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Chance had a share in urging Condé to take a further and almost decisive step in the dangerous path that was opening before him. One evening, just as he had lain down on his bed and was chatting with Vineuil, one of his trusty friends, the latter received a note which directed him to warn the Prince that two companies of guards were advancing on the side of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly of the subject that filled his bewildered brain. "The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what matters it! See, they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of Donchery; soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank us there, while more of them are coming up along the valley of the Givonne.
The bearers had tightly bandaged the injured limb in order to keep the bones in position and were about to bear the captain off the field on what children call a "chair," formed by joining their hands and slipping an arm of the patient over each of their necks, when Colonel de Vineuil, who had heard of the accident, came up, spurring his horse.
She was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte's father, Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene-Populeux.
A breath, chill and icy as that from the lips of death, had passed over the camp that lay lost in slumber and agonized expectation. It was at that moment that Jean and Maurice recognized in the tall, thin, spectral form that passed swiftly by, their colonel, de Vineuil.
But the old lady discouraged the project with an authority there was no disputing. The good old bourgeois blood of the frontier towns flowed in her veins; her austerely patriotic sentiments were almost those of a man. She broke the stern silence that she had preserved during the meal by saying: "Never mind Monsieur de Vineuil; he is doing his duty."
"In the Rue Maqua, near the corner of the Rue au Beurre; you can't mistake it; it is a big house, with statues in the garden." The old man turned away, but presently came running back. "I see you belong to the 106th. If it is your regiment you are looking for, it left the city by the Chateau, down there. I just met the colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil; I used to know him when he lived at Mezieres."
Then, unable longer to restrain their flight, with tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above his head: "My children," cried M. de Vineuil, "I commend you to the protection of God, who thus far has spared us all!" He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugitives, and vanished from their sight.
It is proper to add that Sedan, which is very straitlaced in its notions of propriety, has always been inclined to frown on Charleville, the city of laughter and levity. And then again the marriage would never have been effected but for the fact that Gilberte's uncle was Colonel de Vineuil, who it was supposed would soon be made a general.
All that evening M. de Vineuil had manifested great uneasiness that he had received no instructions to guide him in the morning. He felt that his regiment was too much "in the air," too much advanced, although it had already fallen back from the exposed position that it had occupied earlier in the day.
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