“When I say that the German artillery will not reach there,” murmured the head general, “I am not sure of it.  But you are right, Colonel.  We must see.  Send two of your men.”

“With your permission, General,” said Pere Lantz, “I will go myself.”  Maurice bravely added at once: 

“Not without me, Colonel!”

“As you please,” said the General, who had already pointed his glass upon another point of the battlefield.

Followed by the only son of his companion in arms in Africa and the Crimea, this office clerk and dauber in watercolors walked to the front as tranquilly as he would have gone to the minister’s office with his umbrella under his arm.  At the very moment when the two officers reached the plateau, a projectile from the Prussian batteries fell upon a chest and blew it up with a frightful uproar.  The dead and wounded were heaped upon the ground.  Pere Lantz saw the foot-soldiers fleeing, and the artillery men harnessing their wagons.

“What!” exclaimed he, rising up to his full height, “do they abandon the position?”

The Colonel’s face was transfigured; opening wide his long cloak and showing his black velvet plastron upon which shone his commander’s cross, he drew his sword, and, putting his cap upon the tip of it, bareheaded, with his gray hair floating in the wind, with open arms he threw himself before the runaways.

“Halt!” he commanded, in a thundering tone.  “Turn about, wretches, turn about!  You are here at a post of honor.  Form again, my men!  Gunners, to your places!  Long life to France!”

Just then a new shell burst at the feet of the Colonel and of Maurice, and they both fell to the ground.

Amedee, staggering with emotion and a heart bursting with grief and fear, entered the hospital behind the two litters.

“Put them in the dining-room,” said one of the brothers.  “There is nobody there.  The doctor will come immediately.”

The young man with the bloody apron came in at once, and after a look at the wounded man he gave a despairing shake of the head, and, shrugging his shoulders, said: 

“There is nothing to be done they will not last long.”

In fact, the Colonel was dying.  They had thrown an old woollen covering over him through which the hemorrhage showed itself by large stains of blood which were constantly increasing and penetrating the cloth.  The wounded man seemed to be coming out of his faint; he half opened his eyes, and his lips moved.

The doctor, who had just come in, came up to the litter upon which the old officer was lying and leaned over him.

“Did you wish to say anything?” he asked.

The old Colonel, without moving his head, turned his sad gaze upon the surgeon, oh! so sad, and in a voice scarcely to be heard he murmured: 

“Three daughters—­to marry—­without a dowry!  Three—­three—!”

Then he heaved a deep sigh, his blue eyes paled and became glassy.  Colonel Lantz was dead.