billet, which
called for instant succor, either all his soldiers would be killed or he
should be obliged to surrender himself a prisoner with them.

The boy ran rapidly for a space, then relaxed his pace and limped, then
resumed his course, but grew constantly more fatigued, and every little
while he stumbled and paused.

"Perhaps a bullet has grazed him," thought the captain, and he noted all
his movements, quivering with excitement; and he encouraged him, he
spoke to him, as though he could hear him; he measured incessantly, with
a flashing eye, the space intervening between the fleeing boy and that
gleam of arms which he could see in the distance on the plain amid the
fields of grain gilded by the sun. And meanwhile he heard the whistle
and the crash of the bullets in the rooms beneath, the imperious and
angry shouts of the sergeants and the officers, the piercing laments of
the wounded, the ruin of furniture, and the fall of rubbish.

"On! courage!" he shouted, following the far-off drummer with his
glance. "Forward! run! He halts, that cursed boy! Ah, he resumes his
course!"

An officer came panting to tell him that the enemy, without slackening
their fire, were flinging out a white flag to hint at a surrender.
"Don't reply to them!" he cried, without detaching his eyes from the
boy, who was already on the plain, but who was no longer running, and
who seemed to be dragging himself along with difficulty.

"Go! run!" said the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; "let
them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!" Then he uttered a horrible
oath. "Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!" In fact, the boy,
whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of
grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of
a minute, his head came into sight again; finally, it was lost behind
the hedges, and the captain saw it no more.

Then he descended impetuously; the bullets were coming in a tempest; the
rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were whirling round
like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls and floor
were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the
lieutenant had had his arm shattered by a ball; smoke and clouds of dust
enveloped everything.

"Courage!" shouted the captain. "Stand firm at your post! Succor is on
the way! Courage for a little while longer!"

The Austrians had approached still nearer: their contorted