vehicle:

"Hold! do not shoot! God is not willing!" But the major alone obeyed the
injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with
rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had
only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with
an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for
she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside
her.

As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion,
Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast
out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself.
She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:

"Quick! they are going to fire again!"

It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their
carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and
found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead
man if he awaited the double discharge.

Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the
demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: "Kill, kill, kill!"
into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the
weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.

The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his
neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his
comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside