Short Stories, vol 2 | Page 8

sad news. Your boy
Victor was killed yesterday by a shell which almost cut him in two. I
was near by, as we stood next each other in the company, and he told
me about you and asked me to let you know on the same day if
anything happened to him.
I took his watch, which was in his pocket, to bring it back to you when
the war is done. CESAIRE RIVOT,
Soldier of the 2d class, March. Reg. No. 23.
The letter was dated three weeks back.
She did not cry at all. She remained motionless, so overcome and
stupefied that she did not even suffer as yet. She thought: "There's
Victor killed now." Then little by little the tears came to her eyes and
the sorrow filled her heart. Her thoughts came, one by one, dreadful,
torturing. She would never kiss him again, her child, her big boy, never
again! The gendarmes had killed the father, the Prussians had killed the
son. He had been cut in two by a cannon-ball. She seemed to see the
thing, the horrible thing: the head falling, the eyes open, while he
chewed the corner of his big mustache as he always did in moments of
anger.

What had they done with his body afterward? If they had only let her
have her boy back as they had brought back her husband--with the
bullet in the middle of the forehead!
But she heard a noise of voices. It was the Prussians returning from the
village. She hid her letter very quickly in her pocket, and she received
them quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes.
They were laughing, all four, delighted, for they brought with them a
fine rabbit--stolen, doubtless--and they made signs to the old woman
that there was to be something good to east.
She set herself to work at once to prepare breakfast, but when it came
to killing the rabbit, her heart failed her. And yet it was not the first.
One of the soldiers struck it down with a blow of his fist behind the
ears.
The beast once dead, she skinned the red body, but the sight of the
blood which she was touching, and which covered her hands, and
which she felt cooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to
foot, and she kept seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still
palpitating animal.
She sat down at table with the Prussians, but she could not eat, not even
a mouthful. They devoured the rabbit without bothering themselves
about her. She looked at them sideways, without speaking, her face so
impassive that they perceived nothing.
All of a sudden she said: "I don't even know your names, and here's a
whole month that we've been together." They understood, not without
difficulty, what she wanted, and told their names.
That was not sufficient; she had them written for her on a paper, with
the addresses of their families, and, resting her spectacles on her great
nose, she contemplated that strange handwriting, then folded the sheet
and put it in her pocket, on top of the letter which told her of the death
of her son.
When the meal was ended she said to the men:
"I am going to work for you."
And she began to carry up hay into the loft where they slept.
They were astonished at her taking all this trouble; she explained to
them that thus they would not be so cold; and they helped her. They
heaped the stacks of hay as high as the straw roof, and in that manner
they made a sort of great chamber with four walls of fodder, warm and

perfumed, where they should sleep splendidly.
At dinner one of them was worried to see that La Mere Sauvage still ate
nothing. She told him that she had pains in her stomach. Then she
kindled a good fire to warm herself, and the four Germans ascended to
their lodging-place by the ladder which served them every night for this
purpose.
As soon as they closed the trapdoor the old woman removed the ladder,
then opened the outside door noiselessly and went back to look for
more bundles of straw, with which she filled her kitchen. She went
barefoot in the snow, so softly that no sound was heard. From time to
time she listened to the sonorous and unequal snoring of the four
soldiers who were fast asleep.
When she judged her preparations to be sufficient, she threw one of the
bundles into the fireplace, and when it was alight she scattered it over
all the others. Then she went outside again and looked.
In a few seconds the whole interior of the cottage was illumined with