Weiss and Laurent, aided by the remaining soldiers, carried him below, notwithstanding his vehement protests; he told them not to waste their time on him, his time had come; he might as well die upstairs as down.  He was still able to be of service to them, however, when they had laid him on a bed in a room of the first floor, by advising them what was best to do.

“Fire into the mass,” he said; “don’t stop to take aim.  They are too cowardly to risk an advance unless they see your fire begin to slacken.”

And so the siege of the little house went on as if it was to last for eternity.  Twenty times it seemed as if it must be swept away bodily by the storm of iron that beat upon it, and each time, as the smoke drifted away, it was seen amid the sulphurous blasts, torn, pierced, mangled, but erect and menacing, spitting fire and lead with undiminished venom from each one of its orifices.  The assailants, furious that they should be detained for such length of time and lose so many men before such a hovel, yelled and fired wildly in the distance, but had not courage to attempt to carry the lower floor by a rush.

“Look out!” shouted the corporal, “there is a shutter about to fall!”

The concentrated fire had torn one of the inside blinds from its hinges, but Weiss darted forward and pushed a wardrobe before the window, and Laurent was enabled to continue his operations under cover.  One of the soldiers was lying at his feet with his jaw broken, losing blood freely.  Another received a bullet in his chest, and dragged himself over to the wall, where he lay gasping in protracted agony, while convulsive movements shook his frame at intervals.  They were but eight, now, all told, not counting the lieutenant, who, too weak to speak, his back supported by the headboard of the bed, continued to give his directions by signs.  As had been the case with the attic, the three rooms of the first floor were beginning to be untenable, for the mangled mattresses no longer afforded protection against the missiles; at every instant the plaster fell in sheets from the walls and ceiling, and the furniture was in process of demolition:  the sides of the wardrobe yawned as if they had been cloven by an ax.  And worse still, the ammunition was nearly exhausted.

“It’s too bad!” grumbled Laurent; “just when everything was going so beautifully!”

But suddenly Weiss was struck with an idea.

“Wait!”

He had thought of the dead soldier up in the garret above, and climbed up the ladder to search for the cartridges he must have about him.  A wide space of the roof had been crushed in; he saw the blue sky, a patch of bright, wholesome light that made him start.  Not wishing to be killed, he crawled over the floor on his hands and knees, then, when he had the cartridges in his possession, some thirty of them, he made haste down again as fast his legs could carry him.

Downstairs, as he was sharing his newly acquired treasure with the gardener’s lad, a soldier uttered a piercing cry and sank to his knees.  They were but seven; and presently they were but six, a bullet having entered the corporal’s head at the eye and lodged in the brain.