La Vireville gave a laugh. Could they not be at the trouble of searching him afterwards?
"I have several louis left, as it happens," he said, "but it would not be fair to give them all to you, my friend. If I am to pay for the privilege of being shot . . .! Shall I throw them to you all?"
"No!" said the first applicant, with emphasis. "No, divide them now!" cried two of the others; but this altercation on the brink of the grave was broken into by an angry order from the officer commanding the party: "You there at the end, get to your places instantly!" And the hands, unwillingly, left Fortuné alone in the darkness, on the bank of the same river whose fording he had tried to make easier for that unfortunate young man at Auray yesterday morning. For himself, he had always known and expected that he would end like this, with his back to a wall and a firing-party in front of him; the only feeling which remained, now that the moment had actually come, was a hope for accurate aim.
Down the line in front of him he heard the click of cocking hammers. The voice of the old Poitevin a little way off on his right began, firm and clear, to repeat a response from the Burial Mass: "Libera me, Domine, de morte eterna, in die illa. . . ." The man on his left was murmuring over and over again a woman's name. . . . All that Fortuné himself thought was, "They might as well have it, the rascals, if I can get it out in time!" He thrust his right hand into his breeches pocket.
"Apprêtez armes!" shouted the officer.
And La Vireville, drawing out his hand full of gold pieces, threw the money from him with a gesture half-tolerant, half-contemptuous.
But all that he had played for and lost, much that he remembered, much that he had forgotten, surged like a tumultuous mist before him, in those two or three seconds that he folded his arms on his breast and waited for the final order. . . .
"Feu!"
In Quiberon village the peasants crossed themselves at the sound of the volley.