He spoke to her in horrible French, so Pierre Nesle told me, imitating it savagely, as Madame Chéri had done to him. The man was filthily drunk and declared that he loved Hélène and would kill her if she did not let him love her. Why did she lock her door like that? He had been kind to her. He had smiled at her. A German officer was a human being, not a monster. Why did they treat him as a monster, draw themselves away when he passed, become silent when he wished to speak with them, stare at him with hate in their eyes? The French people were all devils, proud as devils. Another figure stood on the landing. It was Edouard--a tall, slim figure with a white face and burning eyes, in which there was a look of fury. “What is happening, _maman_?” he said coldly. “What does this animal want?” Madame Chéri trembled with a new fear. If the boy were to kill that man, he would be shot. She had a vision of him standing against a wall.... “It is nothing,” she said. “This gentleman is ill. Go back to bed, Edouard. I command you.” The German laughed, stupidly. “To bed, _shafskopf_. I am going to open your sister’s door. She loves me. She calls to me. I hear her whisper, ‘_Ich liebe dich!_’” Edouard had a stick in his hand. It was a heavy walking-stick which had belonged to his father. Without a word he sprang forward, raised his weapon, and smashed it down on the German’s head. It knocked off Schwarz’s helmet, which rolled from the top to the bottom of the staircase, and hit the man a glancing blow on the temple. He fell like a log. Edouard smiled and said, “_Très bien_.” Then he rattled the lock of his sister’s door and called out to her: “Hélène.... Have no fear. He is dead. I have killed him.” It was then that Madame Chéri had her greatest fear. There was no sound from Hélène. She did not answer any of their cries. She did not open the door to them. They tried to force the lock, as Schwarz had done, but though the lock gave at last the door would not open, kept closed by some barricade behind it. Edouard and his mother went out into the yard and the boy climbed up to his sister’s window and broke the glass to go through. Hélène was lying in her nightdress on the bedroom floor, unconscious. She had moved a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, by some supernatural strength which came from fear. Then she had fainted. To his deep regret Edouard had not killed the German. Schwarz had crawled back to his bedroom when they went back into the house, and next morning wept to Madame Chéri, and implored forgiveness. There had been a little banquet, he said, and he had drunk too much. Madame Chéri did not forgive. She called at the Kommandantur where the General saw her, and listened to her gravely. He did not waste words. “The matter will be attended to,” he said. Captain Schwarz departed that day from the house in the rue Esquermoise. He was sent to a battalion in the line and was killed somewhere near Ypres. V