And he added, with a short, fierce laugh which showed his wolfish-looking teeth:
—That makes the fifteenth that I have laid low in two months . . . I think that is pretty well for one man alone, and with no other weapon but this.
He drew forth from under his smock a pair of pruning-shears—those large kind of scissors that gardeners use to cut rose-trees and shrubs. I had a shudder of horror at the sight of the assassin’s tool, held by that bloody hand; but I had been so long silent, and deprived of all intercourse with human beings, that, the first feeling of repulsion overcome, I made the unfortunate creature welcome to a place at my table. There, in the comfortable atmosphere of the room, by the heat of the faggots, at the smell of the pheasant, which was becoming brown before the flame, his wild-beast expression seemed to soften. Accustomed to the darkness of the long nights, he blinked his eyes a little while he related his history to me in a quiet tone.
“—You are a Freemason,” said he, in a low tone, and in excellent French. “I am also one . . . and I would not refuse to help a brother who appealed to me . . . Be off, and let me see you no more! . . .”
I left my own home hanging my head like a beggar. Only I did not go far, you may believe. Hidden among the ruins of the bridge, living on raw turnips and sloes, I was present at the pillage of my goods; the emptied granaries, the pulley creaking all day long to lower the sacks, the wood burning in the open yard in large fires, round which they drank my wine, and my furniture and my flocks going of by degrees in every direction! And when at last nothing remained, after setting fire to the house, they went off, driving and whipping my last cow before them. That evening, when I had been round my ruins, when, thinking of my children, I realised that in my whole life long I should never make enough to restore my property, even if I killed myself with work, I became mad with rage. The very first Prussian I met on the road I sprang upon like a wild beast and cut his throat with this . . .
From that moment I had but one idea—to hunt down the Prussians. I remained in ambush night and day, attacking the stragglers, the marauders, the despatch-bearers, the sentinels. All those I kill I carry to the quarries or throw into the water. That is the tedious part. Otherwise they are as gentle as lambs. You can do what you will with them . . . However, the one this evening was more tough than the others, and then that fiendish dog gave the alarm. And now I must remain quiet for a time, and with your permission, Mr. Robert, I will remain a few days with you . . .
While he was speaking, his countenance resumed the sinister expression and peculiar intensity that these fearful night-watches had imparted to it. What a terrible companion I am going to have! . . .
