The Downfall

THE DOWNFALL

PART FIRST

I.

In the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away in the directionof the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from Mülhausen, the camp was pitched. In thefitful light of the overcast August day, beneath the lowering sky that wasfilled with heavy drifting clouds, the long lines of squat white shelter-tentsseemed to cower closer to the ground, and the muskets, stacked at regularintervals along the regimental fronts, made little spots of brightness, whileover all the sentries with loaded pieces kept watch and ward, motionless asstatues, straining their eyes to pierce the purplish mists that lay on thehorizon and showed where the mighty river ran.

It was about five o’clock when they had come in from Belfort; it was noweight, and the men had only just received their rations. There could be nodistribution of wood, however, the wagons having gone astray, and it hadtherefore been impossible for them to make fires and warm their soup. They hadconsequently been obliged to content themselves as best they might, washingdown their dry hard-tack with copious draughts of brandy, a proceeding that wasnot calculated greatly to help their tired legs after their long march. Nearthe canteen, however, behind the stacks of muskets, there were two soldierspertinaciously endeavoring to elicit a blaze from a small pile of green wood,the trunks of some small trees that they had chopped down with theirsword-bayonets, and that were obstinately determined not to burn. The cloud ofthick, black smoke, rising slowly in the

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