"Earnest—ma foi! I should think so, Louis."
"Ah, mon Dieu—to be shot thus—it is terrible!" he exclaimed, in a piercing voice.
"On your knees, Frenchmen," repeated the militant friar, "not to us, but to God!"
"To the blessed God, then," said the old captain; "kneel, comrades; 'tis the last word of command you will ever hear from me."
They all knelt, and now the firing party came forward three paces—
——"a death-determined band,
Hell in their face and horror in their hand."
And forming line about twenty paces from the prisoners, shouldered arms. Then Quentin felt his excited heart beating painfully in his breast, and he held his breath as if suffocating. From the shoulder the muskets were cast to the "ready," and then followed the terrible clicking of the sixty locks, a sound that made the youngest victim, who had been named Louis, a fair-haired lad (some poor conscript, torn from his mother's arms, perhaps), to shudder very perceptibly and close his eyes; and now came the three fatal and final words of command from the unfrocked friar.
"Camaradas, preparen las armas!"
"Apunten!"
("Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur!" cried the old captain, defiantly.)