Shot after shot was fired after him, but he escaped them all, and ere long found himself in a village, the main street of which was crowded by Francs-Tireurs, who seemed to have expended all their ammunition, as they pursued him simply with fixed bayonets, yells, and ferocious maledictions; for, as the Prussians gave no quarter to this species of volunteer force, they were not disposed to give any in return, so Heinrich began to give himself up for lost.
An alley opened on his right, and by it he hoped to gain the open country. He spurred his horse and shouted; he urged it with leg and hand and voice, and forced it to the right down the alley, followed by a shout of fierce derisive laughter, the source of which he soon discovered to be the fact that the alley had no outlet, and that he was fairly entrapped in a narrow cul-de-sac!
To take a pistol from the holsters, to leap from his horse, make a dash into the nearest house, was to Heinrich but the work of an instant; but he had barely closed and secured the door, ere the human tide of the Francs-Tireurs, intent on revenge and bloodshed, came surging wildly down the alley against it.
The house had been abandoned by its owners. He sought for the back-door, but there was none. He could only drop from an upper window into a garden; but his uniform would cause him at once to be recognised, and instant death was sure to follow. Not a moment was to be lost! He looked wildly round him. On a peg there hung a loose, coarse peasant blouse of blue cloth. He tore off his uniform, threw it and his helmet aside with his weapons, donned the blouse, and was just in the act of dropping from the window, when his exulting pursuers, who had soon forced the door, burst into the room, with cries of:
'Tué, tué!—justice, revenge!—revenge for the Francs-Tireurs!'
The garden-wall was uncommonly high, the gate securely locked; outlet there was none; and in another minute Frankenburg found himself in the hands of a score of these French volunteers, so many of whose comrades had been—no doubt, barbarously—put to death by the Prussians, simply for being found with arms in their hands, so that to look for mercy was vain. Their grasp was upon him; and in their desire to destroy him, they actually impeded each other, and for a second or two it seemed doubtful whether he was to perish by the charged bayonet or the whirled butt-end of the chassepot, as he was hustled and dragged hither and thither from hand to hand.
'Checkmated—cornered!' thought he, as the faces of Herminia and all at home came before him; 'to die thus—and at the hands of these rascally French peasantry.' Suddenly one exclaimed:
'Un espion—un mouchard! A Prussian disguised in a blouse—he was about to become a spy!'
'L'espion, l'espion!—a rope, a rope!' cried the rest, catching at the new idea with extreme fervour. 'No, no—bayonet him!' cried one.
'They hanged my brother at Borny,' said another;' so, by Baalzebub, let us hang him—hang him, Etienne!'