Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about the camp
in search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed; discipline appeared
to have been relaxed still further, the men went and came at their own
sweet will. He found no obstacle in the way of his return to the city,
where he desired to cash a money-order for a hundred francs that his
sister Henriette had sent him. While in a cafe he heard a sergeant
telling of the disaffection that existed in the eighteen battalions of
the garde mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent back to Paris;
the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a day
passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, and since
Froeschwiller the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal MacMahon the
military salute. The cafe resounded with the sound of voices in
excited conversation; a violent dispute arose between two sedate
burghers in respect to the number of men that MacMahon would have at
his disposal. One of them made the wild assertion that there would be
three hundred thousand; the other, who seemed to be more at home upon
the subject, stated the strength of the four corps: the 12th, which
had just been made complete at the camp with great difficulty with the
assistance of provisional regiments and a division of infanterie de
marine; the 1st, which had been coming straggling in in fragments ever
since the 14th of the month and of which they were doing what they
could to perfect the organization; the 5th, defeated before it had
ever fought a battle, swept away and broken up in the general panic,
and finally, the 7th, then landing from the cars, demoralized like all
the rest and minus its 1st division, of which it had just recovered
the remains at Rheims; in all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the
outside, including the cavalry, Bonnemain's and Margueritte's
divisions. When the sergeant took a hand in the quarrel, however,
speaking of the army in terms of the utmost contempt, characterizing
it as a ruffianly rabble, with no _esprit de corps_, with nothing to