I am suffering and shed tears; it does one good.
Thank you, my kind friends."

"Poor Piedelot! But we will avenge you, you may be sure!"

"Yes, yes, I want you to do that. Especially, there is a woman among
them, who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed
yesterday. She is dressed like a lancer, and she tortured me the most
yesterday, and suggested burning me, and it was she who set fire to the
wood. Oh! the wretch, the brute.... Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my
arms!" and he fell back panting and exhausted, writhing in his terrible
agony, while the captain's wife wiped the perspiration from his
forehead, and we all shed tears of grief and rage, as if we had been
children. I will not describe the end to you; he died half-an-hour
later, but before that he told us in which direction the enemy had gone.
When he was dead, we gave ourselves time to bury him, and then we set
out in pursuit of them, with our hearts full of fury and hatred.

"We will throw ourselves on the whole Prussian army, if it be needful,"
the captain said, "but we will avenge Piedelot. We must catch those
scoundrels. Let us swear to die, rather than not to find them, and if I
am killed first, these are my orders: all the prisoners that you make
are to be shot immediately, and as for the lancer's wife, she is to be
violated before she is put to death."

"She must not be shot, because she is a woman," the captain's wife said.
"If you survive, I am sure that you would not shoot a woman. Outraging
her will be quite sufficient; but if you are killed in this pursuit, I
want one thing, and that is to fight with her; I will kill her with my
own hands, and the others can do what they like with her if she kills
me.

"We will outrage her! We will burn her! We will tear her to pieces!
Piedelot shall be avenged, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!"

V

The next morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four
leagues away. Surprised by our sudden attack, they were not able to
mount their horses, nor even to defend themselves, and in a few moments
we had five prisoners, corresponding to our own number. The captain
questioned them, and from their answers we felt certain that they were
the same whom we had encountered the previous day, then a very curious
operation took place. One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and
nothing can depict our joy when we discovered what we were seeking among
them, the female executione