Two days later, I received the following letter, dated the day after we
had left, and that had been written at an inn on the high road:
"MY FRIEND,
"I am writing to you, according to my promise. For the moment I am
at the inn, where I have just handed my prisoner over to a Prussian
officer.
"I must tell you, my friend, that this poor woman has left two
children in Germany. She had followed her husband whom she adored,
as she did not wish him to be exposed to the risks of war by
himself, and as her children were with their grandparents. I have
learnt all this since yesterday, and it has turned my ideas of
vengeance into more humane feelings. At the very moment when I felt
pleasure in insulting this woman, and in threatening her with the
most fearful torments, in recalling Piédelot, who had been burnt
alive, and in threatening her with a similar death, she looked at
me coldly, and said:
"'What have you got to reproach me with, Frenchwoman? You think
that you will do right in avenging your husband's death, is not
that so?'
"'Yes, I replied.'
"'Very well then; in killing him, I did what you are going to do in
burning me. I avenged my husband, for your husband killed him.'
"'Well,' I replied, 'as you approve of this vengeance, prepare to
endure it.'
"'I do not fear it.'
"And in fact she did not seem to have lost courage. Her face was
calm, and she looked at me without trembling, while I brought wood
and dried leaves together, and feverishly threw on to them the
powder from some cartridges, which was to make her funeral pile the
more cruel.
"I hesitated in my thoughts of persecution for a moment. But the
captain was there, pale and covered with blood, and he seemed to be
looking at me with his large, glassy eyes, and I applied myself to
my work again after kissing his pale lips. Suddenly, however, on
raising my head, I saw that she was crying, and I felt rather
surprised.
"'So you are frightened?' I said to her.
"'No, but when I saw you kiss your husband, I thought of mine, of
all whom I love."
"She continued to sob, but stopping suddenly she said to me in
broken words, and in a low voice:
"'Have you any children?'
"A shiver ran over me, for I guessed that this poor woman had some.
She asked me to look in a pocketbook which was in her bosom, and in
it I saw two photographs of quite young children, a boy and a girl,
with those kind, gentle, chubby faces that German children have. In
it there were also two locks of light hair and a letter in a large
childish hand, and beginning with German words which meant: 'My
dear little mother.'
"I could not restrain my tears, my dear friend, and so I untied
her, and without venturing to look at the face of my poor, dead
husband, who was not to be avenged, I went with her as far as the
inn. She is free; I have just left her, and she kissed me with
tears. I am going upstairs to my husband; come as soon as possible,
my dear friend, to look for our two bodies."
I set off with all speed, and when I arrived, there was a Prussian
patrol at the cottage, and when I asked what it all meant, I was told
that there was a captain of _Franc-tireurs_ and his wife inside, both
dead. I gave their names; they saw that I knew them, and I begged to be
allowed to undertake their funeral.
"Somebody has already undertaken it," was the reply. "Go in if you wish
to, as you knew them. You can settle about their funeral with their
friend."
I went in. The captain and his wife were lying side by side on a bed,
and were covered by a sheet. I raised it, and saw that the woman had
inflicted a similar wound in her throat to that from which her husband
had died.
At the side of the bed there sat, watching and weeping, the woman who
had been mentioned to me as their best friend. It was the lancer's wife.