Paul hardly knew what he was doing. He started running again, drunk with rage and grief.
Ten minutes later, he had rejoined his company and was crossing the open space where his father had been stabbed. The chapel was in front of him. Farther on, instead of the little door that used to be in the wall, a great breach had been made, to admit the convoys of wagons for provisioning the castle. Eight hundred yards beyond it, a violent rifle-fire crackled over the fields, at the crossing of the road and the highway.
A few dozen retreating Germans were trying to force their way through the hussars who had come by the high road. They were attacked from behind by Paul's company, but succeeded in taking shelter in a square patch of trees and copsewood, where they defended themselves with fierce energy, retiring step by step and dropping one after the other.
"Why don't they surrender?" muttered Paul, who was firing continually and who was gradually being calmed by the heat of the fray. "You would think they were trying to gain time."
"Look over there!" said Bernard, in a husky voice.
Under the trees, a motor-car had just come from the frontier, crammed with German soldiers. Was it bringing reinforcements? No, the motor turned almost in its own length; and between it and the last of the combatants stood an officer in a long gray cloak, who, revolver in hand, exhorted them to persevere in their resistance, while he himself effected his retreat towards the car sent to his rescue.
"Look, Paul," Bernard repeated, "look!"
Paul was dumfounded. That officer to whom Bernard was calling his attention was . . . but no, it could not be. And yet . . .
"What do you mean to suggest, Bernard?" he asked.
"It's the same face," muttered Bernard, "the same face as yesterday, you know, Paul: the face of the woman who asked me those questions about you, Paul."