Just then an unforeseen meeting put the finishing touch to Maurice's rage. A dull, continuous rumbling was heard from afar; it was the reserve artillery, which had been the last to start, and the first detachment of which suddenly debouched round a turn of the road, the laggard linesmen having barely time to throw themselves into the fields. There was an entire artillery regiment of six squadrons marching in column, the colonel in the centre and each officer in his place, and they all clattered along at equal, carefully observed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, horses, and men. And in the fifth squadron Maurice recognised his cousin Honoré's gun. The quartermaster was there, proudly erect on his horse, to the left of the front driver, Adolphe, a stalwart, fair-complexioned man, who bestrode a sturdy chestnut, which admirably matched the off-horse trotting beside it; whilst Adolphe's chum, Louis, the gunner, a dark little fellow, would be seen among the six men seated in pairs on the ammunition boxes. They all seemed to have grown taller to Maurice, who had become acquainted with them at the camp, and the gun, drawn by its four horses and followed by its caisson, to which six other horses were harnessed, appeared to him as dazzling as a sun, well groomed and furbished, idolised by all its people, man and beast, who clung to it as it were with the discipline and attachment of a gallant family; and fearfully was Maurice's suffering increased when he saw his cousin Honoré dart a contemptuous glance at all the laggards, and then look quite stupefied on perceiving him among this flock of unarmed men. The defiling was nearly over already. The train of the batteries, the ammunition and forage waggons, the field smithies passed by; and then in a last cloud of dust came the spare men and horses, who vanished from sight at another bend of the road, amid the gradually subsiding clatter of wheels and hoofs. 'Pooh!' said Loubet, 'it's easy enough to swagger when you travel about in a carriage.' The staff had found Altkirch unoccupied. There were no Prussians there as yet. Still fearing, however, that he was being pursued, and that the enemy might appear at any moment, General Douay had determined upon pushing on to Dannemarie, where the first detachments only arrived at five in the evening. Eight o'clock had struck, and night was gathering in, when the regiments, in frightful confusion and reduced to half their strength, commenced preparations for bivouacking. The men were quite exhausted, sinking both with hunger and fatigue. The laggards, the lamentable and interminable tag-rag and bobtail of the army, the cripples and mutineers scattered along the roads, continued arriving, now one by one, now in little bands, until ten o'clock, and had to search in the darkness for their companies which they could not find.