The staff had gone on ahead at a sharp trot, spurring their horses in the fear lest the Prussians might get into Altkirch before them. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, aware that he had a hard day’s work before him, had prudently taken Mülhausen in his way, where he fortified himself with a copious breakfast, denouncing in language more forcible than elegant such hurried movements. And Mülhausen watched with sorrowful eyes the officers trooping through her streets; as the news of the retreat spread the citizens streamed out of their houses, deploring the sudden departure of the army for whose coming they had prayed so earnestly: they were to be abandoned, then, and all the costly merchandise that was stacked up in the railway station was to become the spoil of the enemy; within a few hours their pretty city was to be in the hands of foreigners? The inhabitants of the villages, too, and of isolated houses, as the staff clattered along the country roads, planted themselves before their doors with wonder and consternation depicted on their faces. What! that army, that a short while before they had seen marching forth to battle, was now retiring without having fired a shot? The leaders were gloomy, urged their chargers forward and refused to answer questions, as if ruin and disaster were galloping at their heels. It was true, then, that the Prussians had annihilated the army and were streaming into France from every direction, like the angry waves of a stream that had burst its barriers? And already to the frightened peasants the air seemed filled with the muttering of distant invasion, rising louder and more threatening at every instant, and already they were beginning to forsake their little homes and huddle their poor belongings into farm-carts; entire families might be seen fleeing in single file along the roads that were choked with the retreating cavalry. In the hurry and confusion of the movement the 106th was brought to a halt at the very first kilometer of their march, near the bridge over the canal of the Rhone and Rhine. The order of march had been badly planned and still more badly executed, so that the entire 2d division was collected there in a huddle, and the way was so narrow, barely more than sixteen feet in width, that the passage of the troops was obstructed. Two hours elapsed, and still the 106th stood there watching the seemingly endless column that streamed along before their eyes. In the end the men, standing at rest with ordered arms, began to become impatient. Jean’s squad, whose position happened to be opposite a break in the line of poplars where the sun had a fair chance at them, felt themselves particularly aggrieved. “Guess we must be the rear-guard,” Loubet observed with good-natured raillery. But Chouteau scolded: “They don’t value us at a brass farthing, and that’s why they let us wait this way. We were here first; why didn’t we take the road while it was empty?”