cockades. They were republicans. They were the Parisians who, the day before, were there all alive, keeping garrison in the farm of Herbe-en-Pail. These men had been executed; this was proved by the symmetrical position of the bodies: they had been struck down on the spot, and with care. They were all dead. Not a death-rattle sounded from the heap.
Tellmarch passed the corpses in review without omitting a single one; all were riddled with bullets.
Those who had shot them, probably in haste to go elsewhere, had not taken time to bury them.
As he was going away, his eyes fell on a low wall in the courtyard, and he saw four feet protruding from behind the corner of this wall.
These feet had shoes on; they were smaller than the others; Tellmarch went towards them. They were the feet of women.
Two women were lying side by side behind the wall; they also had been shot.
Tellmarch bent over them. One of these women wore a sort of uniform; beside her was a cask, broken and empty; she was a vivandière. She had four bullets in her head. She was dead.
Tellmarch examined the other. She was a peasant woman. She was pallid and her mouth was open. Her eyes were closed. There was no wound on her head. Her clothing, which her wearisome wandering had doubtless torn to rags, had come open in her fall, and exposed her half-naked body. Tellmarch pushed them open still more, and saw a round wound made by a bullet in her shoulder; her collar-bone was broken. He looked at her livid breasts.
"A nursing mother," he murmured.
He touched her. She was not cold.
She had no other injury than the broken collar-bone and the wound on her shoulder.
He placed his hand on her heart and felt a feeble fluttering. She was not dead.
Tellmarch rose to his feet and cried in a terrible voice:—
"Is there nobody here?"
"It is you, the caimand!" replied a voice, so low that he could hardly hear it.
