of Chalons put themselves in motion and soon were pouring onward in a
resistless torrent; and notwithstanding the rumors that had been
current since the preceding day, it was a great surprise to most to
see that instead of continuing their retrograde movement they were
leaving Paris behind them and turning their faces toward the unknown
regions of the East.

At five o'clock in the morning the 7th corps was still unsupplied with
cartridges. For two days the artillerymen had been working like
beavers to unload the _materiel_, horses, and stores that had been
streaming from Metz into the overcrowded station, and it was only at
the very last moment that some cars of cartridges were discovered
among the tangled trains, and that a detail which included Jean among
its numbers was enabled to bring back two hundred and forty thousand
on carts that they had hurriedly requisitioned. Jean distributed the
regulation number, one hundred cartridges to a man, among his squad,
just as Gaude, the company bugler, sounded the order to march.

The 106th was not to pass through Rheims, their orders being to turn
the city and debouch into the Chalons road farther on, but on this
occasion there was the usual failure to regulate the order and time of
marching, so that, the four corps having commenced to move at the same
moment, they collided when they came out upon the roads that they were
to traverse in common and the result was inextricable confusion.
Cavalry and artillery were constantly cutting in among the infantry
and bringing them to a halt; whole brigades were compelled to leave
the road and stand at ordered arms in the plowed fields for more than
an hour, waiting until the way should be cleared. And to make matters
worse, they had hardly left the camp when a terrible storm broke over
them, the rain pelting down in torrents, drenching the men completely