“That, that is the death of Victor.”
Showing the other, she added, indicating the red ruins
with a bend of the head: “Here are their
names, so that you can write home.” She
quietly held a sheet of paper out to the officer,
who held her by the shoulders, and she continued:
“You must write how it happened, and you must
say to their mothers that it was I who did that, Victoire
Simon, la Sauvage! Do not forget.”
The officer shouted some orders in German. They
seized her, they threw her against the walls of her
house, still hot. Then twelve men drew quickly
up before her, at twenty paces. She did not move.
She had understood; she waited.
An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report.
A belated shot went off by itself, after the others.
The old woman did not fall. She sank as though
they had cut off her legs.
The Prussian officer approached. She was almost
cut in two, and in her withered hand she held her
letter bathed with blood.
My friend Serval added:
“It was by way of reprisal that the Germans
destroyed the chateau of the district, which belonged
to me.”
I thought of the mothers of those four fine fellows
burned in that house and of the horrible heroism of
that other mother shot against the wall.
And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by
the flames.
I should say I did remember that Epiphany supper during
the war! exclaimed Count de Garens, an army captain.
I was quartermaster of cavalry at the time, and for
a fortnight had been scouting in front of the German
advance guard. The evening before we had cut
down a few Uhlans and had lost three men, one of whom
was that poor little Raudeville. You remember
Joseph de Raudeville, of course.
Well, on that day my commanding officer ordered me
to take six troopers and to go and occupy the village
of Porterin, where there had been five skirmishes
in three weeks, and to hold it all night. There
were not twenty houses left standing, not a dozen
houses in that wasps’ nest. So I took ten
troopers and set out about four o’clock, and
at five o’clock, while it was still pitch dark,
we reached the first houses of Porterin. I halted
and ordered Marchas—you know Pierre de Marchas,
who afterward married little Martel-Auvelin, the daughter
of the Marquis de Martel-Auvelin—to go
alone into the village, and to report to me what he
saw.
I had selected nothing but volunteers, all men of
good family. It is pleasant when on duty not
to be forced to be on intimate terms with unpleasant
fellows. This Marchas was as smart as possible,
cunning as a fox and supple as a serpent. He
could scent the Prussians as a dog can scent a hare,
could discover food where we should have died of hunger
without him, and obtained information from everybody,
and information which was always reliable, with incredible
cleverness.
