'Not yet, not yet,' muttered the Frenchman, while his white lips quivered and his blood-shot glazing eyes turned slowly on Charlie; 'accursed Prussian, I am not yet done with it.' Charlie drew back. He would have taken it from the dead man without compunction, but shrank from touching the living. 'A little time--a little time,' moaned the Frenchman, 'and I shall indeed be done with it, and all--earthly things.' 'Pardon me,' said Charlie, and was about to pass on, when the Frenchman spoke again. 'Water,' said he, in a low piteous voice, like a sigh; 'one drop of water on my lips, for the love of God!' Charlie glanced for a moment at the body of young Donnersberg that lay close by, with the Voltigeur's sword nearly up to the hilt in his breast; and then, inspired by pity, placed his water-bottle to the lips of his slayer, whose face was ghastly now and covered with the dew of death. '_Merci! Merci!_ I am dying!' said he. 'Take my cross, or less worthy hands will soon do so,' he added, trying with a feeble and fatuous hand to detach the ornament from his breast; 'but what will you do with it?' 'Hang it round the neck of her I love,' replied Charlie, who spoke French fluently, and hoping its destination might please a Frenchman's love of gallantry. 'Take it, then. Take it,' replied the latter, as he rent the cross from his breast by a last effort; 'take it, accursed Prussian!' he hissed, through his clenched teeth, 'and when you hang it round the neck of her you love, may she be like--like me!' 'What mean you?' '_A corpse!_' With this dreadful and inhuman wish, the vindictive Gaul sank back; a deadlier pallor overspread his features--there was a terrible sound in his throat, and all was over. For a moment Charlie stood bewildered, with the cross in his hand, and half-tempted to cast it from him. But he changed his mind, and carefully placed it in his breast-pocket as a _souvenir_ for Ernestine of the battles before Metz, and hurried to join the shattered remnant of his regiment, now hurrying with others, double-quick, to take part in the attack of the orchards of the farm of Bellecroix, where two batteries of mitrailleuses made dreadful havoc among the assailants, sweeping whole ranks away. By the time the batteries were taken, the French, after losing _nineteen_ thousand men (and the Prussians fully an equal number), were in rapid retreat for Metz. Charlie Pierrepont's work was over for the day, and like his friend Heinrich, he still found himself untouched.