In the fierce fighting at
Sedan, each in turn saved the other's life. After the battle, they were
made prisoners, but escaped, Jean receiving a severe wound during their
flight. They took refuge at Remilly in the house of Fouchard, and Jean
was nursed by Henriette Weiss, Levasseur's sister. Under her care, the
wounded man came to dream of the possibility of a life of happiness with
this woman, so tender, so sweet, and so active, whose fate had been so
sad. But the chances of war were too hard; Maxime returned to Paris, and
after the conclusion of the war took part in the Communist rising, which
Jean assisted to quell. By an extraordinary chance, the two men, loving
one another as brothers, came to be fighting on opposite sides, and it
was the hand of Jean that was fated to inflict the fatal wound upon his
friend. He had killed the brother of the woman he loved, and henceforth
there could be nothing between them, so he passed from her life,
returning to assist in that cultivation of the soil which was needed to
rejuvenate his country. La Debacle.
He settled at Valqueyras, near Plassans, where he married Melanie Vial,
the only daughter of a peasant farmer in easy circumstances, whose land
he cultivated.
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