Volume III Part 29 (1/2)
”Good , all of you,” he said ”Ah! the scoundrels, the wretches! Why twenty of them came to surprise us”
”Twenty, do you say?”
”Yes, there was a whole band of them, and that is why I disobeyed orders, captain, and fired on them, for they would have killed you all, so I preferred to stop theo further than the cross-roads They were such cowards Four of theet, and then they slashed me with their swords My arm was broken so that I could only use my bayonet with one hand”
”But why did you not call for help?”
”I took good care not to do that, for you would all have come, and you would neither have been able to defend ainst twenty”
”You know that we should not have allowed you to have been taken, poor old fellow”
”I preferred to die byyou there, for it would have been a mere ambush”
”Well, ill not talk about it anyI know that I cannot live er The brutes! They tied me to a tree, and beat me till I felt half dead, and then they shook my broken arm, but I did not ue out than have called out before the and shed tears; it does one good
Thank you, e you, you may be sure!”
”Yes, yes, I want you to do that Especially, there is a wo them, who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed yesterday She is dressed like a lancer, and she torturedme, and it was she who set fire to the wood Oh! the wretch, the brute Ah! how I a and exhausted, writhing in his terrible agony, while the captain's iped the perspiration froe, as if we had been children I will not describe the end to you; he died half-an-hour later, but before that he told us in which direction the eneave ourselves time to bury him, and then we set out in pursuit of them, with our hearts full of fury and hatred
”We will throw ourselves on the whole Prussian army, if it be needful,”
the captain said, ”but ill avenge Piedelot We must catch those scoundrels Let us swear to die, rather than not to find them, and if I am killed first, these are my orders: all the prisoners that you make are to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer's wife, she is to be violated before she is put to death”
”She must not be shot, because she is a woman,” the captain's wife said
”If you survive, I a her will be quite sufficient; but if you are killed in this pursuit, I want one thing, and that is to fight with her; I will kill her with my own hands, and the others can do what they like with her if she kills e her! We will burn her! We will tear her to pieces!
Piedelot shall be avenged, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!”
V
The next ues away Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to mount their horses, nor even to defend themselves, and in a fewto our own number The captain questioned them, and from their anse felt certain that they were the same e had encountered the previous day, then a very curious operation took place One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and nothing can depict our joy e discovered ere seeking a them, the female executioner who had tortured our friend
The four others were shot on the spot, with their backs towards us, and close to the muzzles of our rifles, and then we turned our attention to the woe that ere all of us in favor of shooting her Hatred, and the wish to avenge Piedelot had extinguished all pity in us, and we had forgotten that ere going to shoot a woman, but a woman reminded us of it, the captain's wife; at her entreaties, therefore, we determined to keep her prisoner
The captain's poor as to be severely punished for this act of clemency
The next day we heard that the armistice had been extended to the Eastern part of France, and we had to put an end to our little cahborhood, returned home, so there were only four of us, all told; the captain, his wife, and two ed in spite of the armistice
”Let us stop here,” said the captain ”I cannot believe that the war is going to end like this The devil take it Surely there are men still left in France, and now is the ti on, and the ar the time that it lasts, a new ar we shall fall upon thee--let us remain here”
We fixed our quarters there It was terribly cold, and we did not go out much, and soht