The officer who was struggling in the middle of the obstructed road, trying to clear a space so that the platoon might fall back a few paces, turned round on hearing the sound of voices; and when he perceived the woman hanging on the neck of one of the prisoners, he again savagely shouted in French: 'No, no--no humbug, please! Where have you come from? What do you want?' 'I want my husband.' 'Your husband, that man there? He has been condemned; justice must be done.' 'I want my husband.' 'Come, be reasonable--move aside, we don't wish to do you any harm.' 'I want my husband.' Renouncing his attempts at persuasion, the officer was about to give orders that she should be torn from the prisoner's arms, when Laurent, hitherto silent and impassive, ventured to intervene: 'I say, captain, it was I who knocked so many of your men over, and it's right enough that you should shoot me. Besides, I've nobody to think of, neither mother, nor wife, nor child--but this gentleman's married--why not let him go, and settle my affair?' 'What's that tomfoolery!' yelled the captain, quite beside himself; 'are you making fun of me? Here! a man here to take this woman away.' He had to repeat the order in German, whereupon a soldier stepped forward, a short, broad-chested Bavarian, whose enormous head was bushy with carroty beard and hair, amidst which one could only distinguish a broad square-shaped nose, and a pair of big blue eyes. He was a frightful object, stained all over with blood, looking like some bear from a mountain cavern--one of those hairy monsters, red with the blood of the prey whose bones they have just been crunching. 'I want my husband; kill me with my husband!' repeated Henriette, in a heartrending cry. But, dealing himself heavy blows on the chest with his clenched fist, the officer declared that he was not a murderer, and that if there were some who slaughtered the innocent, he at all events was not one of them. She had not been condemned, and he would cut off his hand rather than touch a hair of her head. Then, as the soldier was approaching her, Henriette distractedly coiled her limbs round Weiss: 'Oh! I beseech you, dear, keep me, let me die with you.' Weiss was shedding big tears, and without answering was trying to unloosen the unhappy woman's convulsive grasp upon his shoulder and his loins. 'Do you no longer care for me,' she pleaded, 'that you wish to die without me? Keep me here; it will tire them out, and they will shoot us both.' He had now succeeded in detaching one of her little hands, and was pressing it to his mouth, covering it with kisses, whilst still striving to loosen the grasp of the other one. 'No, no! Keep me,' she cried, 'I want to die.' At last, however, after infinite trouble, he held both her hands in his own. And, hitherto silent, having purposely refrained from answering her, he now said but three words: 'Farewell, dear wife!'