One night when we were asleep, and the captain was on guard, the lancer’s wife was lying more quietly in her corner than usual, and she had even smiled for the first time since she had been our prisoner during the evening.  Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, we were all awakened by a terrible cry.  We got up, groping about, and at once stumbled over a furious couple who were rolling about and fighting on the ground.  It was the captain and the lancer’s wife.  We threw ourselves on them, and separated them in a moment.  She was shouting and laughing, and he seemed to have the death rattle.  All this took place in the dark.  Two of us held her, and when a light was struck a terrible sight met our eyes.  The captain was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with an enormous gash in his throat, and his sword bayonet, that had been taken from his rifle, was sticking in the red, gaping wound.  A few minutes afterward he died, without having been able to utter a word.

His wife did not shed a tear.  Her eyes were dry, her throat was contracted, and she looked at the lancer’s wife steadfastly, and with a calm ferocity that inspired fear.

“This woman belongs to me,” she said to us suddenly.  “You swore to me not a week ago to let me kill her as I chose, if she killed my husband; and you must keep your oath.  You must fasten her securely to the fireplace, upright against the back of it, and then you can go where you like, but far from here.  I will take my revenge on her myself.  Leave the captain’s body, and we three, he, she and I, will remain here.”

We obeyed, and went away.  She promised to write to us to Geneva, as we were returning thither.

VI

Two days later I received the following letter, dated the day after we had left, that had been written at an inn on the high road: 

“My friend:  I am writing to you, according to my promise.  For the moment I am at the inn, where I have just handed my prisoner over to a Prussian officer.

“I must tell you, my friend, that this poor woman has left two children in Germany.  She had followed her husband, whom she adored, as she did not wish him to be exposed to the risks of war by himself, and as her children were with their grandparents.  I have learned all this since yesterday, and it has turned my ideas of vengeance into more humane feelings.  At the very moment when I felt pleasure in insulting this woman, and in threatening her with the most fearful torments, in recalling Piedelot, who had been burned alive, and in threatening her with a similar death, she looked at me coldly, and said: 

“’What have you got to reproach me with, Frenchwoman?  You think that you will do right in avenging your husband’s death, is not that so?’

“‘Yes,’ I replied.

“’Very well, then; in killing him, I did what you are going to do in burning me.  I avenged my husband, for your husband killed him.’