all the Emperor's plans were disconcerted by the tardiness of our
operations and the incapacity of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to
be working against us, heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed
accidents in our path and favoring the secret plan of the Prussians,
which was to divide our armies, throwing one portion back on Metz,
where it would be cut off from France, while they, having first
destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on Paris. It was as
plain now as a problem in mathematics that our defeat would be owing
to causes that were patent to everyone; it was bravery without
intelligent guidance pitted against numbers and cold science. Men
might discuss the question as they would in after days; happen what
might, defeat was certain in spite of everything, as certain and
inexorable as the laws of nature that rule our planet.

In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice's eyes suddenly lighted
on the legend scrawled on the wall before him--_Vive Napoleon!_ and a
sensation of intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a
red hot iron. Could it be true, then, that France, whose victories
were the theme of song and story everywhere, the great nation whose
drums had sounded throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had
been thrown in the dust at the first onset by an insignificant race,
despised of everyone? Fifty years had sufficed to compass it; the
world had changed, and defeat most fearful had overtaken those who had
been deemed invincible. He remembered the words that had been uttered
by Weiss his brother-in-law, during that evening of anxiety when they
were at Mulhausen. Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had
penetrated the hidden causes that had long been slowly sapping our
strength, had felt the freshening gale of youth and progress under the
impulse of which Germany was being wafted onward to prosperity and
power. Was not the old warlike age dying and a new one coming to the