“To Bazeilles—­oh, no, I guess not; I don’t think my business lies that way—­I have another engagement.  Bye-bye, ta-ta!”

He turned on his heel and was off like a shot, and she was none the wiser as to whence he came or whither he went.  She had found him in a hole, she had lost sight of him at the corner of a wall, and never was she to set eyes on him again.

When she was alone again Henriette experienced a strange sensation of fear.  He had been no protection to her, that scrubby urchin, but his chatter had been a distraction; he had kept her spirits up by his way of making game of everything, as if it was all one huge raree show.  Now she was beginning to tremble, her strength was failing her, she, who by nature was so courageous.  The shells no longer fell around her:  the Germans had ceased firing on Bazeilles, probably to avoid killing their own men, who were now masters of the village; but within the last few minutes she had heard the whistling of bullets, that peculiar sound like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly, that she recognized by having heard it described.  There was such a raging, roaring clamor rising to the heavens in the distance, the confused uproar of other sounds was so violent, that in it she failed to distinguish the report of musketry.  As she was turning the corner of a house there was a deadened thud close at her ear, succeeded by the sound of falling plaster, which brought her to a sudden halt; it was a bullet that had struck the facade.  She was pale as death, and asked herself if her courage would be sufficient to carry her through to the end; and before she had time to frame an answer, she received what seemed to her a blow from a hammer upon her forehead, and sank, stunned, upon her knees.  It was a spent ball that had ricocheted and struck her a little above the left eyebrow with sufficient force to raise an ugly contusion.  When she came to, raising her hands to her forehead, she withdrew them covered with blood.  But the pressure of her fingers had assured her that the bone beneath was uninjured, and she said aloud, encouraging herself by the sound of her own voice: 

“It is nothing, it is nothing.  Come, I am not afraid; no, no!  I am not afraid.”

And it was the truth; she arose, and from that time walked amid the storm of bullets with absolute indifference, like one whose soul is parted from his body, who reasons not, who gives his life.  She marched straight onward, with head erect, no longer seeking to shelter herself, and if she struck out at a swifter pace it was only that she might reach her appointed end more quickly.  The death-dealing missiles pattered on the road before and behind her; twenty times they were near taking her life; she never noticed them.  At last she was at Bazeilles, and struck diagonally across a field of lucerne in order to regain the road, the main street that traversed the village.  Just as she turned into it she cast her eyes to the right, and there, some two hundred paces from her, beheld her house in a blaze.  The flames were invisible against the bright sunlight; the roof had already fallen in in part, the windows were belching dense clouds of black smoke.  She could restrain herself no longer, and ran with all her strength.