'Your husband, that man there? He has been condemned; justice must be done.'
'I want my husband.'
'Come, be reasonable—move aside, we don't wish to do you any harm.'
'I want my husband.'
Renouncing his attempts at persuasion, the officer was about to give orders that she should be torn from the prisoner's arms, when Laurent, hitherto silent and impassive, ventured to intervene: 'I say, captain, it was I who knocked so many of your men over, and it's right enough that you should shoot me. Besides, I've nobody to think of, neither mother, nor wife, nor child—but this gentleman's married—why not let him go, and settle my affair?'
'What's that tomfoolery!' yelled the captain, quite beside himself; 'are you making fun of me? Here! a man here to take this woman away.'
He had to repeat the order in German, whereupon a soldier stepped forward, a short, broad-chested Bavarian, whose enormous head was bushy with carroty beard and hair, amidst which one could only distinguish a broad square-shaped nose, and a pair of big blue eyes. He was a frightful object, stained all over with blood, looking like some bear from a mountain cavern—one of those hairy monsters, red with the blood of the prey whose bones they have just been crunching.
'I want my husband; kill me with my husband!' repeated Henriette, in a heartrending cry.
But, dealing himself heavy blows on the chest with his clenched fist, the officer declared that he was not a murderer, and that if there were some who slaughtered the innocent, he at all events was not one of them. She had not been condemned, and he would cut off his hand rather than touch a hair of her head.