strong. The general announced, moreover, in the confidence of his
sublime ignorance, that a column of one hundred thousand men was on
the way from Grand-Pre to attack them, while another, of sixty
thousand, was coming up by the way of Sainte-Menehould.

"How's your foot, Maurice?" asked Jean.

"It don't hurt now," the other laughingly replied. "If there is to be
a fight, I think it will be quite well."

It was true; his nervous excitement was so great that he was hardly
conscious of the ground on which he trod. To think that in the whole
campaign he had not yet burned powder! He had gone forth to the
frontier, he had endured the agony of that terrible night of
expectation before Mulhausen, and had not seen a Prussian, had not
fired a shot; then he had retreated with the rest to Belfort, to
Rheims, had now been marching five days trying to find the enemy, and
his useless _chassepot_ was as clean as the day it left the shop,
without the least smell of smoke on it. He felt an aching desire to
discharge his piece once, if no more, to relieve the tension of his
nerves. Since the day, near six weeks ago, when he had enlisted in a
fit of enthusiasm, supposing that he would surely have to face the foe
in a day or two, all that he had done had been to tramp up and down
the country on his poor, sore feet--the feet of a man who had lived in
luxury, far from the battle-field; and so, among all those impatient
watchers, there was none who watched more impatiently than he the
Grand-Pre road, extending straight away to a seemingly infinite
distance between two rows of handsome trees. Beneath him was unrolled
the panorama of the valley; the Aisne was, like a silver ribbon,
flowing between its willows and poplars, and ever his gaze returned,