“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, so I preferred to stop them.  That frightened them, and they did not venture to go further than the cross-roads.  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.”

“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 there, 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 felt 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 say 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.  Especially, there is 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 panting 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, but before that he told us in which 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 needful,” 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 make are to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer’s wife, she is to be violated 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.  Outraging 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.