"Yes, thank goodness," replied the Lieutenant, his long arms going
like windmills. "Wait a little; you'll find it warm enough!"

The soldiers were all delighted; the animation in the camp was still
more pronounced. A feverish impatience had taken possession of the
men, now that they were actually in line of battle between Chestres
and Falaise. At last they were to have a sight of those Prussians who,
if the newspapers were to be believed, were knocked up by their long
marches, decimated by sickness, starving, and in rags, and every man's
heart beat high with the prospect of annihilating them at a single
blow.

"We are lucky to come across them again," said Jean. "They've been
playing hide-and-seek about long enough since they slipped through our
fingers after their battle down yonder on the frontier. But are these
the same troops that whipped MacMahon, I wonder?"

Maurice could not answer his question with any degree of certainty. It
seemed to him hardly probable, in view of what he had read in the
newspapers at Rheims, that the third army, commanded by the Crown
Prince of Prussia, could be at Vouziers, when, only two days before,
it was just on the point of going into camp at Vitry-le-Francois.
There had been some talk of a fourth army, under the Prince of Saxony,
which was to operate on the line of the Meuse; this was doubtless the
one that was now before them, although their promptitude in occupying
Grand-Pre was a matter of surprise, considering the distances. But
what put the finishing touch to the confusion of his ideas was his
stupefaction to hear General Bourgain-Desfeuilles ask a countryman if
the Meuse did not flow past Buzancy, and if the bridges there were