Paul positively roared with rage when he saw the dreadful word set down in his poor Élisabeth's hand. It was on one of the last pages. After that there were only a few sentences written at random, across the paper, obviously in the dark, sentences that seemed breathless as the voice of one dying:
"The tocsin! . . . The wind carries the sound from Corvigny. . . . What can it mean? . . . The French troops? . . . Paul, Paul, perhaps you are with them! . . .
"Two soldiers came in, laughing:
"'Lady's kaput! . . . All three kaput! . . . Major Hermann said so: they're kaput!'
"I am alone again. . . . We are going to die. . . . But Rosalie wants to talk to me and daren't. . . .
"Five o'clock.
"The French artillery. . . . Shells bursting round the château. . . . Oh, if one of them could hit me! . . . I hear Rosalie's voice. . . . What has she to tell me? What secret has she discovered?
"Oh, horror! Oh, the vile truth! Rosalie has spoken. Dear God, I beseech Thee, give me time to write. . . . Paul, you could never imagine. . . . You must be told before I die. . . . Paul. . . ."
The rest of the page was torn out; and the following pages, to the end of the month, were blank. Had Élisabeth had the time and the strength to write down what Rosalie had revealed to her?
This was a question which Paul did not even ask himself. What cared he for those revelations and the darkness that once again and for good shrouded the truth which he could no longer hope to discover? What cared he for vengeance or Prince Conrad or Major Hermann or all those savages who tortured and slew women? Élisabeth was dead. She had, so to speak, died before his eyes. Nothing outside that fact was worth a thought or an effort. Faint and stupefied by a sudden fit of cowardice, his eyes still fixed on the diary in which his poor wife had jotted down the phases of the most cruel martyrdom imaginable, he felt an immense longing for death and oblivion steal slowly over him. Élisabeth was calling to him. Why go on fighting? Why not join her?