Paul and Bernard asked the reason. They were told that, for some days past, we had been successfully attacking the slopes opposite Soissons, on the other side of the Aisne. Two days before, some battalions of light infantry and African troops had taken Hill 132 by assault. On the following day, we held the positions which we had won and carried the trenches on the Dent de Crouy. Then, in the course of the Monday night at a time when the enemy was delivering a violent counter-attack, a curious thing happened. The Aisne, which was swollen as the result of the heavy rains, overflowed its banks and carried away all the bridges at Villeneuve and Soissons. The rise of the Aisne was natural enough; but, high though the river was, it did not explain the destruction of the bridges; and this destruction, coinciding with the German counter-attack and apparently due to suspect reasons which had not yet been cleared up, had complicated the position of the French troops by making the dispatch of reinforcements almost impossible. Our men had held the hill all day, but with difficulty and with great losses. At this moment, a part of the artillery was being moved back to the right bank of the Aisne. Paul and Bernard did not hesitate in their minds for a second. In all this they recognized the Comtesse Hermine's handiwork. The destruction of the bridges, the German attacks, those two incidents which happened on the very night of her arrival were, beyond a doubt, the outcome of a plan conceived by her, the execution of which had been prepared for the time when the rains were bound to swell the river and proved the collaboration existing between the countess and the enemy's staff. Besides, Paul remembered the sentences which she had exchanged with Karl the spy outside the door of Prince Conrad's villa: "I am going to France . . . everything is ready. The weather is in our favor; and the staff have told me. . . . So I shall be there to-morrow evening; and it will only need a touch of the thumb. . . ." She had given that touch of the thumb. All the bridges had been tampered with by Karl or by men in his pay and had now broken down. "It's she, obviously enough," said Bernard. "And, if it is, why look so anxious? You ought to be glad, on the contrary, because we are now positively certain of laying hold of her."