“I did.”
The colonel, surprised, was silent for a minute, looking straight at
the prisoner. Father Milon stood impassive, with the stupid look of the
peasant, his eyes lowered as though he were talking to the priest. Just
one thing betrayed an uneasy mind; he was continually swallowing his
saliva, with a visible effort, as though his throat were terribly
contracted.
The man's family, his son Jean, his daughter-in-law and his two
grandchildren were standing a few feet behind him, bewildered and
affrighted.
The colonel went on:
“Do you also know who killed all the scouts who have been found dead,
for a month, throughout the country, every morning?”
The old man answered with the same stupid look:
“I did.”
“You killed them all?”
“Uh huh! I did.”
“You alone? All alone?”
“Uh huh!”
“Tell me how you did it.”
This time the man seemed moved; the necessity for talking any length of
time annoyed him visibly. He stammered:
“I dunno! I simply did it.”
The colonel continued:
“I warn you that you will have to tell me everything. You might as well
make up your mind right away. How did you begin?”
The man cast a troubled look toward his family, standing close behind
him. He hesitated a minute longer, and then suddenly made up his mind to
obey the order.
“I was coming home one night at about ten o'clock, the night after you
got here. You and your soldiers had taken more than fifty ecus worth of
forage from me, as well as a cow and two sheep. I said to myself: 'As
much as they take from you; just so much will you make them pay back.'
And then I had other things on my mind which I will tell you. Just then
I noticed one of your soldiers who was smoking his pipe by the ditch
behind the barn. I went and got my scythe and crept up slowly behind
him, so that he couldn't hear me. And I cut his head off with one single
blow, just as I would a blade of grass, before he could say 'Booh!' If
you should look at the bottom of the pond, you will find him tied up in
a potato-sack, with a stone fastened to it.
“I got an idea. I took all his clothes, from his boots to his cap, and
hid them away in the little wood behind the yard.”
The old man stopped. The officers remained speechless, looking at each
other. The questioning began again, and this is what they learned.
Once this murder committed, the man had lived with this one thought:
“Kill the Prussians!” He hated them with the blind, fierce hate of the
greedy yet patriotic peasant. He had his idea, as he said. He waited
several days.
He was allowed to go and come as he pleased, because he had shown
himself so humble, submissive and obliging to the invaders. Each night
he saw the outposts leave. One night he followed them, having heard the
name of the village to which the men were going, and having learned the
few words of German which he needed for his plan through associating
with the soldiers.
He left through the back yard, slipped into the woods, found the dead
man's clothes and put them on. Then he began to crawl through the
fields, following along the hedges in order to keep out of sight,
listening to the slightest noises, as wary as a poacher.
As soon as he thought the time ripe, he approached the road and hid
behind a bush. He waited for a while. Finally, toward midnight, he heard
the sound of a galloping horse. The man put his ear to the ground in
order to make sure that only one horseman was approaching, then he got
ready.
An Uhlan came galloping along, carrying des patches. As he went, he
was all eyes and ears. When he was only a few feet away, Father Milon
dragged himself across the road, moaning: “Hilfe! Hilfe!” ( Help!
Help!) The horseman stopped, and recognizing a German, he thought he was
wounded and dismounted, coming nearer without any suspicion, and just
as he was leaning over the unknown man, he received, in the pit of his
stomach, a heavy thrust from the long curved blade of the sabre. He
dropped without suffering pain, quivering only in the final throes. Then
the farmer, radiant with the silent joy of an old peasant, got up again,
and, for his own pleasure, cut the dead man's throat. He then dragged
the body to the ditch and threw it in.
The horse quietly awaited its master. Father Milon mounted him and
started galloping across the plains.
About an hour later he noticed two more Uhlans who were returning
home, side by side. He rode straight for them, once more crying “Hilfe!
Hilfe!”
The Prussians, recognizing the uniform, let him approach without
distrust. The old man passed between them like a cannon-ball, felling
them both, one with his sabre and the other with a revolver.
Then he killed the horses, German horses! After that he quickly returned
to the woods and hid one of the horses. He left his uniform there and
again put on his old clothes; then going back into bed, he slept until
morning.
For four days he did not go out, waiting for the inquest to be
terminated; but on the fifth day he went out again and killed two more
soldiers by the same stratagem. From that time on he did not stop.
Each night he wandered about in search of adventure, killing Prussians,
sometimes here and sometimes there, galloping through deserted fields,
in the moonlight, a lost Uhlan, a hunter of men. Then, his task
accomplished, leaving behind him the bodies lying along the roads, the
old farmer would return and hide his horse and uniform.
He went, toward noon, to carry oats and water quietly to his mount, and
he fed it well as he required from it a great amount of work.
But one of those whom he had attacked the night before, in defending
himself slashed the old peasant across the face with his sabre.
However, he had killed them both. He had come back and hidden the horse
and put on his ordinary clothes again; but as he reached home he began
to feel faint, and had dragged himself as far as the stable, being
unable to reach the house.
They had found him there, bleeding, on the straw.
When he had finished his tale, he suddenly lifted up his head and looked
proudly at the Prussian officers.
The colonel, who was gnawing at his mustache, asked:
“You have nothing else to say?”
“Nothing more; I have finished my task; I killed sixteen, not one more
or less.”
“Do you know that you are going to die?”
“I haven't asked for mercy.”
“Have you been a soldier?”
“Yes, I served my time. And then, you had killed my father, who was a
soldier of the first Emperor. And last month you killed my youngest son,
Francois, near Evreux. I owed you one for that; I paid. We are quits.”
The officers were looking at each other.
The old man continued:
“Eight for my father, eight for the boy--we are quits. I did not seek
any quarrel with you. I don't know you. I don't even know where you come
from. And here you are, ordering me about in my home as though it were
your own. I took my revenge upon the others. I'm not sorry.”
And, straightening up his bent back, the old man folded his arms in the
attitude of a modest hero.
The Prussians talked in a low tone for a long time. One of them, a
captain, who had also lost his son the previous month, was defending the
poor wretch. Then the colonel arose and, approaching Father Milon, said
in a low voice:
“Listen, old man, there is perhaps a way of saving your life, it is
to--”
But the man was not listening, and, his eyes fixed on the hated officer,
while the wind played with the downy hair on his head, he distorted his
slashed face, giving it a truly terrible expression, and, swelling out
his chest, he spat, as hard as he could, right in the Prussian's face.
The colonel, furious, raised his hand, and for the second time the man
spat in his face.
All the officers had jumped up and were shrieking orders at the same
time.
In less than a minute the old man, still impassive, was pushed up
against the wall and shot, looking smilingly the while toward Jean, his
eldest son, his daughter-in-law and his two grandchildren, who witnessed
this scene in dumb terror.