'In the Rue Maqua, almost at the corner of the Rue au Beurre. It's a big, handsome house, with a carved front.' The old man then passed on, but all at once he hastened back after Jean, exclaiming: 'I say, you belong to the 106th. If you are looking for your regiment, it has left the town by way of the Château over there. I just met your colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil, whom I knew very well when he was in garrison at Mézières.'
Jean, however, set off again, making a furious gesture of annoyance. No, no, he wasn't going to lie on the hard ground now that he was certain of finding Maurice. And yet, in the depths of his conscience, he was worried by a feeling of remorse, for in his mind's eye he could see the colonel, tall and rigid, indefatigable despite his age, and always sleeping under canvas like his men. Busy with such thoughts as these, Jean began threading the High Street, and, having lost himself amid the increasing tumult that pervaded the town, he ended by applying to a little boy, who conducted him to the Rue Maqua.
It was here that one of Delaherche's grand-uncles had, in the last century, built a monumental factory, which had now been the property of the family for a hundred and sixty years. Sedan counts several cloth manufactories, dating from the earlier years of Louis XV., as large as Louvres, and with regally majestic façades. That in the Rue Maqua had three storeys of lofty windows framed round with carving of a severe style; and, in the rear of the front building, there was a palatial courtyard shaded with old trees, gigantic elms dating from the foundation of the establishment. Three generations of Delaherches had amassed considerable fortunes there, and now it was the younger branch of the family that reigned, the father of Jules Delaherche, the present owner, having inherited the property from a cousin who had died childless. Jules' father had increased the prosperity of the firm, but he was a man of easy morals, and had rendered his wife extremely unhappy. She, on becoming a widow, had feared lest her son should take to the same courses as his father, and after marrying him to a woman who was very devout and of very simple tastes, she had sought to maintain him in a dependent state as though he were a mere youth, and this till he was over fifty years of age. Life, however, sometimes has terrible revenges, and his wife having died, Delaherche, like a mere stripling, fell in love with a young widow of Charleville, pretty Madame Maginot, concerning whom there had been no little gossip, but whom he had ended by marrying during the previous autumn, despite all his mother's remonstrances. Sedan, a very puritanical town, has always looked down severely on Charleville, the abode of gaiety and festivity. It should be said, however, that the marriage would never have taken place had Gilberte not been the niece of Colonel de Vineuil, who, so it seemed, was on the point of becoming a general. This relationship, the idea of allying himself to a military family, had greatly flattered the manufacturer's feelings.