I
It was after Bourbaki's defeat in the east of France. The army, broken
up, decimated, and worn out, had been obliged to retreat into Switzerland
after that terrible campaign, and it was only its short duration that
saved a hundred and fifty thousand men from certain death. Hunger, the
terrible cold, forced marches in the snow without boots, over bad
mountain roads, had caused us 'francs-tireurs', especially, the greatest
suffering, for we were without tents, and almost without food, always in
the van when we were marching toward Belfort, and in the rear when
returning by the Jura. Of our little band that had numbered twelve
hundred men on the first of January, there remained only twenty-two pale,
thin, ragged wretches, when we at length succeeded in reaching Swiss
territory.
There we were safe, and could rest. Everybody knows what sympathy was
shown to the unfortunate French army, and how well it was cared for. We
all gained fresh life, and those who had been rich and happy before the
war declared that they had never experienced a greater feeling of comfort
than they did then. Just think. We actually had something to eat every
day, and could sleep every night.
Meanwhile, the war continued in the east of France, which had been
excluded from the armistice. Besancon still kept the enemy in check, and
the latter had their revenge by ravaging Franche Comte. Sometimes we
heard that they had approached quite close to the frontier, and we saw
Swiss troops, who were to form a line of observation between us and them,
set out on their march.
That pained us in the end, and, as we regained health and strength, the
longing to fight took possession of us. It was disgraceful and
irritating to know that within two or three leagues of us the Germans
were victorious and insolent, to feel that we were protected by our
captivity, and to feel that on that account we were powerless against
them.
One day our captain took five or six of us aside, and spoke to us about
it, long and furiously. He was a fine fellow, that captain. He had been
a sublieutenant in the Zouaves, was tall and thin and as hard as steel,
and during the whole campaign he had cut out their work for the Germans.
He fretted in inactivity, and could not accustom himself to the idea of
being a prisoner and of doing nothing.
"Confound it!" he said to us, "does it not pain you to know that there is
a number of uhlans within two hours of us? Does it not almost drive you
mad to know that those beggarly wretches are walking about as masters in
our mountains, when six determined men might kill a whole spitful any
day? I cannot endure it any longer, and I must go there."
"But how can you manage it, captain?"
"How? It is not very difficult! Just as if we had not done a thing or
two within the last six months, and got out of woods that were guarded by
very different men from the Swiss. The day that you wish to cross over
into France, I will undertake to get you there."
"That may be; but what shall we do in France without any arms?"
"Without arms? We will get them over yonder, by Jove!"
"You are forgetting the treaty," another soldier said; "we shall run the
risk of doing the Swiss an injury, if Manteuffel learns that they have
allowed prisoners to return to France."
"Come," said the captain, "those are all bad reasons. I mean to go and
kill some Prussians; that is all I care about. If you do not wish to do
as I do, well and good; only say so at once. I can quite well go by
myself; I do not require anybody's company."
Naturally we all protested, and, as it was quite impossible to make the
captain alter his mind, we felt obliged to promise to go with him. We
liked him too much to leave him in the lurch, as he never failed us in
any extremity; and so the expedition was decided on.
II
The captain had a plan of his own, that he had been cogitating over for
some time. A man in that part of the country whom he knew was going to
lend him a cart and six suits of peasants' clothes. We could hide under
some straw at the bottom of the wagon, which would be loaded with Gruyere
cheese, which he was supposed to be going to sell in France. The captain
told the sentinels that he was taking two friends with him to protect his
goods, in case any one should try to rob him, which did not seem an
extraordinary precaution. A Swiss officer seemed to look at the wagon in
a knowing manner, but that was in order to impress his soldiers. In a
word, neither officers nor men could make it out.
"Get up," the captain said to the horses, as he cracked his whip, while
our three men quietly smoked their pipes. I was half suffocated in my
box, which only admitted the air through those holes in front, and at the
same time I was nearly frozen, for it was terribly cold.
"Get up," the captain said again, and the wagon loaded with Gruyere
cheese entered France.
The Prussian lines were very badly guarded, as the enemy trusted to the
watchfulness of the Swiss. The sergeant spoke North German, while our
captain spoke the bad German of the Four Cantons, and so they could not
understand each other. The sergeant, however, pretended to be very
intelligent; and, in order to make us believe that he understood us, they
allowed us to continue our journey; and, after travelling for seven
hours, being continually stopped in the same manner, we arrived at a
small village of the Jura in ruins, at nightfall.
What were we going to do? Our only arms were the captain's whip, our
uniforms our peasants' blouses, and our food the Gruyere cheese. Our
sole wealth consisted in our ammunition, packages of cartridges which we
had stowed away inside some of the large cheeses. We had about a
thousand of them, just two hundred each, but we needed rifles, and they
must be chassepots. Luckily, however, the captain was a bold man of an
inventive mind, and this was the plan that he hit upon:
While three of us remained hidden in a cellar in the abandoned village,
he continued his journey as far as Besancon with the empty wagon and one
man. The town was invested, but one can always make one's way into a
town among the hills by crossing the tableland till within about ten
miles of the walls, and then following paths and ravines on foot. They
left their wagon at Omans, among the Germans, and escaped out of it at
night on foot; so as to gain the heights which border the River Doubs;
the next day they entered Besancon, where there were plenty of
chassepots. There were nearly forty thousand of them left in the
arsenal, and General Roland, a brave marine, laughed at the captain's
daring project, but let him have six rifles and wished him "good luck."
There he had also found his wife, who had been through all the war with
us before the campaign in the East, and who had been only prevented by
illness from continuing with Bourbaki's army. She had recovered,
however, in spite of the cold, which was growing more and more intense,
and in spite of the numberless privations that awaited her, she persisted
in accompanying her husband. He was obliged to give way to her, and they
all three, the captain, his wife, and our comrade, started on their
expedition.
Going was nothing in comparison to returning. They were obliged to
travel by night, so as to avoid meeting anybody, as the possession of six
rifles would have made them liable to suspicion. But, in spite of
everything, a week after leaving us, the captain and his two men were
back with us again. The campaign was about to begin.
III
The first night of his arrival he began it himself, and, under pretext of
examining the surrounding country, he went along the high road.
I must tell you that the little village which served as our fortress was
a small collection of poor, badly built houses, which had been deserted
long before. It lay on a steep slope, which terminated in a wooded
plain. The country people sell the wood; they send it down the slopes,
which are called coulees, locally, and which lead down to the plain, and
there they stack it into piles, which they sell thrice a year to the wood
merchants. The spot where this market is held in indicated by two small
houses by the side of the highroad, which serve for public houses. The
captain had gone down there by way of one of these coulees.
He had been gone about half an hour, and we were on the lookout at the
top of the ravine, when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not
to stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It
was made of a goat's horn, and could be heard a league off; but it gave
no sound, and, in spite of our cruel anxiety, we were obliged to wait in
silence, with our rifles by our side.
It is nothing to go down these coulees; one just lets one's self slide
down; but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to scramble up by
catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and sometimes on all
fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed, and he did not
come; nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife began to grow
impatient. What could he be doing? Why did he not call us? Did the
shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed or
wounded our leader, her husband? They did not know what to think, but I
myself fancied either that he was dead or that his enterprise was
successful; and I was merely anxious and curious to know what he had
done.
Suddenly we heard the sound of his trumpet, and we were much surprised
that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the
village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the
same idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians
were blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore
returned to the cottage, keeping a careful lookout with our fingers on
the trigger, and hiding under the branches; but his wife, in spite of our
entreaties, rushed on, leaping like a tigress. She thought that she had
to avenge her husband, and had fixed the bayonet to her rifle, and we
lost sight of her at the moment that we heard the trumpet again; and, a
few moments later, we heard her calling out to us:
"Come on! come on! He is alive! It is he!"
We hastened on, and saw the captain smoking his pipe at the entrance of
the village, but strangely enough, he was on horseback.
