“You know this country, madame?” 60
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Will you set us on our way through the Gunstett hill-road?”
“No.”
The chapel bell was clanging wildly; the beacon shot up in a whirling column of sparks and red smoke.
“Put that woman into the carriage!” bellowed the officer. “I’m cursed if I leave her to set the whole country yapping at our heels! Loisel, put her in beside the prisoner! Madame, it is useless to resist. Hark! What’s that sound of galloping?”
I listened. I heard nothing save the clamor of the chapel bell.
An Uhlan laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the listening Countess; she tried to draw back, but he pushed her brutally into the carriage, and she stumbled and fell into the cushions beside me.
“Uhlans, into your saddles!” cried the Rittmeister, sharply. “Two men to the wagon!—a man on the box there! Here you, Jacques Bonhomme, drive carefully or I’ll hang you higher than the Strasbourg clock. Are the wounded in the straw? Sepp, take the riderless horses. Peloton, attention! Draw sabres! March! Trot!”
Fever had already begun to turn my head; the jolting of the carriage brought me to my senses at times; at times, too, I could hear the two wounded Uhlans groaning in the wagon behind me, the tramping of the cavalry ahead, the dull rattle of lance butts in the leather stirrup-boots.