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It was far away, prostrate beside the loved ones who were dead under the trees amidst the pungent smoke of the gunpowder. But the one-eyed man was growing impatient; giving a push to Mourgue, who was lagging behind, he growled: "Get along, do; I don't want to be here all night." Silvere stumbled. He looked at his feet. A fragment of a skull lay whitening in the grass.
If he had known it, he would have hastened on yet more quickly in order to die on that stone, at the end of the narrow path, in the atmosphere where he could still detect the scent of Miette's breath! Never had he hoped for such consolation in his grief. Heaven was merciful. He waited, a vague smile playing on is face. Mourgue, meantime, had caught sight of the pistols.
"Will you hold your tongue?" he shouted. Thereupon Mourgue, mad with fright and unwilling to die, began to howl like a beast like a pig that is being slaughtered. "Hold your tongue, you scoundrel!" the gendarme repeated. And he blew his brains out. The peasant fell with a thud. His body rolled to the foot of a timber-stack, where it remained doubled up.
He was fastened by the arm to a peasant of Poujols named Mourgue, a man about fifty, who had been brutified by the scorching sun and the hard labour of tilling the ground. Crooked-backed already, his hands hardened, his face coarse and heavy, he blinked his eyes in a stupid manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject to the lash.
The violence of the shock had severed the rope which fastened him to his companion. Silvere fell on his knees before the tombstone. It was to make his vengeance the more terrible that Rengade had killed Mourgue first. He played with his second pistol, raising it slowly in order to relish Silvere's agony. But the latter looked at him quietly.
Silvered with her beams, I am about to jog to Clapton upon my own stumps; musing, as I homeward plod my way. Ah! need I name the subject of my contemplations? "Thursday. "I had a sweet walk home last night, and found the Claptonians, with their fair guest, a Miss Mourgue, very well. My sisters send their amities, and will write in a few days. "This morning I returned to town.
However some boys who recognised Silvere, began to speak of "the red girl." Thereupon the little citizen retraced his steps, in order to see the lover of the female standard-bearer, that depraved creature who had been mentioned in the "Gazette." Silvere, for his part, neither saw nor heard anything; Rengade had to seize him by the collar. Thereupon he got up, forcing Mourgue to rise also.
So he avoided the gaze of Rengade's one eye, which glared from beneath the white bandage. And of his own accord he proceeded to the end of the Aire Saint-Mittre, to the narrow lane hidden by the timber stacks. Mourgue followed him thither. The Aire stretched out, with an aspect of desolation under the sallow sky. A murky light fell here and there from the copper-coloured clouds.
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