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Updated: June 17, 2025
But there she could not repress a shiver as she saw the corpse of a Prussian soldier stretched out on a cloak beside the well. Around the body troops gesticulated, uttering cries of fury. Many of them shook their fists at the village. Meanwhile the officer had summoned Pere Merlier as the mayor of the commune. "Look!" he said to him in a voice almost choking with anger.
In the background the building displayed the four windows of its second story, surmounted by a pigeon house. Pere Merlier's sole vanity was to have this front plastered every ten years. It had just received a new coating and dazzled the village when the sun shone on it at noon. For twenty years Pere Merlier had been mayor of Rocreuse. He was esteemed for the fortune he had acquired.
She heard a shuffling of feet, a hoarse cry and the hollow fall of a body. Afterward the silence grew deeper. Then as if she had felt Death pass by, she stood, chilled through and through, staring into the thick night. At dawn a clamor of voices shook the mill. Pere Merlier opened the door of Francoise's chamber. She went down into the courtyard, pale and very calm.
Gordon could see the full, smooth cheek, the drooping gaze, against the green radiance of the lamp. "If you will drink," Merlier said in a bitter, repressed voice, "if you will indulge the flesh, don't whimper at the price." He made a gesture, indicating the bed, then returned to his reading.
Opening a door opposite the one by which Gordon had entered, and which obviously gave upon an outer shed, Merlier procured a roughly made mop; and, returning, he obliterated all traces of the mud. Suddenly, to Gordon's dismay, his supreme discomfort, he stooped to a knee, and began to remove the former's shoes. "Hey!" Gordon protested; "don't do that; I can tend to my own feet."
The captain immediately asked for the mayor of the district and remained at the mill after having talked with Pere Merlier. The sun rose gaily that morning. It would be hot at noon. Over the wood floated a golden brightness, while in the distance white vapors arose from the meadows.
To the right and to the left the forests were like the walls of an ancient ampitheater which enclosed the fighting gladiators, while the springs, the fountains and the flowing brooks seemed to sob amid the panic of the country. Beneath the shed Francoise still sat near Dominique's body; she had not moved. Pere Merlier had received a slight wound.
Pere Merlier laughed silently, pointing to the wide stretch of wooden hills. "Do you expect to find a man in there?" he said. "Oh, there must be nooks there with which you are acquainted. I will give you ten men. You must guide them." "As you please. But it will take a week to search all the wood in the vicinity." The old man's tranquillity enraged the officer.
Francoise, her hands clasped, supplicated him from afar. She had forgotten everything; she would have advised him to commit an act of cowardice. But Pere Merlier seized her hands that the Prussians might not see her wild gestures. "He is right," he whispered: "it is better to die!" The platoon of execution was there. The officer awaited a sign of weakness on Dominique's part.
The sentinel had been struck in the throat, and the weapon had remained in the cut. It was a kitchen knife with a black handle. "Examine that knife," said the officer to Pere Merlier; "perhaps it will help us in our search." The old man gave a start but recovered control of himself immediately. He replied without moving a muscle of his face: "Everybody in the district has similar knives.
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