France, their France, trodden under the heel of the invader! To see and hear of nothing but ruin and ravage! To be unable to help! To be afraid to advance! To march until the soul cries for peace and the body aches for rest, though neither can be satisfied! Horrible is the battle, but more horrible by far is the dispiriting agony of the retreat. For twelve long days France saw the flower of her manhood vanquished and thrown back. She saw her armies despondent and dejected. She saw her territory given over to spoliation and destruction. "Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!" Almost the heart of France was breaking. Yet she saw, too, her generals and officers, with grim-set lips and watchful eyes, who knew the mighty strength that lay behind the apparent weakness, in whose minds lurked menace and thrust in the word "Retreat!" She saw, too, the line traced by a broad thumb across a big scale map as her Commander-in-Chief outlined the Valley of the Marne. "Retreat!" he said. Ever and again his generals questioned him, but received only the word. "Retreat!" Until, one day, he placed that same broad thumb upon the map. "There!" he said. "There, they shall not pass!" FOOTNOTES: [15] Vance Thompson, writing from the front, Sept. 13, 1914, said of this: "Some day the story of what was done in Alsace will be written, and the stories of Visé and Aerschot and Onsmael and Louvain will seem pale and negligible; but not now--five generations to come will whisper them in the Vosges." [16] The horizon-blue uniforms of the French Army were not ready until the year 1915. [17] Red Cross report. Private of the Lancashire Fusilier Regiment after the battle of Vitry le François. [18] Official report. Lieut. Col. of Hussars, after battle of Le Cateau. CHAPTER VII WHERE DESTINY SAID "HALT!" "The bugler of Destiny has sounded 'Halt!'" In these words, the hunchback summarized the news of the defeat of the Germans at _Le Grand Couronne de Nancy_ (Hill-Crest of Nancy), the defeat which duped the German High Command and nullified their plans for the supreme effort on Paris. It was evening, the evening of September 4. Horace and his fellow fugitive, safely arrived in Paris, were sitting at the window of a tiny room, looking at the night sky, across which the cones of searchlights wandered. The tightening of the French lines, the reëstablishment of regular communications and military discipline had combined to relegate both Croquier and Horace from the front, though they had begged to be allowed to stay. They had been in Paris for over a week, now, the hunchback having offered his tremendous strength for heavy work in a munitions factory.