“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!”
