Then, as the soldier was approaching her, Henriette distractedly coiled her limbs round Weiss: 'Oh! I beseech you, dear, keep me, let me die with you.'
Weiss was shedding big tears, and without answering was trying to unloosen the unhappy woman's convulsive grasp upon his shoulder and his loins.
'Do you no longer care for me,' she pleaded, 'that you wish to die without me? Keep me here; it will tire them out, and they will shoot us both.'
He had now succeeded in detaching one of her little hands, and was pressing it to his mouth, covering it with kisses, whilst still striving to loosen the grasp of the other one.
'No, no! Keep me,' she cried, 'I want to die.'
At last, however, after infinite trouble, he held both her hands in his own. And, hitherto silent, having purposely refrained from answering her, he now said but three words: 'Farewell, dear wife!'
He himself had thrown her into the arms of the Bavarian who carried her away. She struggled and shrieked, whilst the soldier, doubtless for the purpose of calming her, gave vent to a stream of gruff words. With a violent effort she had managed to disengage her head, and she saw everything.
In less than three seconds it was over. Weiss, whose glasses had slipped down while he was parting from his wife, had hastily set them on his nose again, as though he wished to look death full in the face. He stepped back and leant against the wall, with his arms crossed; and this stout peaceable fellow, in his coat torn to shreds, had a wildly excited face, aglow with all the beauty of courage. Near him was Laurent, who had contented himself with shoving his hands into his pockets. The cruel scene, the abominableness of those savages who shot men down before the very eyes of their wives, seemed to fill him with indignation. He drew himself up, scanned the firing party, and in a contemptuous tone spat forth the words: 'You filthy pigs!'
But the officer had raised his sword, and the two men fell like logs, the gardener with his face on the ground, the book-keeper on his flank, alongside the wall. The latter, before expiring, experienced a final convulsion, his eyelids blinked, his mouth writhed. Then the officer stepped up to him, and stirred him with his foot, desirous of making sure that he was quite dead.