The mayor and the priest changed their places in the file, seeking one another. Each, with solemn courtesy, was offering the other the central place in the group.
“Here, your Honor, is your place as mayor—at the head of all.”
“No, after you, Monsieur le cure.”
They were disputing for the last time, but in this supreme moment each one was wishing to yield precedence to the other.
Instinctively they had clasped hands, looking straight ahead at the firing squad, that had lowered its guns in a rigid, horizontal line. Behind them sounded laments—“Good-bye, my children. . . . Adieu, life! . . . I do not wish to die! . . . I do not want to die! . . .”
The two principal men felt the necessity of saying something, of closing the page of their existence with an affirmation.
“Vive la Republique!” cried the mayor.
“Vive la France!” said the priest.
Desnoyers thought that both had said the same thing. Two uprights flashed up above their heads—the arm of the priest making the sign of the cross, and the sabre of the commander of the shooters, glistening at the same instant. . . . A dry, dull thunderclap, followed by some scattering, tardy shots.
Don Marcelo’s compassion for that forlorn cluster of massacred humanity was intensified on beholding the grotesque forms which many assumed in the moment of death. Some collapsed like half-emptied sacks; others rebounded from the ground like balls; some leaped like gymnasts, with upraised arms, falling on their backs, or face downward, like a swimmer. In that human heap, he saw limbs writhing in the agony of death. Some soldiers advanced like hunters bagging their prey. From the palpitating mass fluttered locks of white hair, and a feeble hand, trying to repeat the sacred sign. A few more shots and blows on the livid, mangled mass . . . and the last tremors of life were extinguished forever.