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Maurice, who preferred to say nothing on the subject, could not help smiling, while Jean, embarrassed by the political turn the conversation had taken and fearful lest he might make some ill-timed remark, simply replied:

“They say he is a brave man, though.”

But those few words, modestly expressed, fairly made Delaherche jump. All his past fear and alarm, all the mental anguish he had suffered, burst from his lips in a cry of concentrated passion, closely allied to hatred.

“A brave man, forsooth; and what does that amount to! Are you aware, sir, that my factory was struck three times by Prussian shells, and that it is no fault of the Emperor’s that it was not burned! Are you aware that I, I shall lose a hundred thousand francs by this idiotic business! No, no; France invaded, pillaged, and laid waste, our industries compelled to shut down, our commerce ruined; it is a little too much, I tell you! One brave man like that is quite sufficient; may the Lord preserve us from any more of them! He is down in the blood and mire, and there let him remain!”

And he made a forcible gesture with his closed fist as if thrusting down and holding under the water some poor wretch who was struggling to save himself, then finished his coffee, smacking his lips like a true gourmand. Gilberte waited on Henriette as if she had been a child, laughing a little involuntary laugh when the latter made some exhibition of absent-mindedness. And when at last the coffee had all been drunk they still lingered on in the peaceful quiet of the great cool dining room.

And at that same hour Napoleon III. was in the weaver’s lowly cottage on the Donchery road. As early as five o’clock in the morning he had insisted on leaving the Sous-Prefecture; he felt ill at ease in Sedan, which was at once a menace and a reproach to him, and moreover he thought he might, in some measure, alleviate the sufferings of his tender heart by obtaining more favorable terms for his unfortunate army. His object was to have a personal interview with the King of Prussia. He had taken his place in a hired caleche and been driven along the broad highway, with its row of lofty poplars on either side, and this first stage of his journey into exile, accomplished in the chill air of early dawn, must have reminded him forcibly of the grandeur that had been his and that he was putting behind him forever. It was on this road that he had his encounter with Bismarck, who came hurrying to meet him in an old cap and coarse, greased boots, with the sole object of keeping him occupied and preventing him from seeing the King until the capitulation should have been signed. The King was still at Vendresse, some nine miles away. Where was he to go? What roof would afford him shelter while he waited? In his own country, so far away, the Palace of the Tuileries had disappeared from his sight, swallowed up in the bosom of a storm-cloud, and he was never to see it more. Sedan seemed already to have receded into the distance, leagues and leagues, and to be parted from him by a river of blood. In France there were no longer imperial chateaus, nor official residences, nor even a chimney-nook in the house of the humblest functionary, where he would have dared to enter and claim hospitality. And it was in the house of the weaver that he determined to seek shelter, the squalid cottage that stood close to the roadside, with its scanty kitchen-garden inclosed by a hedge and its front of a single story with little forbidding windows. The room above-stairs was simply whitewashed and had a tiled floor; the only furniture was a common pine table and two straw-bottomed chairs. He spent two hours there, at first in company with Bismarck, who smiled to hear him speak of generosity, after that alone in silent misery, flattening his ashy face against the panes, taking his last look at French soil and at the Meuse, winding in and out, so beautiful, among the broad fertile fields.