.

.

By nightfall the vehicles filled with the sick were no longer filing by.
He now saw hundreds of drays, some hermetically sealed with the prudence that explosive material requires, others with bundles and boxes that were sending out a stale odor of provisions.

Then came great herds of cattle raising thick, whirling clouds of dust in the narrow parts of the road, prodded on by the sticks and yells of the shepherds in kepis.
His thoughts kept him wakeful all night.

This, then, was the retreat of which the people of Paris were talking, but in which many wished not to believe--the retreat reaching even there and continuing its indefinite retirement, since nobody knew what its end might be.