he 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 a