Where had it been fought and what was the outcome at this stage? As night fell it seemed as though mounting anxiety was spreading a lake of darkness over the orchard and the few hayricks around the farm buildings. And it was also being said that a Prussian spy had just been arrested while prowling round the camp and taken to the farm for the general to interrogate. Perhaps Colonel de Vineuil had had some telegram that was making him run so fast.

Meanwhile Maurice had gone on talking to his brother-in-law Weiss and his cousin Honoré Fouchard, the artillery sergeant. Retreat, at first far distant, then gradually getting louder, passed near them, with its brass and drums in the melancholy quiet of dusk, but they did not even appear to notice it. The young man, grandson of a hero of the Grande Armée, was born at Le Chêne-Populeux, where his father, fighting shy of glory, had come down to a humble job of tax-collector. His mother, of peasant stock, had died bringing him and his twin sister Henriette into the world, and Henriette had looked after him from their earliest childhood. He was now here as a volunteer after a long series of misdeeds, the typical dissipations of a weak and excitable temperament, money thrown away on gambling, women and the follies of all-devouring Paris; and all that when he had gone there to finish his law studies and his people had bled themselves white to make a grand gentleman of him. This had hastened his father’s death, and his sister, having spent her all, had had the good fortune to find a husband, this reliable fellow Weiss, an Alsatian from Mulhouse, who had been a book-keeper for years at the General Refinery at Le Chêne-Populeux, and was now an overseer for Monsieur Delaherche, one of the biggest clothmakers in Sedan. And Maurice thought he had quite turned over a new leaf, with his nervy nature as quick to hope for the best as to be discouraged by the bad, generous, enthusiastic, but without the slightest stability, blown hither and thither by every passing gust of wind. Fair, small, with a very large head, small neat nose and chin, he had a clever face, with grey, affectionate eyes, a bit wild at times.

Weiss had hurried to Mulhouse the day before the outbreak of hostilities, suddenly anxious to settle a family affair, and the reason why he had taken advantage of Colonel de Vineuil’s kindness and come to give his brother-in-law a handshake was that the colonel was uncle of young Madame Delaherche, a pretty widow married last year to the manufacturer. Maurice and Henriette had known her as a young girl through having been neighbours. Also, apart from the colonel, Maurice had found in Captain Beaudoin, the captain of his company, an acquaintance of Gilberte, young Madame Delaherche, and an intimate one, it was said, dating from Mézières when she was Madame Maginot, wife of Monsieur Maginot, Inspector of Forests.

‘Give Henriette a kiss for me,’ Maurice was saying to Weiss, for he was passionately devoted to his sister. ‘Tell her she will be pleased with me and that I mean to make her proud of me at last.’

Tears came into his eyes as he thought of his follies. His brother-in-law, deeply moved himself, changed the subject abruptly and talked to Honoré Fouchard, the artilleryman.

‘And as I’m going up Remilly way I’ll go and tell Uncle Fouchard I’ve seen you and you are all right.’

Uncle Fouchard, a peasant with some land and a business as a travelling butcher, was a brother of Henriette and Maurice’s mother. He lived at Remilly, up on the hill, six kilometres from Sedan.

‘Yes do,’ Honoré quietly answered. ‘Dad couldn’t care less, but go all the same if you would like to.’

At that moment there was a commotion over by the farm and they saw the prowler, the man they had accused of being a spy, coming out quite free, with only one officer. Presumably he had shown his papers and told a tale, for he was simply being turned out of the camp. At such a distance and in the dusk they could not make him out very clearly, but he was huge and square, with reddish hair.

But Maurice uttered a cry.

‘Honoré, look… it’s just like that Prussian, you know, Goliath!’

The name made the artilleryman start. He looked with blazing eyes. Goliath Steinberg, the farm-hand, the man who had made trouble between him and his father, who had taken Silvine away from him, the whole nasty story and abominable corruption that still tortured him. He would have liked to rush over and strangle the man, but by now he was beyond the piled arms and disappearing into the night.

‘Goliath!’ he muttered. ‘But it can’t be! He’s over there with the others… If ever I run into him!’

He had made a menacing gesture towards the darkening horizon – all that purplish Orient which for him was Prussia. There was a silence and then retreat was heard once more, but far away, fading out towards the end of the camp with a dying softness in keeping with the deepening haze.

‘Gosh!’ went on Honoré, ‘I shall get run in if I’m not there for roll-call. Good night, bye-bye all!’

He gave a final squeeze to both Weiss’s hands and strode rapidly towards the hillock on which the reserve artillery was parked, without another word about his father or message for Silvine, whose name burned his throat.

A few more minutes went by and over to the left, where the second brigade would be, a bugle sounded roll-call. Another answered, nearer, and then a third a long way off. Then, one after another they were all blowing together when Gaude, the company bugler, made up his mind in a volley of piercing notes. He was a tall, thin and miserable-looking fellow, clean shaven and with never a word to say, and he blew his calls with the breath of a hurricane.

Then Sergeant Sapin, a skinny little man with big cowlike eyes, began roll-call. He snapped out the names in his high-pitched voice, and the soldiers who had gathered round answered on every note from cello to flute. But then there was a hold-up.

‘Lapoulle!’ repeated the sergeant, very loud.

Still no answer. And Jean had to dash over to the heap of green sticks which Fusilier Lapoulle, egged on by his mates, was determined to get alight.