Our confidence was returning. Every evening George and I, by the fireside, talked of these affairs; reading the paper three or four times over, to get at something new. My wife had returned from Rastadt full of indignation against the Badeners, for not having allowed her to see Jacob, or even to send him the provisions she had brought. She had only seen, at a distance, the wooden huts, with their four lines of sentinels, the palisades, and the ditches that surrounded them. Gredel, Marie Anne, and she, talked only of these poor prisoners; vowing to make a pilgrimage to Marienthal if Jacob came back safe and sound. Fatigue, anxiety, the high price of provisions, the fear of coming short altogether if the war went on, all this gave us matter for serious reflection; and yet we went on hoping, when the _Independance_ brought us the report of General Chanzy upon the combats at Montfort, Champagne, Parigne, l'Eveque, and other places where our columns, overpowered by the 120,000 men of Frederick Charles and the Duke of Mecklenburg, had been obliged to retire to their last lines around Le Mans. That evening, as we were going home upon the stroke of ten, George said: "I don't believe much in pilgrimages, although several of my old shipmates in the _Boussole_ had full confidence in our Lady of Good Deliverance: I have never made any vows; these are no part of my principles; but I promise to drink two bottles of good wine with Christian in honor of the Republic, and to distribute one for every poor man in the village if we gain the great battle of to-morrow. According to Chanzy our army is driven to bay; it has fallen back upon its last position, and the great blow will be struck. Good-night." "Good-night, George and Marie Anne." We went out by moonlight, the hoar-frost was glittering on the ground; it was the 15th of January, 1871. The next day no _Independance_ arrived, nor the next day; it often had missed, and would come three or four numbers together. Fresh rumors had spread; there was a report of a lost battle; the Landwehr at Phalsbourg were rejoicing and drinking champagne. On the 18th, about two in the afternoon, the foot-postman Michel arrived. I was waiting at my cousin's. We were walking up and down, smoking and looking out of the windows; Michel was still in the passage, when George opened the door and cried: "Well?" "Here they are, Monsieur Weber." My cousin sat at his desk. "Now we will see," said he, changing color. But instead of beginning with the first, he opened the second, and read aloud that report of Chanzy's in which he said that all was going on well the evening before; but that a panic which seized upon the Breton Mobiles had disordered the army, without the possibility of either he or the Vice-Admiral Jaurreguiberry being able to check or stop it; so that the Prussians had rushed pell-mell into the unhappy city of Le Mans, mingled with our own troops, and taken a large body of prisoners.