Maurice followed their example, and endeavoured to obtain some newspapers. He filled his pockets with every number he could buy, and read them as he walked along under the spreading trees of the magnificent promenades that engirdle the town. Where could the German armies be? It seemed as if they had been lost. Two of them, no doubt, were near Metz--the first, under General Steinmetz, watching the fortress; the second, under Prince Frederick Charles, trying to make its way up the right bank of the Moselle so as to cut off Bazaine's communications with Paris. But where--so confused and contradictory were the newspaper statements--could the third army really be--the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, victorious at Weissenburg and Frœschweiler, and launched in pursuit of the First and Fifth French corps? Was it still camping at Nancy, or was it on the point of reaching Châlons that the camp should have been so hastily abandoned, and the magazines, accoutrements, forage, quite an incalculable wealth of supplies, fired and destroyed? There was the same confusion, and the same contradictory suppositions were indulged in with respect to the plans of the French generals. Hitherto separated from the rest of the world, it was only now that Maurice learnt what had been occurring in Paris--the thunderbolt of defeat falling on a people confident of victory, the terrible emotion in the streets, the convocation of the Chambers, the fall of the Liberal ministry[12] that had organised the Plebiscitum, and the Emperor's deposition from the post of commander-in-chief, which he had been obliged to surrender to Marshal Bazaine. The Emperor had been at the camp of Châlons since August 16, and all the papers spoke of a great council held there on the 17th, and attended by Prince Napoleon and several generals. None of the accounts agreed, however, as to the decisions that had been arrived at, apart from the incidents that had immediately followed, such as the appointment of General Trochu as governor of Paris and of Marshal MacMahon as commander of the army of Châlons, which implied the complete effacement of the Sovereign. A general scare, prodigious irresolution, conflicting plans following swiftly one upon the other--all these could be divined. But ever the same question arose in Maurice's mind: Where were the German armies? Who were right--those who pretended that Bazaine's movements were free, and that he was effecting his retreat by way of the northern fortresses, or those who asserted that he was already blockaded under Metz? There were persistent rumours of gigantic battles, heroic struggles sustained during an entire week, from the 14th to the 20th, but from these there was evolved only a formidable echo of conflict, waged far away.