Without knowing how they had got there, Jean and Maurice next found themselves with the remnants of their company behind the hedge which they had skirted in the morning. There remained at most some forty men under the command of Lieutenant Rochas. The colours were with them, and with a view of trying to save them, the sub-lieutenant, acting as ensign, had just rolled the silk around the staff. They all filed along to the end of the hedge, and then threw themselves among some little trees on a slope, where Rochas ordered them to open fire again. Sheltered and scattered in skirmishing order, the men were able to hold out here, the more especially as a mass of cavalry was being set in motion on their right, and regiments of infantry were again being brought into line to support it. And now Maurice realised the slow, invincible encompassment which was on the point of being completed. Early in the morning he had seen the Prussians debouching from the defile of St. Albert, reaching first St. Menges, and then Fleigneux, and now he could not only hear the cannon of the Prussian Guard thundering behind the wood of La Garenne, but began to perceive some other German uniforms coming up by the heights of Givonne. But a few minutes more and the circle would close up, and the Guard would join hands with the Fifth German Corps, surrounding the French army with a living wall, an annihilating belt of artillery. It must have been with the desperate thought of making a last effort, of striving to break through this marching wall, that a division of the reserve cavalry, that commanded by General Margueritte, was now being massed behind a fold in the ground in readiness to charge. They, were, indeed, about to charge to death, without any possibility of effecting their object, but for the honour of France. And Maurice, thinking of Prosper, witnessed the terrible sight.