r the horses to be put back in the stable, and I sent
my two soldiers to meet the others, and returned to the house. Then the
cure, Marchas, and I took a mattress into the room to lay the wounded
man on; the sister tore up a table napkin in order to make lint, while
the three frightened women remained huddled up in a corner.

Soon I heard the rattle of sabres on the road, and I took a candle to
show a light to the men who were returning; and they soon appeared,
carrying that inert, soft, long, sinister object which a human body
becomes when life no longer sustains it.

They put the wounded man on the mattress that had been prepared for him,
and I saw at the first glance that he was dying. He had the death rattle
and was spitting up blood, which ran out of the corners of his mouth at
every gasp. The man was covered with blood! His cheeks, his beard, his
hair, his neck and his clothes seemed to have been soaked, to have been
dipped in a red tub; and that blood stuck to him, and had become a dull
color which was horrible to look at.

The wounded man, wrapped up in a large shepherd's cloak, occasionally
opened his dull, vacant eyes, which seemed stupid with astonishment,
like those of animals wounded by a sportsman, which fall at his feet,
more than half dead already, stupefied with terror and surprise.

The cure exclaimed: "Ah, it is old Placide, the shepherd from Les
Moulins. He is deaf, poor man, and heard nothing. Ah! Oh, God! they have
killed the unhappy man!" The sister had opened his blouse and shirt, and
was looking at a little blue hole in his chest, which was not bleeding
any more. "There is nothing to be done," she said.

The shepherd was gasping terribly and bringing up blood with every last
breath, and in his throat, to the very depth of his lungs, they could
hear an ominous and continued gurgling. The cure, standing in front of
him, raised his right hand, made the sign of the cross, and in a slow
and solemn voice pronounced the Latin words which purify men's souls,
but before they were finished, the old man's body trembled violently, as
if something had given way inside him, and he ceased to breathe. He was
dead.

When I turned round, I saw a sight which was even more horrible than
the death struggle of this unfortunate man; the three old women were
standing up huddled close together, hideous, and grimacing with fear and
horror. I went up to them, and they began to utter shrill screams, while
La Jean-Jea