The peasant cast an uneasy glance towards his family, who remained in a listening att.i.tude behind him. He hesitated for another second or so, then all of a sudden, he came to a resolution on the matter.
"I came home one night about ten o"clock and the next day you were here.
You and your soldiers gave me fifty crowns for forage with a cow and two sheep. Said I to myself: "As long as I get twenty crowns out of them, I"ll sell them the value of it." But then I had other things in my heart, which I"ll tell you about now. I came across one of your cavalrymen smoking his pipe near my dike, just behind my barn. I went and took my scythe off the hook, and I came back with short steps from behind, while he lay there without hearing anything. And I cut off his head with one stroke, like a feather, while he only said "Oof!" You have only to look at the bottom of the pond; you"ll find him there in a coal-bag, with a big stone tied to it.
"I got an idea into my head. I took all he had on him from his boots to his cap, and I hid them in the bake-house in the Martin wood behind the farm-yard."
The old man stopped. The officers, speechless, looked at one another.
The examination was resumed, and this is what they were told.
Once he had accomplished this murder, the peasant lived with only one thought: "To kill the Prussians!" He hated them with the sly and ferocious hatred of a countryman who was at the same time covetous and patriotic. He had got an idea into his head, as he put it. He waited for a few days.
He was allowed to go and come freely, to go out and return just as he pleased, as long as he displayed humility, submissiveness, and complaisance towards the conquerors.
Now, every evening he saw the cavalrymen bearing dispatches leaving the farmhouse; and he went out one night after discovering the name of the village to which they were going, and after picking up by a.s.sociating with the soldiers the few words of German he needed.
He made his way through his farm-yard slipped into the wood, reached the bake-house, penetrated to the end of the long pa.s.sage, and having found the clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on.
Then, he went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the slopes so as to avoid observation, listening to the least sounds, restless as a poacher.
When he believed the time had arrived he took up his position at the roadside, and hid himself in a clump of brushwood. He still waited. At length, near midnight, he heard the galloping of a horse"s hoofs on the hard soil of the road. The old man put his ear to the ground to make sure that only one cavalryman was approaching; then he got ready.
The Uhlan came on at a very quick pace, carrying some dispatches. He rode forward with watchful eyes and strained ears. As soon as he was no more than ten paces away, Pere Milon dragged himself across the road, groaning: "Hilfe! Hilfe!" ("Help! help!")
The cavalryman drew up, recognized a German soldier dismounted, believed that he was wounded, leaped down from his horse, drew near the prostrate man, never suspecting anything, and, as he stooped over the stranger, he received in the middle of the stomach the long curved blade of the saber. He sank down without any death throes, merely quivering with a few last shudders.
Then, the Norman radiant with the mute joy of an old peasant, rose up, and merely to please himself, cut the dead soldier"s throat. After that, he dragged the corpse to the dike and threw it in.
The horse was quietly waiting for its rider. Pere Milon got on the saddle, and started across the plain at the gallop.
At the end of an hour, he perceived two more Uhlans approaching the staff-quarters side by side. He rode straight towards them, crying, "Hilfe! hilfe!" The Prussians let him come on, recognizing the uniform without any distrust.
And like a cannon-ball, the old man shot between the two, bringing both of them to the ground with his saber and a revolver. The next thing he did was to cut the throats of the horses--the German horses! Then, softly he re-entered the bake-house, and hid the horse he had ridden himself in the dark pa.s.sage. There he took off the uniform, put on once more his own old clothes, and going to his bed, slept till morning.
For four days he did not stir out, awaiting the close of the open inquiry as to the cause of the soldiers" deaths; but, on the fifth day, he started out again, and by a similar stratagem killed two more soldiers.
Thenceforth he never stopped. Each night he wandered about, prowled through the country at random, cutting down some Prussians, sometimes here, sometimes there, galloping through the deserted fields under the moonlight, a lost Uhlan, a hunter of men. Then when he had finished his task, leaving behind the corpses lying along the roads, the old horseman went to the bake-house, where he concealed both the animal and the uniform. About midday he calmly returned to the spot to give the horse a feed of oats and some water, and he took every care of the animal, exacting therefore the hardest work.
But, the night before his arrest, one of the soldiers he attacked put himself on his guard, and cut the old peasant"s face with a slash of a saber.
He had, however, killed both of them. He had even managed to go back and hide his horse and put on his everyday garb, but, when he reached the stable, he was overcome by weakness, and was not able to make his way into the house.
He had been found lying on the straw, his face covered with blood.
When he had finished his story, he suddenly lifted his head, and glanced proudly at the Prussian officers.
The Colonel, tugging at his moustache, asked:
"Have you anything more to say?"
"No, nothing more; we are quits. I killed sixteen, not one more, not one less."
"You know you have to die?"
"I ask for no quarter!"
"Have you been a soldier?"
"Yes, I served at one time. And "tis you killed my father, who was a soldier of the first Emperor, not to speak of my youngest son, Francois, whom you killed last month near Exreux. I owed this to you, and I"ve paid you back. "Tis t.i.t for tat!"
The officers stared at one another.
The old man went on:
"Eight for my father, eight for my son--that pays it off! I sought for no quarrel with you. I don"t know you! I only know where you came from.
You came to my house here, and ordered me about as if the house was yours. I have had my revenge, and I"m glad of it!"
And stiffening up his old frame, he folded his arms in the att.i.tude of a humble hero.
The Prussians held a long conference. A captain, who had also lost a son the month before, defended the brave old scoundrel.
Then the Colonel rose up, and, advancing towards Pere Milon, he said, lowering his voice:
"Listen, old man! There is perhaps one way of saving your life--it is--"
But the old peasant was not listening to him, and fixing his eyes directly on the German officer, while the wind made the scanty hair move to and fro on his skull, he made a frightful grimace, which shriveled up his pinched countenance scarred by the saber-stroke, and, puffing out his chest, he spat, with all his strength, right into the Prussian"s face.
The Colonel, stupefied, raised his hand, and for the second time the peasant spat in his face.
All the officers sprang to their feet and yelled out orders at the same time.
In less than a minute, the old man, still as impa.s.sive as ever, was stuck up against the wall, and shot while he cast a smile at Jean, his eldest son, and then at his daughter-in-law and the two children, who were staring with terror at the scene.
THE IMPOLITE s.e.x
Madame de X. to Madame de L.
Etretat, Friday.
My dear Aunt,--I am going to pay you a visit without making much fuss about it. I shall be at Les Fresnes on the 2nd of September, the day before the hunting season opens, as I do not want to miss it, so that I may tease these gentlemen. You are very obliging, aunt, and I would like you to allow them to dine with you, as you usually do when there are no strange guests, without dressing or shaving for the occasion, on the ground that they are fatigued.
They are delighted, of course, when I am not present. But I shall be there, and I shall hold a review, like a general, at the dinner-hour; and, if I find a single one of them at all careless in dress, no matter how little, I mean to send him down to the kitchen to the servant-maids.