We heard nothing more, except the barking of a dog in the distance.  The rain had ceased, and it was cold, very cold, and soon I heard the gallop of a horse, of a single horse, coming back.  It was Marchas, and I called out to him:  “Well?” “It is nothing; Francois has wounded an old peasant who refused to answer his challenge:  ‘Who goes there?’ and who continued to advance in spite of the order to keep off; but they are bringing him here, and we shall see what is the matter.”

I gave orders for the horses to be put back in the stable, and I sent my two soldiers to meet the others, and returned to the house.  Then the cure, Marchas, and I took a mattress into the room to lay the wounded man on; the sister tore up a table napkin in order to make lint, while the three frightened women remained huddled up in a corner.

Soon I heard the rattle of sabres on the road, and I took a candle to show a light to the men who were returning; and they soon appeared, carrying that inert, soft, long, sinister object which a human body becomes when life no longer sustains it.

They put the wounded man on the mattress that had been prepared for him, and I saw at the first glance that he was dying.  He had the death rattle and was spitting up blood, which ran out of the corners of his mouth at every gasp.  The man was covered with blood!  His cheeks, his beard, his hair, his neck and his clothes seemed to have been soaked, to have been dipped in a red tub; and that blood stuck to him, and had become a dull color which was horrible to look at.

The wounded man, wrapped up in a large shepherd’s cloak, occasionally opened his dull, vacant eyes, which seemed stupid with astonishment, like those of animals wounded by a sportsman, which fall at his feet, more than half dead already, stupefied with terror and surprise.

The cure exclaimed:  “Ah, it is old Placide, the shepherd from Les Moulins.  He is deaf, poor man, and heard nothing.  Ah!  Oh, God! they have killed the unhappy man!” The sister had opened his blouse and shirt, and was looking at a little blue hole in his chest, which was not bleeding any more.  “There is nothing to be done,” she said.

The shepherd was gasping terribly and bringing up blood with every last breath, and in his throat, to the very depth of his lungs, they could hear an ominous and continued gurgling.  The cure, standing in front of him, raised his right hand, made the sign of the cross, and in a slow and solemn voice pronounced the Latin words which purify men’s souls, but before they were finished, the old man’s body trembled violently, as if something had given way inside him, and he ceased to breathe.  He was dead.

When I turned round, I saw a sight which was even more horrible than the death struggle of this unfortunate man; the three old women were standing up huddled close together, hideous, and grimacing with fear and horror.  I went up to them, and they began to utter shrill screams, while La Jean-Jean, whose burned leg could no longer support her, fell to the ground at full length.