fastly, 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 c