doors of the houses stood open. The path was encumbered with the
wreckage of their contents, and every now and then he smelt a whiff of
paraffin, as though lamps had been broken or cans overset. Vaudère had
been looted, but there were no Prussians now in the village.

He made sure of this by walking as far as the large house at the head
of the village. Then he went back to his men and led them forward
until he reached the general shop which every village has.

"It is not likely," he said, "that we shall find even the makeshift of
a supper. But courage, my friends, let us try!"

He could not have eaten a crust himself, but it had become an instinct
with him to anticipate the needs of his privates, and he acted from
habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier
lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty
cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food
not so much as a stale biscuit.

"Go upstairs and search."