the very marrow seemed to be congealing, murmured in his resigned
manner:

"Ah, worse luck! The gentleman, that relative of yours, was right all
the same in saying that they are stronger than we."

Maurice was beside himself, could have strangled him. The Prussians
stronger than the French! The thought made his blood boil. The peasant
calmly and stubbornly added:

"That don't matter, mind you. A man don't give up whipped at the first
knock-down he gets. We shall have to keep hammering away at them all
the same."

But a tall figure arose before them. They recognized Rochas, still
wrapped in his long mantle, whom the fugitive sounds about him, or it
may have been the intuition of disaster, had awakened from his uneasy
slumber. He questioned them, insisted on knowing all. When he was
finally brought, with much difficulty, to see how matters stood,
stupor, immense and profound, filled his boyish, inexpressive eyes.
More than ten times in succession he repeated:

"Beaten! How beaten? Why beaten?"

And that was the calamity that had lain hidden in the blackness of
that night of agony. And now the pale dawn was appearing at the
portals of the east, heralding a day heavy with bitterest sorrow and
striking white upon the silent tents, in one of which began to be
visible the ashy faces of Loubet and Lapoulle, of Chouteau and of
Pache, who were snoring still with wide-open mouths. Forth from the