Then all at once her stature seemed to dilate; she drew herself up,
tragic in her leanness, in her poor old apology for a gown, and
sweeping the heavens with her long arm from west to east, with a
gesture so broad that it seemed to fill the dome:

"Cowards, the Rhine is not there! The Rhine lies yonder! Cowards,
cowards!"

They got under way again at last, and Maurice, whose look just then
encountered Jean's, saw that the latter's eyes were filled with tears,
and it did not alleviate his distress to think that those rough
soldiers, compelled to swallow an insult that they had done nothing to
deserve, were shamed by it. He was conscious of nothing save the
intolerable aching in his poor head, and in after days could never
remember how the march of that day ended, prostrated as he was by his
terrible suffering, mental and physical.

The 7th corps had spent the entire day in getting over the fourteen or
fifteen miles between Dannemarie and Belfort, and it was night again
before the troops got settled in their bivouacs under the walls of the
town, in the very same place whence they had started four days before
to march against the enemy. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour
and their spent condition, the men insisted on lighting fires and
making soup; it was the first time since their departure that they had
had an opportunity to put warm food into their stomachs, and seated
about the cheerful blaze in the cool air of evening they were dipping
their noses in the porringers and grunting inarticulately in token of
satisfaction when news came in that burst upon the camp like a
thunderbolt, dumfoundering everyone. Two telegrams had just been
received: the Prussians had not crossed the Rhine at Markolsheim, and