“O God! my child! They have killed you!”
He suffered more, as the cry broke from him, than if the bullets had brought him that death which he saw at one glance had stricken down forever all the glory of her childhood, all the gladness of her youth.
She laughed—all the clear, imperious, arch laughter of her sunniest hours unchanged.
“Chut! It is the powder and ball of France! That does not hurt. If it was an Arbico's bullet now! But wait! Here is the Marshal's order. He suspends your sentence; I have told him all. You are safe!—do you hear?—you are safe! How he looks! Is he grieved to live? Mes Francais! Tell him clearer than I can tell—here is the order. The General must have it. No—not out of my hand till the General sees it. Fetch him, some of you—fetch him to me.”
“Great Heavens! You have given your life for mine!”
The words broke from him in an agony as he held her upward against his heart, himself so blind, so stunned, with the sudden recall from death to life, and with the sacrifice whereby life was thus brought to him, that he could scarce see her face, scarce hear her voice, but only dimly, incredulously, terribly knew, in some vague sense, that she was dying, and dying thus for him.
She smiled up in his eyes, while even in that moment, when her life was broken down like a wounded bird's, and the shots had pierced through from her shoulder to her bosom, a hot, scarlet flush came over her cheeks as she felt his touch, and rested on his heart.
“A life! what is it to give? We hold it in our hands every hour, we soldiers, and toss it in change for a draught of wine. Lay me down on the ground—at your feet—so! I shall live longest that way, and I have much to tell. How they crowd around me! Mes soldats, do not make that grief and that rage over me. They are sorry they fired; that is foolish. They were only doing their duty, and they could not hear me in time.”
But the brave words could not console those who had killed the Child of the Tricolor; they flung their carbines away, they beat their breasts, they cursed themselves and the mother who had borne them; the silent, rigid, motionless phalanx that had stood there in the dawn to see death dealt in the inexorable penalty of the law was broken up into a tumultuous, breathless, heart-stricken, infuriated throng, maddened with remorse, convulsed with sorrow, turning wild eyes of hate on him as on the cause through which their darling had been stricken. He, laying her down with unspeakable gentleness as she had bidden him, hung over her, leaning her head against his arm, and watching in paralyzed horror the helplessness of the quivering limbs, the slow flowing of the blood beneath the Cross that shone where that young heroic heart so soon would beat no more.
“Oh, my child, my child!” he moaned, as the full might and meaning of this devotion which had saved him at such cost rushed on him. “What am I worth that you should perish for me? Better a thousand times have left me to my fate! Such nobility, such sacrifice, such love!”