her crazy. While all pressed round and listened, she told the story from
beginning to end, from the arrival of the 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: