Worried to see him look so pale, the corporal, in a fatherly way, inquired: 'Still queer, eh? Is it your foot again?' Maurice shook his head. Thanks to the broad shoes he was now wearing, his foot was very much better. 'You are hungry, then?' And, as he did not reply, Jean, without being observed, took one of the two remaining biscuits out of his knapsack, and then, frankly lying, said, 'There, I kept your share for you. I ate the other one just now.' The dawn was breaking when the Seventh Corps left Oches, on the way to Mouzon, through La Besace, where it ought to have slept. First of all, the terrible convoy had gone off escorted by the First Division, and whilst the train waggons, drawn by capital horses, set out at a good pace, the vehicles that had been requisitioned, empty for the most part and useless, dawdled in the strangest way between the ridges of the defile of Stonne. The road rises--more particularly after passing the hamlet of La Berlière--between wooded hills which overlook it. At about eight o'clock, just as the two other divisions were at last setting out, Marshal MacMahon made his appearance, and was exasperated at still finding there the troops, whom he fancied would have left La Besace at dawn with only a few miles to cover in order to reach Mouzon. And, not unnaturally, he had a lively altercation with General Douay. It was decided that the First Division and the convoy should be allowed to continue their march on Mouzon, but that the other division should take the road to Raucourt and Autrecourt, so as to pass the Meuse at Villers, by which plan they would no longer be retarded by that heavy, slow-travelling advance-guard. Once more, then, they had to take a northerly direction, so eager was the marshal in his desire to place the Meuse between his army and the enemy. They must, at any cost, be on the right bank of the river that evening. Yet the rear-guard was still at Oches, when a Prussian battery on a distant summit, in the direction of St. Pierremont, again began the game of the day before, and fired. At first the French unwisely returned the fire, but eventually the last troops fell back. Until eleven o'clock or so the 106th continued slowly following the road which winds, between lofty rounded hills, through the depths of the defile of Stonne. Precipitous bare crests rise up on the left, but the slopes descending from the woods on the right are less abrupt. The sun was now shining again, and it was very hot in that narrow valley, the solitude of which was quite oppressive. After passing La Berlière, which is overlooked by a lofty, dreary calvary, there was not a farm, not a human being, not even a cow grazing in the meadows. And the men, so weary and so hungry already the previous day, who had scarcely slept and had eaten nothing, were even at this stage lapsing into a crawl, dispirited and full of covert rage.