He galloped off on a road that conducted to la Moncelle. It was said that there had been a violent altercation between him and General Ducrot, each upholding his own plan, and decrying the plan of the other—one asserting that retreat by way of Mézières had been impracticable all that morning; the other predicting that, unless they fell back on Illy, the army would be surrounded before night. And there was a great deal of bitter recrimination, each taxing the other with ignorance of the country and of the situation of the troops. The pity of it was that both were right. But Henriette, meantime, had made an encounter that caused her to forget her project for a moment. In some poor outcasts; stranded by the wayside, she had recognized a family of honest weavers from Bazeilles, father, mother, and three little girls, of whom the largest was only nine years old. They were utterly disheartened and forlorn, and so weary and footsore that they could go no further, and had thrown themselves down at the foot of a wall. “Alas! dear lady,” the wife and mother said to Henriette, “we have lost our all. Our house—you know where our house stood on the Place de l’Église—well, a shell came and burned it. Why we and the children did not stay and share its fate I do not know—” At these words the three little ones began to cry and sob afresh, while the mother, in distracted language, gave further details of the catastrophe. “The loom, I saw it burn like seasoned kindling wood, and the bed, the chairs and tables, they blazed like so much straw. And even the clock—yes, the poor old clock that I tried to save and could not.” “My God! my God!” the man exclaimed, his eyes swimming with tears, “what is to become of us?” Henriette endeavored to comfort them, but it was in a voice that quavered strangely. “You have been preserved to each other, you are safe and unharmed; your three little girls are left you. What reason have you to complain?”