1870—1872 193 



The town was full of soldiers, some crouching round fires in 

 the street, others stepping across their dead horses and begging 

 for a little straw to lie on. Many had taken refuge in the 

 church and were lying on the steps of the altar; a few were 

 attempting to bandage their frozen feet, threatened with 

 gangrene. 



Suddenly the news spread that the general-in-chief, Bour- 

 baki, had shot himself through the brain. This did not excite 

 much surprise. He had telegraphed two days before to the 

 Minister of War: *'You cannot have an idea of the sufferings 

 that the army has endured since the beginning of December. 

 It is martyrdom to be in command at such a time," he added 

 despairingly. 



*'The retreat from Moscow cannot have been worse than 

 this," said Pasteur to a staff officer. Commandant Bourboulon, 

 a nephew of Sainte Claire Deville, whom he met in the midst 

 of those horrors and who could give him no information as to 

 his son's battalion of Chasseurs. ''AH that I can tell you," 

 said a soldier anxiously questioned by Mme. Pasteur, "is that 

 out of the 1,200 men of that battalion there are but 300 left." 

 As she was questioning another, a soldier who was passing 

 stopped: ''Sergeant Pasteur? Yes, he is alive; I slept by him 

 last night at Chaffois. He has remained behind ; he is ill. You 

 might meet him on the road towards Chaffois." 



The Pasteurs started again on the road followed the day 

 before. They had barely passed the Pontarlier gate when a 

 rough cart came by. A soldier muffled in his great coat, his 

 hands resting on the edge of the cart, started with surprise. 

 He hurried down, and the family embraced without a word, so 

 great was their emotion. 



The capitulation of starving Paris and the proposed armistice 

 are historical events still present in the memory of men who 

 were then beginning to learn the meaning of defeat. The 

 armistice, which Jules Favre thought would be applied with- 

 out restriction to all the army corps, was interpreted by Bis- 

 marck in a peculiar way. He and Jules Favre between them 

 had drawn up a protocol in general terms; it had been under- 

 stood in those preliminary confabulations that, before drawing 

 up the limits of the neutral zone applicable to the Eastern Army 

 Corps, some missing information would be awaited, the respec- 

 tive positions of the belligerents being unknown. The in- 

 formation did not come, and Jules Favre in his imprudent 



