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While matters were in this condition at one end of the house Delaherche, who was never contented unless occupied, was bustling about and making attempts to start up his business once more, but what with the disordered condition of the labor market and the pecuniary embarrassment of many among his customers, he had so far only put a few looms in motion. Then it occurred to him, as a means of killing the time that hung heavy on his hands, to make a complete inventory of his business and perfect certain changes and improvements that he had long had in mind. To assist him in his labors he had just then at his disposal a young man, the son of an old business acquaintance, who had drifted in on him after the battle. Edmond Lagarde, who, although he was twenty-three years old, would not have been taken for more than eighteen, had grown to man’s estate in his father’s little dry-goods shop at Passy; he was a sergeant in the 5th line regiment and had fought with great bravery throughout the campaign, so much so that he had been knocked over near the Minil gate about five o’clock, when the battle was virtually ended, his left arm shattered by one of the last shots fired that day, and Delaherche, when the other wounded were removed from the improvised ambulance in the drying room, had good-naturedly received him as an inmate of his house. It was under these circumstances that Edmond was now one of the family, having an apartment in the house and taking his meals at the common table, and, now that his wound was healed, acting as a sort of secretary to the manufacturer while waiting for a chance to get back to Paris. He had signed a parole binding himself not to attempt to leave the city, and owing to this and to his protector’s influence the Prussian authorities did not interfere with him. He was fair, with blue eyes, and pretty as a woman; so timid withal that his face assumed a beautiful hue of rosy red whenever anyone spoke to him. He had been his mother’s darling; she had impoverished herself, expending all the profits of their little business to send him to college. And he adored Paris and bewailed his compulsory absence from it when talking to Gilberte, did this wounded cherub, whom the young woman had displayed great good-fellowship in nursing.

Finally, their household had received another addition in the person of M. de Gartlauben, a captain in the German landwehr, whose regiment had been sent to Sedan to supply the place of troops dispatched to service in the field. He was a personage of importance, notwithstanding his comparatively modest rank, for he was nephew to the governor-general, who, from his headquarters at Rheims, exercised unlimited power over all the district. He, too, prided himself on having lived at Paris, and seized every occasion ostentatiously to show he was not ignorant of its pleasures and refinements; concealing beneath this film of varnish his inborn rusticity, he assumed as well as he was able the polish of one accustomed to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly buttoned in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously about his age, never being able to bring himself to own up to his forty-five years. Had he had more intelligence he might have made himself an object of greater dread, but as it was his over-weening vanity, kept him in a continual state of satisfaction with himself, for never could such a thing have entered his mind as that anyone could dare to ridicule him.

At a subsequent period he rendered Delaherche services that were of inestimable value. But what days of terror and distress were those that followed upon the heels of the capitulation! the city, overrun with German soldiery, trembled in momentary dread of pillage and conflagration. Then the armies of the victors streamed away toward the valley of the Seine, leaving behind them only sufficient men to form a garrison, and the quiet that settled upon the place was that of a necropolis: the houses all closed, the shops shut, the streets deserted as soon as night closed in, the silence unbroken save for the hoarse cries and heavy tramp of the patrols. No letters or newspapers reached them from the outside world; Sedan was become a dungeon, where the immured citizens waited in agonized suspense for the tidings of disaster with which the air was instinct. To render their misery complete they were threatened with famine; the city awoke one morning from its slumbers to find itself destitute of bread and meat and the country roundabout stripped naked, as if a devouring swarm of locusts had passed that way, by the hundreds of thousands of men who for a week past had been pouring along its roads and across its fields in a devastating torrent. There were provisions only for two days, and the authorities were compelled to apply to Belgium for relief; all supplies now came from their neighbors across the frontier, whence the customs guards had disappeared, swept away like all else in the general cataclysm. Finally there were never-ending vexations and annoyances, a conflict that commenced to rage afresh each morning between the Prussian governor and his underlings, quartered at the Sous-Prefecture, and the Municipal Council, which was in permanent session at the Hotel de Ville. It was all in vain that the city fathers fought like heroes, discussing, objecting, protesting, contesting the ground inch by inch; the inhabitants had to succumb to the exactions that constantly became more burdensome, to the whims and unreasonableness of the stronger.