It was nearly dark when the 106th passed through Angecourt. The wooded hills continued on the right, but to the left the country was more level, and a valley was visible in the distance, veiled in bluish mists. At last, just as the shades of night were descending, they stood on the heights of Remilly and beheld a ribbon of pale silver unrolling its length upon a broad expanse of verdant plain. It was the Meuse, that Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as if victory awaited them. Pointing to some lights in the distance that were beginning to twinkle cheerily among the trees, down in that fertile valley that lay there so peaceful in the mellow twilight, Maurice said to Jean, with the glad content of a man revisiting a country that he knows and loves: “Look! over that way—that is Sedan!” VII. Remilly is built on a hill that rises from the left bank of the Meuse, presenting the appearance of an amphitheater; the one village street that meanders circuitously down the sharp descent was thronged with men, horses, and vehicles in dire confusion. Half-way up the hill, in front of the church, some drivers had managed to interlock the wheels of their guns, and all the oaths and blows of the artillerymen were unavailing to get them forward. Further down, near the woolen mill, where the Emmane tumbles noisily over the dam, the road was choked with a long line of stranded baggage wagons, while close at hand, at the inn of the Maltese Cross, a constantly increasing crowd of angry soldiers pushed and struggled, and could not obtain so much as a glass of wine. All this mad hurly-burly was going on at the southern end of the village, which is here separated from the Meuse by a little grove of trees, and where the engineers had that morning stretched a bridge of boats across the river. There was a ferry to the right; the ferryman’s house stood by itself, white and staring, amid a rank growth of weeds. Great fires had been built on either bank, which, being replenished from time to time, glared ruddily in the darkness and made the stream and both its shores as light as day. They served to show the immense multitude of men massed there, awaiting a chance to cross, while the footway only permitted the passage of two men abreast, and over the bridge proper the cavalry and artillery were obliged to proceed at a walk, so that the crossing promised to be a protracted operation. It was said that the troops still on the left bank comprised a brigade of the 1st corps, an ammunition train, and the four regiments of cuirassiers belonging to Bonnemain’s division, while coming up in hot haste behind them was the 7th corps, over thirty thousand strong, possessed with the belief that the enemy was at their heels and pushing on with feverish eagerness to gain the security of the other shore.