'Twas his one idea, to save his gun, like others save the colours. And he was still speaking when he was annihilated, his right arm torn away and his left side ripped open. He fell upon the gun and remained there as though stretched upon a bed of honour, his head still erect, and his face unscathed, turned with a fine expression of anger towards the enemy yonder. A letter--Silvine's--had slipped through a rent in his uniform and was stained with drop after drop of his blood, as he grasped it with his twisted fingers. The only lieutenant who had not been killed now shouted the command: 'Limber up!' One of the caissons had already blown up with the commotion of fireworks, fusing and bursting. The horses of another caisson had to be taken to save a gun whose team was lying on the ground. And, this last time, when the drivers had wheeled, and the four remaining guns had again been limbered, the battery galloped off without stopping until it was some eleven hundred yards away, behind the fringing trees of the wood of La Garenne. Maurice had seen everything, and with a faint shudder of horror he repeated in a mechanical fashion: 'Oh! the poor fellow, the poor fellow!' It seemed as though his grief imparted increased intensity to the growing pain that was griping his stomach. The animal part of his nature was rebelling; his strength was exhausted; he was dying of hunger. His eyesight was becoming dim, he was no longer conscious even of the danger to which the regiment was exposed, now that the battery had been compelled to fall back. At any moment, indeed, the plateau might be attacked by the enemy in force. 'I say,' he remarked to Jean, 'I really must eat--I'd rather eat and be killed at once.' Having opened his knapsack, he took the bread in his trembling hands and began to bite it voraciously. The bullets whistled by, a couple of shells exploded a few yards away, but nothing had any existence for him save his hunger, which must be satisfied. 'Will you have a bit, Jean?' Stupefied, his eyes swollen, and his stomach rent by a similar craving, Jean looked at him and answered: 'Yes, all the same I'll have some; I feel too bad.' They divided the bread and ate it gluttonously, without a thought of anything else so long as a mouthful of it remained. And it was only after they had finished that they again saw their colonel, on his big charger, with his bloody boot. The 106th was being overlapped on either side. Some companies must have already fled, and M. de Vineuil, compelled to give way to the torrent, raised his sword, and, with his eyes full of tears, exclaimed, 'God shield us, my lads, since He would not take us!' Bands of fugitives were surrounding him, and he disappeared from view in a depression of the ground.