Short Stories, vol 2 | Page 9

a
brilliant light and became a frightful brasier, a gigantic fiery furnace,
whose glare streamed out of the narrow window and threw a glittering
beam upon the snow.
Then a great cry issued from the top of the house; it was a clamor of
men shouting heartrending calls of anguish and of terror. Finally the
trapdoor having given way, a whirlwind of fire shot up into the loft,
pierced the straw roof, rose to the sky like the immense flame of a torch,
and all the cottage flared.
Nothing more was heard therein but the crackling of the fire, the
cracking of the walls, the falling of the rafters. Suddenly the roof fell in
and the burning carcass of the dwelling hurled a great plume of sparks
into the air, amid a cloud of smoke.
The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silver
tinted with red.
A bell, far off, began to toll.
The old "Sauvage" stood before her ruined dwelling, armed with her
gun, her son's gun, for fear one of those men might escape.
When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier.
A loud report followed.
People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.
They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied.

A German officer, but speaking French like a son of France, demanded:
"Where are your soldiers?"
She reached her bony arm toward the red heap of fire which was almost
out and answered with a strong voice:
"There!"
They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:
"How did it take fire?"
"It was I who set it on fire."
They did not believe her, they thought that the sudden disaster had
made her crazy. While all pressed round and listened, she told the story
from beginning to end, from the arrival of the letter to the last shriek of
the men who were burned with her house, and never omitted a detail.
When she had finished, she drew two pieces of paper from her pocket,
and, in order to distinguish them by the last gleams of the fire, she
again adjusted her spectacles. Then she said, showing one:
"That, that is the death of Victor." Showing the other, she added,
indicating the red ruins with a bend of the head: "Here are their names,
so that you can write home." She quietly held a sheet of paper out to the
officer, who held her by the shoulders, and she continued:
"You must write how it happened, and you must say to their mothers
that it was I who did that, Victoire Simon, la Sauvage! Do not forget."
The officer shouted some orders in German. They seized her, they
threw her against the walls of her house, still hot. Then twelve men
drew quickly up before her, at twenty paces. She did not move. She had
understood; she waited.
An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report. A belated shot
went off by itself, after the others.
The old woman did not fall. She sank as though they had cut off her
legs.
The Prussian officer approached. She was almost cut in two, and in her
withered hand she held her letter bathed with blood.
My friend Serval added:
"It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of
the district, which belonged to me."
I thought of the mothers of those four fine fellows burned in that house
and of the horrible heroism of that other mother shot against the wall.
And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by the flames.

EPIPHANY
I should say I did remember that Epiphany supper during the war!
exclaimed Count de Garens, an army captain.
I was quartermaster of cavalry at the time, and for a fortnight had been
scouting in front of the German advance guard. The evening before we
had cut down a few Uhlans and had lost three men, one of whom was
that poor little Raudeville. You remember Joseph de Raudeville, of
course.
Well, on that day my commanding officer ordered me to take six
troopers and to go and occupy the village of Porterin, where there had
been five skirmishes in three weeks, and to hold it all night. There were
not twenty houses left standing, not a dozen houses in that wasps' nest.
So I took ten troopers and set out about four o'clock, and at five o'clock,
while it was still pitch dark, we reached the first houses of Porterin. I
halted and ordered Marchas--you know Pierre de Marchas, who
afterward married little Martel-Auvelin, the daughter of the Marquis de
Martel- Auvelin--to go alone into the village, and to report to me what
he saw.
I had selected nothing but volunteers,