sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob
to massacre.

"I wanted to speak. I was at that time in command of a battalion; but
they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;
they would even have shot me.

"One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the three last
days. He has been asking information from every one about the
artillery.'"

I took it on myself to question this person.

"What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the
army?"

"He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,
indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an
agitated air in my presence that I really no longer doubted that he was a
spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept looking at me from under his
eyes with a humble, stupid, crafty air.

"The men all round us exclaimed.

"'To the wall! To the wall!'

"I said to the gendarmes:

"'Will you be responsible for the prisoner?'

"I had not ceased speaking when a terrible shove threw me on my back, and
in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown down,
struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a tree. He
fell in the snow, nearly dead already.

"And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, reloaded their
guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with
each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and
kept on firing at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water
in front of a coffin.

"But suddenly a cry arose of 'The Prussians! the Prussians!'

"And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this panic-stricken
army in full flight.

"A panic, the result of these shots fired at this vagabond, had filled
his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that they were
themselves the originators of the scare, they fled and disappeared in the
darkness.

"I remained alone with the corpse, except for the two gendarmes whose
duty compelled them to stay with me.

"They lifted up the riddled mass of bruised and bleeding flesh.

"'He must be searched,' I said. And I handed them a box of taper matches
which I had in my pocket. One of the soldiers had another box. I was
standing between the two.

"The gendarme who was examining the body announced:

"'Clothed in a blue blouse, a white shirt, trousers, and a pair of
shoes.'

"The first m