“Scoundrels! cowards!” he shouted.
“I will bet that they have set fire to the two
houses on the marketplace, in order to have their revenge,
and then they will scuttle off without saying a word.
They will be satisfied with having killed a man and
set fire to two houses. All right. It shall
not pass over like that. We must go for them;
they will not like to leave their illuminations in
order to fight.”
“It would be a great stroke of luck if we could
set Piedelot free at the same time,” some one
said.
The five of us set off, full of rage and hope.
In twenty minutes we had got to the bottom of the
coulee, and had not yet seen any one when we were
within a hundred yards of the inn. The fire was
behind the house, and all we saw of it was the reflection
above the roof. However, we were walking rather
slowly, as we were afraid of an ambush, when suddenly
we heard Piedelot’s well-known voice. It
had a strange sound, however; for it was at the same
time—dull and vibrating, stifled and clear,
as if he were calling out as loud as he could with
a bit of rag stuffed into his mouth. He seemed
to be hoarse and gasping, and the unlucky fellow kept
exclaiming: “Help! Help!”
We sent all thoughts of prudence to the devil, and
in two bounds we were at the back of the inn, where
a terrible sight met our eyes.
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.”
