"I wish," said Jeanne Bergère, "that they had set fire to my mattress."
A violent concussion shook the cellar to its foundations. Even the face of the thirsty little boy brightened.
"It is one of ours," he said.
"To eradicate the lice which feed upon the Germans and the foul smells which emanate from their bodies there is nothing so effective as high explosives," said the old man. He looked at his watch and said:
"We have half an hour more."
At the end of that time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly in the deep shadows, he resembled a painting by Rembrandt.
"I see no one," he said. "There is a lot of smoke."
His eyes became suddenly wide open, fixed, round with a kind of celestial astonishment. This his old French heart stopped beating, and he fell to the foot of the stair. His companions thought that he must have been shot. They dared not move.
But it was no bullet or fragment of far-blown shell that had laid the old man low. He had seen in the smoke that whirled down the village street, a little soldier in the uniform of France. Pure unadulterated joy had struck him dead.
Five minutes passed, and no one had moved except the little boy. With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he crept back to his place.