"'He had a narrow escape,' I said.

"'He didn't appreciate it,' said Tomassov, looking even more troubled
than before. 'He came along holding to my stirrup leather. That's what
made me so late. He told me he was a staff officer; and then talking in
a voice such, I suppose, as the damned alone use, a croaking of rage
and pain, he said he had a favour to beg of me. A supreme favour. Did I
understand him, he asked in a sort of fiendish whisper.

"'Of course I told him that I did. I said: _oui, je vous comprends_.'

"'Then,' said he, 'do it. Now! At once--in the pity of your heart.'

"Tomassov ceased and stared queerly at me above the head of the
prisoner.

"I said, 'What did he mean?'

"'That's what I asked him,' answered Tomassov in a dazed tone, 'and he
said that he wanted me to do him the favour to blow his brains out. As a
fellow soldier he said. 'As a man of feeling--as--as a humane man.'

"The prisoner sat between us like an awful gashed mummy as to the face,
a martial scarecrow, a grotesque horror of rags and dirt, with awful
living eyes, full of vitality, full of unquenchable fire, in a body
of horrible affliction, a skeleton at the feast of glory. And suddenly
those shining unextinguishable eyes of his became fixed upon Tomassov.
He, poor fellow, fascinated, returned the ghastly stare of a suffering
soul in that mere husk of a man. The prisoner croaked at him in French.