to distinguish
anything in the dense cloud of dust and smoke that rose in the air,
but presently this drifted away, disclosing the ruined facade of the
dyehouse, and there, stretched across the threshold, Francoise, a
corpse, horribly torn and mangled, her skull crushed in, a fearful
spectacle.

Weiss sprang to her side. Language failed him; he could only express his
feelings by oaths and imprecations.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ _Nom de Dieu!_"

Yes, she was dead. He had stooped to feel her pulse, and as he arose
he saw before him the scarlet face of little Charles, who had raised
himself in bed to look at his mother. He spoke no word, he uttered no
cry; he gazed with blazing, tearless eyes, distended as if they would
start from their sockets, upon the shapeless mass that was strange,
unknown to him; and nothing more.

Weiss found words at last: "_Nom de Dieu!_ they have taken to killing
women!"

He had risen to his feet; he shook his fist at the Bavarians, whose
braid-trimmed helmets were commencing to appear again in the direction
of the church. The chimney, in falling, had crushed a great hole in the
roof of his house, and the sight of the havoc made him furious.

"Dirty loafers! You murder women, you have destroyed my house. No, no! I
will not go now, I cannot; I shall stay here."

He darted away and came running back with the dead soldier's rifle
and ammunition. He was accustomed to carry a pair of spectacles on his
person for use on occasions of emergency, when he wished to see with
great distinctness, but did not wear them habitually out of respect for
the wishes of his young wife. He now impatiently tore off his double
eyeglass and substituted the spectacles, and the big, burly bourgeois,
his overcoat flapping about his legs, his honest, kindly, round face
ablaze with wrath, who would have been ridiculous had he not been so
superbly heroic, proceeded to open fire, peppering away at the Bavarians
at the bottom of the street. It was in his blood, he said; he had been
hankering for something of the kind ever since the days of his boyhood,
down there in Alsace, when he had been told all those tales of 1814.
"Ah! you dirty loafers! you dirty loafers!" And he kept firing away with
such eagerness that, finally, the barrel of his musket became so hot it
burned his fingers.

The assault was made with great vigor and determination. There was
no longer any sound of musketry in the direction of the meadows. The
Bavarians