"Dominique! I recognize my son! It's he! Oh, I'm terrified!"
I also, as I gazed at the victor, recovered in my memory the time-effaced image of my poor cousin.
"It's he!" continued my uncle. "I was right . . . the expression of the Three Eyes. . . . Oh! I can't look! . . . I'm afraid!"
"Afraid of what, uncle?"
"They are going to kill him . . . to kill him before my eyes . . . to kill him as they actually did kill him . . . Dominique! Dominique! Take care!" he shouted.
I did not shout: what warning cry could reach the man about to die? But the same terror brought me to my knees and made me wring my hands. In front of us, from underneath the shapeless mass, among the heaped-up wreckage, something rose up, the swaying body of one of the victims. An arm was extended, aiming a revolver. The victor sprang to one side. It was too late. Shot through the head, he spun round upon his heels and fell beside the dead body of his murderer.
The tragedy was over.
My uncle, bent double, was sobbing pitifully a few paces from my side. He had witnessed the actual death of his son, foully murdered in the great war by a German airman!