The most fearful and the most exhausted quickened their pace, and drew their sabres or loaded their muskets.
It was plain that there would be a veritable butchery if the guards did not give way. Buche himself shouted:
"They ought all to be murdered, we are betrayed. Come, Joseph, let us be revenged."
But I held him back by the collar and exclaimed:
"No, Jean, no! We have had murders enough already, and we have escaped all, and we do not want to be killed here by Frenchmen. Come!"
He struggled still, but at last I showed him a village on the left of the road and said:
"Look! there is the road to Harberg, and there are houses like those at Quatre Vents; let us go there and ask for bread; I have money, and we shall certainly find some. That will be better than to attack the convoys like a pack of wolves."
He allowed himself to be persuaded at last, and we set off once more through the grain. If hunger had not urged us on, we should have sat down on the side of the path at every step. But at the end of half an hour, thanks to God, we reached a sort of farm-house; it was abandoned, with the windows broken out, and the door wide open, and great heaps of black earth lying about. We went in and shouted, "Is there no one here?"
We knocked against the furniture with the butts of our muskets, but not a soul answered. Our fury increased, because we saw several wretches, following the route by which we had come, and we thought, "They are coming to eat up our bread."
Ah! those who have never suffered these privations cannot comprehend the fury which possessed us. It was horrible—horrible!