swarming mob that filled the boulevards on that midsummer night of
frenzied madness when he had determined to enlist. The gentle breeze
had become a devastating hurricane; there had been a terrific
explosion, and all the sanguine temper of his nation had manifested
itself in his absolute, enthusiastic confidence, which had vanished
utterly at the very first reverse, before the unreasoning impulse of
despair that was sweeping him away among those vagrant soldiers,
vanquished and dispersed before they had struck a stroke.

"This confounded blunderbuss must weigh a ton, I think," Loubet went
on. "This is fine music to march by!" And alluding to the sum he
received as substitute: "I don't care what people say, but fifteen
hundred 'balls' for a job like this is downright robbery. Just think
of the pipes he'll smoke, sitting by his warm fire, the stingy old
miser in whose place I'm going to get my brains knocked out!"

"As for me," growled Chouteau, "I had finished my time. I was going to
cut the service, and they keep me for their beastly war. Ah! true as I
stand here, I must have been born to bad luck to have got myself into
such a mess. And now the officers are going to let the Prussians knock
us about as they please, and we're dished and done for." He had been
swinging his piece to and fro in his hand; in his discouragement he
gave it a toss and landed it on the other side of the hedge. "Eh! get
you gone for a dirty bit of old iron!"

The musket made two revolutions in the air and fell into a furrow,
where it lay, long and motionless, reminding one somehow of a corpse.
Others soon flew to join it, and presently the field was filled with
abandoned arms, lying in long winrows, a sorrowful spectacle beneath
the blazing sky. It was an epidemic of madness, caused by the hunger