As yet only some stray bullets had struck the house-front. Weiss and the captain, accompanied by the gardener and two soldiers, had gone up to the garret, whence they could keep watch over the road. They could see it obliquely as far as the Place de l'Eglise, which was now in the possession of the Bavarians, who only continued advancing, however, with great difficulty and extreme caution. A handful of soldiers, at the corner of a lane, kept them at bay during nearly a quarter of an hour, with so galling a fire that there was soon quite a heap of slain. Then, at the other corner, there was a house which they had to secure possession of before proceeding any farther. At one moment, as the smoke blew off, a woman could be espied firing with a gun from one of the windows. It was the house of a baker; some other soldiers had been forgotten there, mingled with the occupants; and when the place was at last captured by the foe, loud shouts resounded, and a frightful scramble whirled to the wall over the way—a rush, amid which the woman's skirt and a man's jacket and bristling white hair suddenly appeared to view. Then came the sound of platoon firing, and blood spurted to the coping of the wall. The Germans were inflexible; every person, not belonging to the belligerent forces, who was captured with arms in his hand, was shot down there and then, as having placed himself beyond the pale of the law of nations. And their wrath was rising in presence of the furious resistance offered by the village. The frightful losses they had sustained during nearly five hours' combat urged them on to atrocious reprisals. The gutters were running red with blood, corpses were barring the streets, and some crossways were like charnel-houses, whence the rattle of death could be heard ascending to the sky. And they were seen to throw lighted straw into each house they carried by force. Some of them ran about with torches, others smeared the walls with petroleum, and soon entire streets were on fire—Bazeilles blazed.
At last, in the central part of the village there only remained Weiss's house, with its closed shutters, that retained the threatening appearance of a citadel resolved upon no surrender.
'Attention! here they come,' exclaimed the captain.
A volley from the garret and the first-floor stretched on the ground three of the Bavarians who were stealthily advancing close to the walls. The others thereupon fell back, placing themselves in ambush at the corners of the road, and the siege of the house began, such a shower of bullets pelting the front that one might have thought there was a hailstorm. For nearly ten minutes this fusillade went on without cessation, denting the plaster without doing much damage. One of the two soldiers, whom the captain had taken with him into the garret, imprudently showed himself, however, at a dormer window, and was instantly killed by a bullet, which struck him full in the forehead.
'Curse it! that's one less!' growled the captain. 'Be cautious, we are not numerous enough to get ourselves killed for the fun of the thing.' He himself had taken a chassepot, and was firing from behind a shutter.
Laurent, the gardener, particularly excited his admiration. On his knees, as though he were stalking game, with the barrel of his gun resting in a narrow loophole, the young fellow only fired when he was sure of bringing down his man, and he himself predicted the result of each shot before it took effect. 'That little blue officer over there,' said he, 'in the heart. That other one, the skinny chap, farther off, between the eyes. That fat fellow with the carroty beard—I can't stand him—in the stomach.'
And the man he named invariably fell, struck in the very spot he had mentioned; and he quietly continued firing, without the least haste, having plenty of work before him, as he said, and requiring, indeed, more time than he could command, to pick them all off in that fashion.
'Ah! if I could only see,' Weiss kept on repeating, in a furious voice. He had just broken his spectacles, and was in despair at this untimely accident. Certainly, he still had his eye-glasses, but with the perspiration that was streaming down his face he was unable to fix them firmly on his nose; and in a feverish state, with his hands trembling, he frequently fired quite at random. Increasing passion was now sweeping away all that remained of his accustomed calmness.
'Don't be in such a hurry; it does no good,' remarked Laurent. 'There! see that one who no longer has his helmet, at the corner by the grocer's. Aim at him carefully. Why! that's first rate; you have broken his leg! See how he's floundering about in his blood.'