In the wood across the valley the Prussians appeared to be receiving re-enforcements, for their fire gradually grew warmer.  There was no one to be seen; at most, the swiftly vanishing form now and then of a man changing his position.  A villa, with green shutters, was occupied by their sharpshooters, who fired from the half-open windows of the rez-de-chaussee.  It was about four o’clock, and the noise of the cannonade in the distance was diminishing, the guns were being silenced one by one; and there they were, French and Prussians, in that out-of-the-way-corner whence they could not see the white flag floating over the citadel, still engaged in the work of mutual slaughter, as if their quarrel had been a personal one.  Notwithstanding the armistice there were many such points where the battle continued to rage until it was too dark to see; the rattle of musketry was heard in the faubourg of the Fond de Givonne and in the gardens of Petit-Pont long after it had ceased elsewhere.

For a quarter of an hour the bullets flew thick and fast from one side of the valley to the other.  Now and again someone who was so incautious as to expose himself went down with a ball in his head or chest.  There were three men lying dead in the avenue.  The rattling in the throat of another man who had fallen prone upon his face was something horrible to listen to, and no one thought to go and turn him on his back to ease his dying agony.  Jean, who happened to look around just at that moment, beheld Henriette glide tranquilly down the steps, approach the wounded man and turn him over, then slip a knapsack beneath his head by way of pillow.  He ran and seized her and forcibly brought her back behind the tree where he and Maurice were posted.

“Do you wish to be killed?”

She appeared to be entirely unconscious of the danger to which she had exposed herself.

“Why, no—­but I am afraid to remain in that house, all alone.  I would rather be outside.”

And so she stayed with them.  They seated her on the ground at their feet, against the trunk of the tree, and went on expending the few cartridges that were left them, blazing away to right and left, with such fury that they quite forgot their sensations of fear and fatigue.  They were utterly unconscious of what was going on around them, acting mechanically, with but one end in view; even the instinct of self-preservation had deserted them.

“Look, Maurice,” suddenly said Henriette; “that dead soldier there before us, does he not belong to the Prussian Guard?”

She had been eying attentively for the past minute or two one of the dead bodies that the enemy had left behind them when they retreated, a short, thick-set young man, with big mustaches, lying upon his side on the gravel of the terrace.

The chin-strap had broken, releasing the spiked helmet, which had rolled away a few steps.  And it was indisputable that the body was attired in the uniform of the Guard; the dark gray trousers, the blue tunic with white facings, the greatcoat rolled and worn, belt-wise, across the shoulder.