On the following morning, when Maurice awoke after a stormy night, which he had spent rolled up in his blanket outside his tent, he was relieved to hear that the plan of retreating upon Paris had gained the upper hand. There was some talk of a fresh council held the previous evening, which had been attended by the ex-vice-Emperor,[14] M. Rouher, whom the Empress had despatched to head quarters in view of hastening the march upon Verdun, but whom Marshal MacMahon seemed to have convinced of the danger that would attend such a movement. Had any bad news of Bazaine come to hand? No one dared to assert this. However, the absence of news was sufficiently significant. All the officers with any common sense pronounced themselves in favour of waiting for the enemy under Paris; and, feeling convinced that he and his comrades would begin falling back the very next day, since it was said that orders to that effect had been issued, Maurice in his delight determined to satisfy a childish craving. He wished, once in a way, to escape the mess-platter and to breakfast somewhere at a cloth-spread table, with a bottle of wine, a decanter of water, and a plate before him--all the things which it seemed to him he had been deprived of for many months. He had some money in his pocket, so he slipped away with a beating heart, as if bent on some spree, and began to search about him for an inn.
It was on the outskirts of the village of Courcelles, beyond the canal, that he found the breakfast he had dreamt of. He had been told the day before that the Emperor had taken up his quarters at a private house in this village, and having strolled there out of curiosity, he remembered having noticed at the corner of a couple of roads a tavern with an arbour, where dangled some beautiful bunches of grapes already ripe and golden. There were some green-painted tables under the creeping vine, and through the open doorway of the spacious kitchen one could espy the loud-ticking clock, the cheap coloured prints pasted on the walls, and the fat hostess attending to the roasting-jack. A bowling alley stretched in the rear of the house, and the whole place had the gay, attractive, free-and-easy aspect of an old-fashioned _guinguette_.