the entire army, and all those movements had amounted to nothing.
Maurice trembled as he reflected how pricelessly valuable was every
hour, every minute, in that mad project of joining forces with
Bazaine, a project that could be carried to a successful issue only by
an officer of genius, with seasoned troops under him, who should press
forward to his end with the resistless energy of a whirlwind, crushing
every obstacle that lay in his path.

"It is all up with us!" said he, as the whole truth flashed through
his mind, to Jean, who had given way to despair. Then as the corporal,
failing to catch his meaning, looked at him wonderingly, he went on in
an undertone, for his friend's ear alone, to speak of their
commanders:

"They mean well, but they have no sense, that's certain--and no luck!
They know nothing; they foresee nothing; they have neither plans nor
ideas, nor happy intuitions. _Allons_! everything is against us; it is
all up!"

And by slow degrees that same feeling of discouragement that Maurice
had arrived at by a process of reasoning settled down upon the denser
intellects of the troops who lay there inactive, anxiously awaiting to
see what the end would be. Distrust, as a result of their truer
perception of the position they were in, was obscurely burrowing in
those darkened minds, and there was no man so ignorant as not to feel
a sense of injury at the ignorance and irresolution of their leaders,
although he might not have been able to express in distinct terms the
causes of his exasperation. In the name of Heaven, what were they
doing there, since the Prussians had not shown themselves? either let
them fight and have it over with, or else go off to some place where