“That, that is the death of Victor.”  Showing the other, she added, indicating the red ruins with a bend of the head:  “Here are their names, so that you can write home.”  She quietly held a sheet of paper out to the officer, who held her by the shoulders, and she continued: 

“You must write how it happened, and you must say to their mothers that it was I who did that, Victoire Simon, la Sauvage!  Do not forget.”

The officer shouted some orders in German.  They seized her, they threw her against the walls of her house, still hot.  Then twelve men drew quickly up before her, at twenty paces.  She did not move.  She had understood; she waited.

An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report.  A belated shot went off by itself, after the others.

The old woman did not fall.  She sank as though they had cut off her legs.

The Prussian officer approached.  She was almost cut in two, and in her withered hand she held her letter bathed with blood.

My friend Serval added: 

“It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of the district, which belonged to me.”

I thought of the mothers of those four fine fellows burned in that house and of the horrible heroism of that other mother shot against the wall.

And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by the flames.

EPIPHANY

I should say I did remember that Epiphany supper during the war! exclaimed Count de Garens, an army captain.

I was quartermaster of cavalry at the time, and for a fortnight had been scouting in front of the German advance guard.  The evening before we had cut down a few Uhlans and had lost three men, one of whom was that poor little Raudeville.  You remember Joseph de Raudeville, of course.

Well, on that day my commanding officer ordered me to take six troopers and to go and occupy the village of Porterin, where there had been five skirmishes in three weeks, and to hold it all night.  There were not twenty houses left standing, not a dozen houses in that wasps’ nest.  So I took ten troopers and set out about four o’clock, and at five o’clock, while it was still pitch dark, we reached the first houses of Porterin.  I halted and ordered Marchas—­you know Pierre de Marchas, who afterward married little Martel-Auvelin, the daughter of the Marquis de Martel-Auvelin—­to go alone into the village, and to report to me what he saw.

I had selected nothing but volunteers, all men of good family.  It is pleasant when on duty not to be forced to be on intimate terms with unpleasant fellows.  This Marchas was as smart as possible, cunning as a fox and supple as a serpent.  He could scent the Prussians as a dog can scent a hare, could discover food where we should have died of hunger without him, and obtained information from everybody, and information which was always reliable, with incredible cleverness.