Piedelot was being burned alive. He was writhing in the midst of a heap
of fagots, tied to a stake, and the flames were licking him with their
burning tongues. When he saw us, his tongue seemed to stick in his
throat; he drooped his head, and seemed as if he were going to die. It
was only the affair of a moment to upset the burning pile, to scatter
the embers, and to cut the ropes that fastened him.
Poor fellow! In what a terrible state we found him. The evening before
he had had his left arm broken, and it seemed as if he had been badly
beaten since then, for his whole body was covered with wounds, bruises
and blood. The flames had also begun their work on him, and he had two
large burns, one on his loins and the other on his right thigh, and his
beard and hair were scorched. Poor Piedelot!
No one knows the terrible rage we felt at this sight! We would have
rushed headlong at a hundred thousand Prussians; our thirst for
vengeance was intense. But the cowards had run away, leaving their
crime behind them. Where could we find them now? Meanwhile, however, the
captain's wife was looking after Piedelot, and dressing his wounds
as best she could, while the captain himself shook hands with him
excitedly, and in a few minutes he came to himself.
“Good-morning, captain; good-morning, 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,
and I preferred to stop them. That frightened them, and they did not
venture to go farther than the crossroads. They were such cowards. Four
of them shot at me at twenty yards, as if I had been a target, 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 me nor yourselves, being only
five against twenty.”
“You know that we should not have allowed you to have been taken, poor
old fellow.”
“I preferred to die by myself, don't you see! I did not want to bring
you here, for it would have been a mere ambush.”
“Well, we will not talk about it any more. Do you feel rather easier?”
“No, I am suffocating. I know that I cannot live much longer. The
brutes! They tied me to a tree, and beat me till I was half dead, and
then they shook my broken arm; but I did not make a sound. I would
rather have bitten my tongue out than have called out before them. Now
I can tell what I am suffering and shed tears; it does one good. Thank
you, my kind friends.”
“Poor Piedelot! But we will avenge you, you may be sure!”
“Yes, yes; I want you to do that. There is, in particular, a woman
among them who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed
yesterday. She is dressed like a lancer, and she tortured me the most
yesterday, and suggested burning me; and it was she who set fire to the
wood. Oh! the wretch, the brute! Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my
arms!” and he fell back gasping and exhausted, writhing in his terrible
agony, while the captain's wife wiped the perspiration from his
forehead, and we all shed tears of grief and rage, as if we had been
children. I will not describe the end to you; he died half an hour
later, previously telling us in what direction the enemy had gone. When
he was dead we gave 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
necessary,” the captain said; “but we will 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 take are to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer's wife,
she is to be tortured 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 am sure that you would not shoot a woman. Torturing
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
me.”
“We will outrage 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 morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four
leagues away. Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to
mount their horses, nor even to defend themselves; and in a few moments
we had five prisoner, corresponding to our own number. The captain
questioned them, and from their answers we felt certain that they were
the same whom we 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 describe our joy when we discovered what we were seeking
among them, the female executioner who had tortured our friend.
The four others were shot on the spot, with their backs to us and close
to the muzzles of our rifles; and then we turned our attention to the
woman. What were we going to do with her? I must acknowledge that we
were 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
we were 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
a prisoner.
The captain's poor wife was 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 campaign.
Two of us, who belonged to the neighborhood, returned home, so there
were only four of us, all told: the captain, his wife, and two men. We
belonged to Besancon, which was still being besieged 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 time to prove what they are made of.
The spring is coming on, and the armistice is only a trap laid for the
Prussians. During the time that it lasts, a new army will be raised, and
some fine morning we shall fall upon them again. We shall be ready, and
we have a hostage--let us remain here.”
We fixed our quarters there. It was terribly cold, and we did not go out
much, and somebody had always to keep the female prisoner in sight.
She was sullen, and never said anything, or else spoke of her husband,
whom the captain had killed. She looked at him continually with fierce
eyes, and we felt that she was tortured by a wild longing for revenge.
That seemed to us to be the most suitable punishment for the terrible
torments that she had made Piedelot suffer, for impotent vengeance is
such intense pain!
Alas! we who knew how to avenge our comrade ought to have thought that
this woman would know how to avenge her husband, and have been on our
guard. It is true that one of us kept watch every night, and that
at first we tied her by a long rope to the great oak bench that was
fastened to the wall. But, by and by, as she had never tried to escape,
in spite of her hatred for us, we relaxed our extreme prudence, and
allowed her to sleep somewhere else except on the bench, and without
being tied. What had we to fear? She was at the end of the room, a man
was on guard at the door, and between her and the sentinel the captain's
wife and two other men used to lie. She was alone and unarmed against
four, so there could be no danger.
One night when we were asleep, and the captain was on guard, the
lancer's wife was lying more quietly in her corner than usual, and
she had even smiled for the first time since she had been our prisoner
during the evening. Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, we
were all awakened by a terrible cry. We got up, groping about, and at
once stumbled over a furious couple who were rolling about and fighting
on the ground. It was the captain and the lancer's wife. We threw
ourselves on them, and separated them in a moment. She was shouting and
laughing, and he seemed to have the death rattle. All this took place
in the dark. Two of us held her, and when a light was struck a terrible
sight met our eyes. The captain was lying on the floor in a pool of
blood, with an enormous gash in his throat, and his sword bayonet, that
had been taken from his rifle, was sticking in the red, gaping wound. A
few minutes afterward he died, without having been able to utter a word.
His wife did not shed a tear. Her eyes were dry, her throat was
contracted, and she looked at the lancer's wife steadfastly, and with a
calm ferocity that inspired fear.
“This woman belongs to me,” she said to us suddenly. “You swore to me
not a week ago to let me kill her as I chose, if she killed my husband;
and you must keep your oath. You must fasten her securely to the
fireplace, upright against the back of it, and then you can go where you
like, but far from here. I will take my revenge on her myself. Leave the
captain's body, and we three, he, she and I, will remain here.”
We obeyed, and went away. She promised to write to us to Geneva, as we
were returning thither.