"They were looking out for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy. The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: 'He must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.
"I wanted to speak! I was at that time in command of a battalion; but they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers; they would have shot myself.
"One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the last three days. He has been asking information from everyone about the artillery.'
"I took it on myself to question this person.
"'What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the army?'
"He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was, indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an agitated air in my presence that I had no longer any real doubt that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept staring at me from under his eyes with humble, stupid, and crafty air.
The men all round us exclaimed:
"'To the wall! to the wall!'
"I said to the gendarmes:
"'Do you answer for the prisoner?'