"Ah! ah !" he said to us, "you see that there is something to be done
here. Here I am on horseback already; I knocked over an uhlan yonder,
and took his horse; I suppose they were guarding the wood, but it was by
drinking and swilling in clover. One of them, the sentry at the door,
had not time to see me before I gave him a sugarplum in his stomach, and
then, before the others could come out, I jumped on the horse and was off
like a shot. Eight or ten of them followed me, I think; but I took the
crossroads through the woods. I have got scratched and torn a bit, but
here I am, and now, my good fellows, attention, and take care! Those
brigands will not rest until they have caught us, and we must receive
them with rifle bullets. Come along; let us take up our posts!"
We set out. One of us took up his position a good way from the village
on the crossroads; I was posted at the entrance of the main street, where
the road from the level country enters the village, while the two others,
the captain and his wife, were in the middle of the village, near the
church, whose tower-served for an observatory and citadel.
We had not been in our places long before we heard a shot, followed by
another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot
--one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a
whip--while the other three came from the lancers' carbines.
The captain was furious. He had given orders to the outpost to let the
enemy pass and merely to follow them at a distance if they marched toward
the village, and to join me when they had gone well between the houses.
Then they were to appear suddenly, take the patrol between two fires, and
not allow a single man to escape; for, posted as we were, the six of us
could have hemmed in ten Prussians, if needful.
"That confounded Piedelot has roused them," the captain said, "and they
will not venture to come on blindfolded any longer. And then I am quite
sure that he has managed to get a shot into himself somewhere or other,
for we hear nothing of him. It serves him right; why did he not obey
orders?" And then, after a moment, he grumbled in his beard: "After all I
am sorry for the poor fellow; he is so brave, and shoots so well!"
The captain was right in his conjectures. We waited until evening,
without seeing the uhlans; they had retreated after the first attack; but
unfortunately we had not seen Piedelot, either. Was he dead or a
prisoner? When night came, the captain proposed that we should go out
and look for him, and so the three of us started. At the crossroads we
found a broken rifle and some blood, while the ground was trampled down;
but we did not find either a wounded man or a dead body, although we
searched every thicket, and at midnight we returned without having
discovered anything of our unfortunate comrade.
"It is very strange," the captain growled. "They must have killed him
and thrown him into the bushes somewhere; they cannot possibly have taken
him prisoner, as he would have called out for help. I cannot understand
it at all." Just as he said that, bright flames shot up in the direction
of the inn on the high road, which illuminated the sky.
"Scoundrels! cowards!" he shouted. "I will bet that they have set fire
to the two houses on the marketplace, in order to have their revenge, and
then they will scuttle off without saying a word. They will be satisfied
with having killed a man and set fire to two houses. All right. It
shall not pass over like that. We must go for them; they will not like
to leave their illuminations in order to fight."
"It would be a great stroke of luck if we could set Piedelot free at the
same time," some one said.
The five of us set off, full of rage and hope. In twenty minutes we had
got to the bottom of the coulee, and had not yet seen any one when we
were within a hundred yards of the inn. The fire was behind the house,
and all we saw of it was the reflection above the roof. However, we were
walking rather slowly, as we were afraid of an ambush, when suddenly we
heard Piedelot's well-known voice. It had a strange sound, however; for
it was at the same time--dull and vibrating, stifled and clear, as if he
were calling out as loud as he could with a bit of rag stuffed into his
mouth. He seemed to be hoarse and gasping, and the unlucky fellow kept
exclaiming: "Help! Help!"
We sent all thoughts of prudence to the devil, and in two bounds we were
at the back of the inn, where a terrible sight met our eyes.
IV
Piedelot was being burned alive. He was writhing in the midst of a heap
of fagots, tied to a stake, and the flames were licking him with their
burning tongues. When he saw us, his tongue seemed to stick in his
throat; he drooped his head, and seemed as if he were going to die. It
was only the affair of a moment to upset the burning pile, to scatter the
embers, and to cut the ropes that fastened him.
Poor fellow! In what a terrible state we found him. The evening before
he had had his left arm broken, and it seemed as if he had been badly
beaten since then, for his whole body was covered with wounds, bruises
and blood. The flames had also begun their work on him, and he had two
large burns, one on his loins and the other on his right thigh, and his
beard and hair were scorched. Poor Piedelot!
