"You want to die?"
The child nodded.
"If I grow up, I should not be a man," he said. "You know what the doctor did to me?"
"I know," she said briefly, "but you shan't die if I can help it."
She could not help it. A few minutes after she had gone, his back strongly arched became rigid. His jaws locked and he died in the attitude of a wrestler making a bridge.
The village street was full of smoke and Frenchmen. These were methodically fighting the fires and hunting the ruins for Germans. Jeanne Bergère seized one of the little soldiers by the elbow.
"Come quickly," she said, "there is a child poisoned!"
The Idiot turned, and she would have fallen if he had not caught her. She tore herself loose from his arms with a kind of ferocity.
"Come! Come!" she cried, and she ran like a frightened animal back to the cellar door, the Idiot close behind her.
The Idiot knelt by the dead child, and after feeling in vain for any pulsation, straightened up and said: