Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fashion, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over an army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du Collège he was carried along—bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a space of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proximity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn from his back, he found that he had been more than an hour in coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five minutes. Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his house being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden, dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then, stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been deposited there and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed there since early morning, had been overlooked by his superiors and had succumbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black as Egypt, and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He lit a candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not to awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early after a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so intense.