No one knows the terrible rage we felt at this sight! We would have
rushed headlong at a hundred thousand Prussians; our thirst for vengeance
was intense. But the cowards had run away, leaving their crime behind
them. Where could we find them now? Meanwhile, however, the captain's
wife was looking after Piedelot, and dressing his wounds as best she
could, while the captain himself shook hands with him excitedly, and in a
few minutes he came to himself.
"Good-morning, captain; good-morning, all of you," he said. "Ah! the
scoundrels, the wretches! Why, twenty of them came to surprise us."
"Twenty, do you say?"
"Yes; there was a whole band of them, and that is why I disobeyed orders,
captain, and fired on them, for they would have killed you all, and I
preferred to stop them. That frightened them, and they did not venture
to go farther than the crossroads. They were such cowards. Four of them
shot at me at twenty yards, as if I had been a target, and then they
slashed me with their swords. My arm was broken, so that I could only
use my bayonet with one hand."
"But why did you not call for help?"
"I took good care not to do that, for you would all have come; and you
would neither have been able to defend me nor yourselves, being only five
against twenty."
"You know that we should not have allowed you to have been taken, poor
old fellow."
"I preferred to die by myself, don't you see! I did not want to bring
you here, for it would have been a mere ambush."
"Well, we will not talk about it any more. Do you feel rather easier?"
"No, I am suffocating. I know that I cannot live much longer. The
brutes! They tied me to a tree, and beat me till I was half dead, and
then they shook my broken arm; but I did not make a sound. I would
rather have bitten my tongue out than have called out before them. Now I
can tell what I am suffering and shed tears; it does one good. Thank
you, my kind friends."
"Poor Piedelot! But we will avenge you, you may be sure!"
"Yes, yes; I want you to do that. There is, in particular, a woman among
them who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed
yesterday. She is dressed like a lancer, and she tortured me the most
yesterday, and suggested burning me; and it was she who set fire to the
wood. Oh! the wretch, the brute! Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my
arms!" and he fell back gasping and exhausted, writhing in his terrible
agony, while the captain's wife wiped the perspiration from his forehead,
and we all shed tears of grief and rage, as if we had been children.
I will not describe the end to you; he died half an hour later,
previously telling us in what direction the enemy had gone. When he was
dead we gave ourselves time to bury him, and then we set out in pursuit
of them, with our hearts full of fury and hatred.
"We will throw ourselves on the whole Prussian army, if it be necessary,"
the captain said; "but we will avenge Piedelot. We must catch those
scoundrels. Let us swear to die, rather than not to find them; and if I
am killed first, these are my orders: All the prisoners that you take are
to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer's wife, she is to be
tortured before she is put to death."
"She must not be shot, because she is a woman," the captain's wife said.
"If you survive, I am sure that you would not shoot a woman. Torturing
her will be quite sufficient; but if you are killed in this pursuit, I
want one thing, and that is to fight with her; I will kill her with my
own hands, and the others can do what they like with her if she kills
me."
"We will outrage her! We will burn her! We will tear her to pieces!
Piedelot shall be avenged!
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!"
V
The next morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four
leagues away. Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to
mount their horses, nor even to defend themselves; and in a few moments
we had five prisoner, corresponding to our own number. The captain
questioned them, and from their answers we felt certain that they were
the same whom we had encountered the previous day. Then a very curious
operation took place. One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and
nothing can describe our joy when we discovered what we were seeking
among them, the female executioner who had tortured our friend.
The four others were shot on the spot, with their backs to us and close
to the muzzles of our rifles; and then we turned our attention to the
woman. What were we going to do with her? I must acknowledge that we
were all of us in favor of shooting her. Hatred, and the wish to avenge
Piedelot, had extinguished all pity in us, and we had forgotten that we
were going to shoot a woman, but a woman reminded us of it, the captain's
wife; at her entreaties, therefore, we determined to keep her a prisoner.
