A diversion occurred, however. Loubet noticed that during the quarrel Pache also had ended by getting rid of his gun, gently depositing it at the foot of a bank. Why had he done this? He did not try to explain, but laughed slyly, in the somewhat shame-faced style of a good little boy detected in his first fault. Then, very gay and quite revived, he marched on with his arms swinging; and along the endless roads, between the fields of ripe corn and the hop grounds that followed one another, ever the same, the straggling march continued, and the laggards without knapsacks or guns were now but a tramping crowd, a medley of scamps and beggars, at whose approach the frightened villagers closed their doors.
Just then an unforeseen meeting put the finishing touch to Maurice's rage. A dull, continuous rumbling was heard from afar; it was the reserve artillery, which had been the last to start, and the first detachment of which suddenly debouched round a turn of the road, the laggard linesmen having barely time to throw themselves into the fields. There was an entire artillery regiment of six squadrons marching in column, the colonel in the centre and each officer in his place, and they all clattered along at equal, carefully observed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, horses, and men. And in the fifth squadron Maurice recognised his cousin Honoré's gun. The quartermaster was there, proudly erect on his horse, to the left of the front driver, Adolphe, a stalwart, fair-complexioned man, who bestrode a sturdy chestnut, which admirably matched the off-horse trotting beside it; whilst Adolphe's chum, Louis, the gunner, a dark little fellow, would be seen among the six men seated in pairs on the ammunition boxes. They all seemed to have grown taller to Maurice, who had become acquainted with them at the camp, and the gun, drawn by its four horses and followed by its caisson, to which six other horses were harnessed, appeared to him as dazzling as a sun, well groomed and furbished, idolised by all its people, man and beast, who clung to it as it were with the discipline and attachment of a gallant family; and fearfully was Maurice's suffering increased when he saw his cousin Honoré dart a contemptuous glance at all the laggards, and then look quite stupefied on perceiving him among this flock of unarmed men. The defiling was nearly over already. The train of the batteries, the ammunition and forage waggons, the field smithies passed by; and then in a last cloud of dust came the spare men and horses, who vanished from sight at another bend of the road, amid the gradually subsiding clatter of wheels and hoofs.