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The troops collected at Versailles were now so numerous as to warrant their formation in two armies, a first line under the orders of Marshal MacMahon and a reserve commanded by General Vinoy.
MacMahon thereupon commuted the punishment of death into a twenty years' imprisonment, remitted the disgrace of the formalities of a military degradation, without canceling its operation, and appointed as the prisoner's place of confinement the fortress on the island of St. Marguerite, opposite Cannes, known in connection with the "iron mask."
Notwithstanding this, however, the troops were pushed ahead with all possible vigor to intercept MacMahon and force a battle before he could withdraw from his faulty movement, for which it has since been ascertained he was not at all responsible.
Oh, Dora, I can't help saying it, I should be so happy if Arthur Lovell and you were to marry." Miss Macmahon blushed a much deeper red than before. "Oh, Laura," she said, "that's quite impossible." But Miss Dunbar shook her head. "I shall live in the hope of it, notwithstanding," she said.
Dunbar in India, after the death of her first husband, a young captain in a cavalry regiment, who had been killed in an encounter with the Sikhs a year after his marriage, leaving his young widow with an infant daughter, a helpless baby of six weeks old. The poor, high-born Lady Louisa Macmahon was left most desolate and miserable after the death of her first husband.
Two minutes before twelve o'clock the word was passed in an undertone, "Ready," and as the hands indicated it was twelve o'clock, on a command from MacMahon a shout arose of "Vive l'Empereur!" bugles and drums sounded the charge, and the zouaves dashed straight at the Malakoff.
As they had not had wit enough to fall back while there was time and take post among the passes of the Vosges, where ten thousand men would have sufficed to hold in check a hundred thousand, they should at least have blown up the bridges and destroyed the tunnels; but the generals had lost their heads, and both sides were so dazed, each was so ignorant of the other's movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to ascertain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off toward Luneville, while the Crown Prince of Prussia was looking for him in the direction of the Vosges.
About seven o'clock Lieutenant Rochas affirmed that MacMahon was coming up with the whole army.
But in the solitude of the Avenue MacMahon, the shadow which she had seen at the corner of the Rue Galilee came near her with a directness that was unmistakable. She recognized Robert Le Menil, who, having followed her from the quay, was stopping her at the most quiet and secure place. His air, his attitude, expressed the simplicity of motive which had formerly pleased Therese.
Victory meant the fall of Washington, the coming of despair to the North, an end of the Civil War, which would bring independence and the prize for which they had contended to the Confederates. And Lee failed at Gettysburg, not as Napoleon failed at Waterloo or as MacMahon failed at Sedan, but he failed, and his failure was the beginning of the end.
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