Jean was sleeping, and Maurice was now quite alone. The idea of joining Lapoulle and the others in the tent was somehow repugnant to him, yet he envied them as he heard them snoring, in response, as it were, to Rochas. Then he reflected that if great captains sometimes sleep so soundly on the eve of battle it is simply because they are very tired. He could now only hear the breath of slumber, a widespread, gentle breathing, rising from all the vast camp plunged in darkness. Everything was obliterated from view; he was simply aware that the Fifth Corps must be encamped somewhere near them, under the ramparts, that the First was stretched from the wood of La Garenne to the village of La Moncelle, whilst the Twelfth occupied Bazeilles, on the other side of Sedan; and all were sleeping--from the depths of the darkness, more than a league away, from the first to the last tent passed the slow palpitation of slumber. Then, too, sounds were wafted to him at intervals from afar off, where all was so mysterious--sounds so light and distant that they seemed like a simple buzzing in the ears--the faint gallop of cavalry, the low, dull rumbling of guns, and especially the heavy tramping of men, the march along the hill-tops of the great, black, human swarm, the invasion and envelopment which even night itself had not been able to stay. And, over yonder, were there not flashes suddenly bursting on the darkness and then expiring, voices which shrieked forth here and there, increasing all the anguish that prevailed during that last night, in the fear-fraught waiting for the dawn? With fumbling fingers Maurice sought Jean's hand and clasped it. Then only did he feel reassured and fall asleep. Nothing now remained awake, save a steeple of Sedan, whose clock struck, one by one, the fateful hours. END OF PART I. PART II _THE BATTLE OF SEDAN_ CHAPTER I THE ATTACK ON BAZEILLES--THE EMPEROR UNDER FIRE Weiss was fast asleep in his little room at Bazeilles, where all was dark, when a sudden disturbance made him spring out of bed. He listened, and heard the roar of cannon. Groping for the candle, he lighted it, and on looking at his watch found it was four o'clock; the dawn was scarcely breaking. He hastily put on his eye-glasses and scanned the high street--the Douzy road, which runs through the village--but the atmosphere there seemed full of thick dust, and nothing could be distinguished. He thereupon entered the adjoining room, the window of which overlooked the meadows on the side of the Meuse, and realised that the morning mist was rising from the river, obscuring the horizon. The guns were thundering more and more loudly from over yonder, across the water, but were hidden from view by the foggy veil. All at once a French battery replied with such a crash, and at so short a distance away, that the walls of the little house fairly shook.