I do not know whether my unseen glance and the intense hatred I was feeling towards him, did not at last disturb him and put him on his guard; but all of a sudden he raised his head, a head covered with thick bristling hair, the eyes of an albino, and red moustaches, showing a grinning set of cruel-looking teeth. For one moment he threw a suspicious glance around him, and having rebuckled his belt and refilled his flask, he went off. As he passed in front of my window, I had my finger on the trigger. Well, no; I could not do it. To kill for the sake of killing, with such certainty, and so little personal danger, was beyond me. It is not such an easy thing as one fancies, to take a fellow-creature’s life in cold blood. Once outside the precincts of the Hermitage, and having shaken off his undefined sensation of fear, the rascal again took up his song, and I heard him getting farther and farther away, giving forth to the forest his “_Mein lieb_, _lieb Mai_ . . .” Sing away, sing away, my lad! you have had a narrow escape of never seeing again your sweet month of May . . . [Picture: Soldier walks off singing] * * * * * [Picture: The approach of Autumn] _October_ . . . What day, what date can it be? I have completely lost count. My brain is all confused. Yet it seems to me that it must be October. The monotonous days get shorter and shorter, the wind colder, and the foliage of the large trees around me becomes thinner at each gust of wind. The sound of incessant cannonading in the direction of Paris, makes a lugubrious accompaniment to my everyday life, a deep, low bass, always mingling in my thoughts. I think the Prussians must have their hands full over there, for my marauders have not reappeared. I no longer even hear the long, slow rumbling of the ammunition waggons, nor the rolling of drums, which used to resound on the roads outside the forest. So I have again lighted the fire in the large room, and I walk openly about in the orchard.