as if to say: "What can I do? It's not my fault!"

A peasant who was pursued, jumped into a boat, moored near the stone
bridge, and with his wife and children moved away across the unfrozen
part of the narrow lagoon. Not daring to follow, the soldiers strode
furiously through the reeds. They climbed up into the willows on the
banks to try to reach the fugitives with their lances--as they did not
succeed, they continued for a long time to threaten the terrified family
adrift upon the black water.

The orchard was still full of people, for it was there, in front of the
white-bearded man who directed the massacre, that most of the children
were killed. Little dots who could just walk alone stood side by side
munching their slices of bread and jam, and stared curiously at the
slaying of their helpless playmates, or collected round the village fool
who played his flute on the grass.

Then suddenly there was a uniform movement in the village. The peasants
ran towards the castle which stood on the brown rising ground, at the
end of the street. They had seen their seigneur leaning on the
battlements of his tower and watching the massacre. Men, women, old
people, with hands outstretched, supplicated to him, in his velvet
mantle and his gold cap, as to a king in heaven. But he raised his arms
and shrugged his shoulders to show his helplessness, and when they
implored him more and more persistently, kneeling in the snow, with
bared heads, and uttering piteous cries, he turned slowly into the tower
and the peasants' last hope was gone.

When all the children were slain, the tired soldiers wiped their swords
on the grass, and supped under the pear trees. Then they mounted one