When they had passed the gate, the sight of the mined court-yard, of the shattered turrets, of the demolished château, of the out-houses in flames, of the dying in their last throes and the thickly stacked corpses of the dead startled them into recoiling. "Forward! Forward!" shouted the colonel, galloping up. "There are troops that must have made off across the park." Paul knew the road, which he had covered a few weeks earlier in such tragic circumstances. He rushed across the lawns, among blocks of stone and uprooted trees. But, as he passed in sight of a little lodge that stood at the entrance to the wood, he stopped, nailed to the ground. And Bernard and all the men stood stupefied, opening their mouths wide with horror. Against the lodge, two corpses rested on their feet, fastened to rings in the wall by a single chain wound round their waists. Their bodies were bent over the chains and their arms hung to the ground. They were the corpses of a man and a woman. Paul recognized Jérôme and Rosalie. They had been shot. The chain continued beyond them. There was a third ring in the wall. The plaster was stained with blood and there were visible traces of bullets. There had been a third victim, without a doubt, and the body had been removed. As he approached, Paul noticed a splinter of bomb-shell embedded in the plaster. Around the hole thus formed, between the plaster and the splinter, was a handful of fair hair with golden lights in it, hair torn from the head of Élisabeth. CHAPTER VII H. E. R. M. Paul's first feeling was an immense need of revenge, then and there, at all costs, a need outweighing any sense of horror or despair. He gazed around him, as though all the wounded men who lay dying in the park were guilty of the monstrous crime: "The cowards!" he snarled. "The murderers!" "Are you sure," stammered Bernard, "are you sure it's Élisabeth's hair?" "Why, of course I am. They've shot her as they shot the two others. I know them both: it's the keeper and his wife. Oh, the blackguards! . . ." He raised the butt of his rifle over a German dragging himself in the grass and was about to strike him, when the Colonel came up to him: "Hullo, Delroze, what are you doing? Where's your company?" "Oh, sir, if you only knew! . . ." He rushed up to his colonel. He looked like a madman and brandished his rifle as he spoke: "They've killed her, sir, yes, they've shot my wife. . . . Look, against the wall there, with the two people who were in her service. . . . They've shot her. . . . She was twenty years old, sir. . . . Oh, we must kill them all like dogs!" But Bernard was dragging him away: "Don't let us waste time, Paul; we can take our revenge on those who are still fighting. . . . I hear firing over there. Some of them are surrounded, I expect." Paul hardly knew what he was doing. He started running again, drunk with rage and grief.