A great calm now descended on the big room, while the rifles crackled outside. The German guns were no longer firing. The enemy's counter-attack must be meeting with success; and Paul, incapable of moving, lay awaiting the terrible explosion foretold by the lieutenant.
He pronounced Élisabeth's name time after time. He reflected that no danger threatened her now, because Major Hermann was also about to die. Besides, her brother Bernard would know how to defend her. But after a while this sort of tranquillity disappeared, changed into uneasiness and then into restless anxiety, giving way to a feeling of which every second that passed increased the torture. He could not tell whether he was haunted by a nightmare, by some morbid hallucination. It all happened on the side of the attic to which he had dragged Major Hermann. A soldier's dead body was lying between them. And it seemed, to his horror, as if the major had cut his bonds and were rising to his feet and looking around him.
Paul exerted all his strength to open his eyes and keep them open. But an ever thicker shadow veiled them; and through this shadow he perceived, as one sees a confused sight in the darkness, the major taking off his cloak, stooping over the body, removing its blue coat and buttoning it on himself. Then he put the dead man's cap on his head, fastened his scarf round his neck, took the soldier's rifle, bayonet and cartridges and, thus transfigured, stepped down the three wooden stairs.
It was a terrible vision. Paul would have been glad to doubt his eyes, to believe in some phantom image born of his fever and delirium. But everything confirmed the reality of what he saw; and it meant to him the most infernal suffering. The major was making his escape!
Paul was too weak to contemplate the position in all its bearings. Was the major thinking of killing him and of killing M. d'Andeville? Did the major know that they were there, both of them wounded, within reach of his hand? Paul never asked himself these questions. One idea alone obsessed his failing mind. Major Hermann was escaping. Thanks to his uniform, he would mingle with the volunteers! By the aid of some signal, he would get back to the Germans! And he would be free! And he would resume his work of persecution, his deadly work, against Élisabeth!
Oh, if the explosion had only taken place! If the ferryman's house could but be blown up and the major with it! . . .
Paul still clung to this hope in his half-conscious condition. Meanwhile his reason was wavering. His thoughts became more and more confused. And he swiftly sank into that darkness in which one neither sees nor hears. . . .
Three weeks later the general commanding in chief stepped from his motor car in front of an old château in the Bourbonnais, now transformed into a military hospital. The officer in charge was waiting for him at the door.
"Does Second Lieutenant Delroze know that I am coming to see him?"