Thereupon, Jean sent Pache to fetch the water, which, after all, was an easy task, since the river was only some fifty yards away. Meantime, Loubet, having lighted the wood in a hole which he had dug in the ground, was able to set the large pot upon it, dropping the meat, which he had skilfully secured together with string, into the warm water. Then came the blissful enjoyment of watching the _soupe_ boil. Fatigue duties being over, all the men of the squad, full of tender solicitude for the cooking meat, had stretched themselves on, the grass around the fire. Like children and savages, brutified by this march towards the Unknown with its uncertain morrow, they now seemed to care for nothing but eating and sleeping. Maurice, however, had found in his knapsack one of the newspapers he had bought at Rheims, and Chouteau on seeing it exclaimed: 'Is there any news of the Prussians? You must read it to us.' Under Jean's steadily increasing authority the men were now getting on fairly well together; and Maurice obligingly began to read all the interesting news, whilst Pache, the squad's needlewoman, mended a tear in his overcoat for him, and Lapoulle cleaned his gun. First of all there was an account of a great victory gained by Bazaine, who was said to have thrown an entire Prussian army corps headlong into the stone quarries of Jaumont; and this imaginary narrative[20] was a dramatically circumstantial one; the enemy's men and horses were said to have been crushed to death among the rocks, annihilated in fact, to such a degree, that not one whole body was left for burial! Then came copious particulars respecting the pitiful condition of the German armies since they had entered France. Badly fed and badly equipped, the men had fallen into a state of complete destitution, and, stricken with fearful maladies, were dying _en masse_ by the wayside. Another article related that the King of Prussia had the diarrhœa, and that Bismarck had broken his leg in jumping out of the window of an inn where some Zouaves had almost caught him. That was capital! Lapoulle laughed from ear to ear, whilst Chouteau and the others, who did not for one moment entertain the shadow of a doubt, felt wondrous bold at the idea that they would soon be picking up Prussians like sparrows in a field after a hailstorm. But it was especially Bismarck's fall that amused them. The Zouaves and the Turcos were plucky devils, and no mistake. All sorts of legends were current concerning these fellows, who not merely made Germany tremble but angered her as well. It was disgraceful, so the German papers declared, that a civilised nation should employ such savages in her defence. And although these so-called savages had already been decimated at Frœschweiler, it seemed to the French as if they were still intact and invincible.