Once on the road, the petty farmer who was driving Maurice did not cease to bewail the evil times. He had lacked the necessary courage to remain at Falaise, and yet he already regretted having left it, repeating that he would be utterly ruined if the enemy should burn his house. His daughter--a tall, pale creature--was crying. Maurice, however--drunk, as it were, with weariness--did not hear either of them, but slept on in a sitting posture, rocked by the rapid trot of the little horse, which in less than an hour and a half covered the four leagues lying between Vouziers and Le Chêne. It was not yet seven o'clock, and the twilight had scarcely fallen, when the young fellow, shivering and perplexed, alighted on the Place, near the bridge spanning the canal, and in front of the narrow yellow house where he had been born and had spent the first twenty years of his life. He was going there in a mechanical sort of way, oblivious of the fact that the house had been sold to a veterinary surgeon some eighteen months previously. When the farmer questioned him on the subject, he answered that he knew very well whither he was bound; and then thanked him repeatedly for his kindness in giving him a lift. However, whilst approaching the well in the centre of the little triangular Place, he stopped short, dazed, and with his head quite empty. Where did he really intend to go? Suddenly he remembered that he had previously decided to call at the notary's house, which adjoined his former home, to ask hospitality of the notary's mother, that venerable, good-hearted old lady, Madame Desroches, who in a neighbourly way had spoilt him when he was a child. But he could scarcely recognise Le Chêne, usually such a dead-alive little place, amid the extraordinary agitation that now prevailed in it, owing to the presence of the army corps which was camping in its outskirts and filling its streets with officers, army followers, prowlers, and laggards of all descriptions. He certainly recognised the canal, crossing the town from end to end and cutting athwart the central Place, the two triangular sections of which were united by a narrow stone bridge. Over there, too, on the other bank, the mossy-roofed market could readily be identified, together with the Rue Berond plunging down on the left, and the road to Sedan stretching away on the right. Only, from the spot where he stood, it was necessary that he should raise his eyes and search for the slated belfry crowning the notary's house, to make sure that this was the once deserted corner where he had played at hopscotch; to such a degree, indeed, did the Rue de Vouziers in front of him now swarm with people, flowing along in a compact crowd as far as the town-hall. It seemed to him that an open space was being kept on the Place, and that some men were making the inquisitive townsfolk retire; and, in fact, behind the well he beheld to his astonishment quite an assemblage of vehicles, vans and waggons,