Old Materne, his beaked nose rising above a juniper branch and his brow erect, was also watching the arrival of the Germans; and as he was very clear-sighted, he could distinguish even faces among the crowd, and choose the man he wished to knock over.
In the centre of the column, on a large bay horse, an old officer was advancing right ahead, with a white wig, a three-cornered hat trimmed with gold, his waist encircled with a yellow scarf, and his breast decorated with ribbons. When this personage raised his head, the peak of his hat, surmounted by a tuft of black plumes, formed a vizor. He had great wrinkles along his cheeks, and looked sufficiently stern.
"There is my man!" thought the old hunter, deliberately taking aim.
He fired, and when he looked again the old officer had disappeared.
Immediately the whole hill-side became enveloped in fire all along the intrenchment; but the Germans, without replying, continued to advance toward the breastworks, their guns on their shoulders, and as steadily as though on parade.
To tell the truth, more than one brave mountaineer, father of a family, seeing this forest of bayonets coming up, and notwithstanding the excitement of battle, felt that he would have done better had he remained in his village, than to have mixed himself up in such an affair. But, as the proverb says, "The wine was drawn, and it had to be drunk."
Riffi, the little tailor, recalled the words of his wife Sapience: "Riffi, you will get yourself crippled, and it will serve you right."
He vowed a costly offering to St. Leon's Chapel should he return from the war; but at the same time he resolved to make good use of his musket.
When they were about two hundred feet from the breastworks, the Germans halted and began a rolling fire, such as had never been heard in the mountain before. It was a regular storm of shot: the balls in hundreds tore away the branches, sent bits of broken ice flying in all directions, or flattened themselves on the rocks on every side, leaping up with a strange hissing noise, and passing by like flocks of pigeons.
All this did not stop the mountaineers from continuing their fire, but it could no longer be heard. The whole hill-side was wrapped in blue smoke, which prevented their taking any aim.