The captain's poor wife was to be severely punished for this act of
clemency.
The next day we heard that the armistice had been extended to the eastern
part of France, and we had to put an end to our little campaign. Two of
us, who belonged to the neighborhood, returned home, so there were only
four of us, all told: the captain, his wife, and two men. We belonged to
Besancon, which was still being besieged in spite of the armistice.
"Let us stop here," said the captain. "I cannot believe that the war is
going to end like this. The devil take it! Surely there are men still
left in France; and now is the time to prove what they are made of. The
spring is coming on, and the armistice is only a trap laid for the
Prussians. During the time that it lasts, a new army will be raised, and
some fine morning we shall fall upon them again. We shall be ready, and
we have a hostage--let us remain here."
We fixed our quarters there. It was terribly cold, and we did not go out
much, and somebody had always to keep the female prisoner in sight.
She was sullen, and never said anything, or else spoke of her husband,
whom the captain had killed. She looked at him continually with fierce
eyes, and we felt that she was tortured by a wild longing for revenge.
That seemed to us to be the most suitable punishment for the terrible
torments that she had made Piedelot suffer, for impotent vengeance is
such intense pain!
Alas! we who knew how to avenge our comrade ought to have thought that
this woman would know how to avenge her husband, and have been on our
guard. It is true that one of us kept watch every night, and that at
first we tied her by a long rope to the great oak bench that was fastened
to the wall. But, by and by, as she had never tried to escape, in spite
of her hatred for us, we relaxed our extreme prudence, and allowed her to
sleep somewhere else except on the bench, and without being tied. What
had we to fear? She was at the end of the room, a man was on guard at
the door, and between her and the sentinel the captain's wife and two
other men used to lie. She was alone and unarmed against four, so there
could be no danger.
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.'
"'Well,' I replied, 'as you approve of this vengeance, prepare to endure
it.'
"'I do not fear it.'
"And in fact she did not seem to have lost courage. Her face was calm,
and she looked at me without trembling, while I brought wood and dried
leaves together, and feverishly threw on to them the powder from some
cartridges, which was to make her funeral pile the more cruel.
"I hesitated in my thoughts of persecution for a moment. But the captain
was there, pale and covered with blood, and he seemed to be looking at me
with his large, glassy eyes, and I applied myself to my work again after
kissing his pale lips. Suddenly, however, on raising my head, I saw that
she was crying, and I felt rather surprised.
"'So you are frightened?' I said to her.
"'No, but when I saw you kiss your husband, I thought of mine, of all
whom I love.'
"She continued to sob, but stopping suddenly, she said to me in broken
words and in a low voice:
"'Have you any children?'
"A shiver rare over me, for I guessed that this poor woman had some. She
asked me to look in a pocketbook which was in her bosom, and in it I saw
two photographs of quite young children, a boy and a girl, with those
kind, gentle, chubby faces that German children have. In it there were
also two locks of light hair and a letter in a large, childish hand, and
beginning with German words which meant:
"'My dear little mother.
"'I could not restrain my tears, my dear friend, and so I untied her, and
without venturing to look at the face of my poor dead husband, who was
not to be avenged, I went with her as far as the inn. She is free; I have
just left her, and she kissed me with tears. I am going upstairs to my
husband; come as soon as possible, my dear friend, to look for our two
bodies.'"
I set off with all speed, and when I arrived there was a Prussian patrol
at the cottage; and when I asked what it all meant, I was told that there
was a captain of francs-tireurs and his wife inside, both dead. I gave
their names; they saw that I knew them, and I begged to be allowed to
arrange their funeral.
"Somebody has already undertaken it," was the reply. "Go in if you wish
to, as you know them. You can settle about their funeral with their
friend."
I went in. The captain and his wife were lying side by side on a bed,
and were covered by a sheet. I raised it, and saw that the woman had
inflicted a similar wound in her throat to that from which her husband
had died.
At the side of the bed there sat, watching and weeping, the woman who had been mentioned to me as their best friend. It was the lancer's wife.
_________
-THE END-
Guy de Maupassant's short story: The Lancer's Wife
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