—“Madman!” he spluttered out; “what crazy impulse induced you to give the word to fire?... Insensate homicide!—do you know what you have done? Take his parole, Lieutenant Mangin. Not a word, sir! You shall reply to the interrogations of a military tribunal, as to this evening’s bloody work!”
Dunoisse, forbidden to explain or exonerate himself, saluted the blotchy, wild-eyed Colonel, and gave up his sword to his junior. You saw him apparently calm, if livid under his Red Indian’s skin, and bleeding from a bullet-graze that burned upon his cheek like red-hot iron. The leather peak of his red shako had been partly shot away, the skirt of the tight-waisted gray-blue field-frock had a bullet-rent in it. His throat seemed as though compressed by the iron collar of the garotte, his heart beat as though it must burst from the breast that caged it. But his head was held stiff and high, and his black eyes never blinked or shifted, though his lips, under the little black mustache with the curved and pointed ends, made a thin white line against the deep sienna-red of his richly-tinted skin.
“Sacred thunder!... Return to your quarters, sir!”
De Roux, becoming alive to the napkin, plucked it from his bemedaled bosom and, realizing the fact of the fork, whipped it smartly behind his back. Dunoisse saluted stiffly, gave up his bleeding charger to his orderly, saluted again, wheeled, and deliberately stepped out of the radius of the Hotel gas-lamps, flaring still, though their massive globes had been broken by ricocheting bullets, into the dense gray fog that veiled the boulevard, where dimly-seen figures moved, groping among the dead, in search of the living....
“The Monarchy will pay dearly for this act of criminal folly!... How came he to give the order?” de Roux demanded.
And the subaltern officer, whose glance had followed the retreating figure of Dunoisse, withdrew it to reply:
“My Colonel, he gave no order. A pistol-shot came from behind us—a voice that was a stranger’s cried ‘Fire!’ The discharge followed instantly, and the people fled, leaving their dead behind them.”
“Why did he not defend himself?” de Roux muttered, glancing over his shoulder at the huge broken-windowed façade of the Hotel rising beyond the imposing carriage-entrance, the enclosing wall and the gateway and the tall spear-headed railings that backed the huddled figures and lowering, sullen faces of the unlucky half-battalion.
“Because, my Colonel, you had ordered him to be silent, and to return to his quarters. They are in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. And he has gone to them by that route.”