"Let's speak of your reward first," he said. "I shall recommend you for the military medal; and you will be sure to get it. And now, my lad, tell your story."
And Paul stood answering questions in the middle of the circle formed around him by the officers and the non-commissioned officers of each company.
"Why, it's very simple, sir," he said. "We were being spied upon."
"Obviously; but who was the spy and where was he?"
"I learnt that by accident. Beside the position which we occupied this morning, there was a village, was there not, with a church?"
"Yes, but I had the village evacuated when I arrived; and there was no one in the church."
"If there was no one in the church, sir, why did the weather-vane point the wind coming from the east, when it was blowing from the west? And why, when we changed our position, was the vane pointed in our direction?"
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, sir. And that was why, after obtaining your leave, I did not hesitate to slip into the church and to enter the steeple as stealthily as I could. I was not mistaken. There was a man there whom I managed to overmaster, not without difficulty."
"The scoundrel! A Frenchman?"
"No, sir, a German dressed up as a peasant."
"He shall be shot."
"No, sir, please. I promised him his life."
"Never!"
"Well, you see, sir, I had to find out how he was keeping the enemy informed."
"Well?"
"Oh, it was simple enough! The church has a clock, facing the north, of which we could not see the dial, where we were. From the inside, our friend worked the hands so that the big hand, resting by turns on three or four figures, announced the exact distance at which we were from the church, in the direction pointed by the vane. This is what I next did myself; and the enemy at once, redirecting his fire by my indications, began conscientiously to shell the beet-field."
"He did," said the colonel, laughing.
"All that remained for me to do was to move on to the other observation-post, where the spy's messages were received. There I would learn the essential details which the spy himself did not know; I mean, where the enemy's batteries were hidden. I therefore ran to this place; and it was only on arriving here that I saw those batteries and a whole German brigade posted at the very foot of the church which did the duty of signaling-station."
"But that was a mad piece of recklessness! Didn't they fire on you?"
"I had put on the spy's clothes, sir, their spy's. I can speak German, I knew the pass-word and only one of them knew the spy and that was the officer on observation-duty. Without the least suspicion, the general commanding the brigade sent me to him as soon as I told him that the French had discovered me and that I had managed to escape them."
"And you had the cheek.. ?"
"I had to, sir; and besides I held all the trump cards. The officer suspected nothing; and, when I reached the platform from which he was sending his signals, I had no difficulty in attacking him and reducing him to silence. My business was done and I had only to give you the signals agreed upon."
"Only that! In the midst of six or seven thousand men!"
"I had promised you, sir, and it was eleven o'clock. The platform had on it all the apparatus required for sending day or night signals. Why shouldn't I use it? I lit a rocket, followed by a second and a third and then a fourth; and the battle commenced."
"But those rockets were indications to draw our fire upon the very steeple where you were! It was you we were firing on!"
"Oh, I assure you, sir, one doesn't think of those things at such moments! I welcomed the first shell that struck the church. And then the enemy left me hardly any time for reflection. Half-a-dozen fellows at once came climbing the tower. I accounted for some of them with my revolver; but a second assault came and, later on, still another. I had to take refuge behind the door that closes the spire. When they had broken it down, it served me as a barricade; and, as I had the arms and ammunition which I had taken from my first assailants and was inaccessible and very nearly invisible, I found it easy to sustain a regular siege."
"While our seventy-fives were blazing away at you."
"While our seventy-fives were releasing me, sir; for you can understand that, once the church was destroyed and the nave in flames, no one dared to venture up the tower. I had nothing to do, therefore, but wait patiently for your arrival."
Paul Delroze had told his story in the simplest way and as though it concerned perfectly natural things. The colonel, after congratulating him again, confirmed his promotion to the rank of sergeant and said:
"Have you nothing to ask me?"
"Yes, sir, I should like to put a few more questions to the German spy whom I left behind me and, at the same time, to get back my uniform, which I hid."
"Very well, you shall dine here and we'll give you a bicycle afterwards."
Paul was back at the first church by seven o'clock in the evening. A great disappointment awaited him. The spy had broken his bonds and fled.
All Paul's searching, in the church and village, was useless. Nevertheless, on one of the steps of the staircase, near the place where he had flung himself upon the spy, he picked up the dagger with which his adversary had tried to strike him. It was exactly similar to the dagger which he had picked up in the grass, three weeks before, outside the little gate in the Ornequin woods. It had the same three-cornered blade, the same brown horn handle and, on the handle, the same four letters: H, E, R, M.
The spy and the woman who bore so strange a resemblance to Hermine d'Andeville, his father's murderess, both made use of an identical weapon.
Next day, the division to which Paul's regiment belonged continued the offensive and entered Belgium after repulsing the enemy. But in the evening the general received orders to fall back.
The retreat began. Painful as it was to one and all, it was doubly so perhaps to those of our troops which had been victorious at the start. Paul and his comrades in the third company could not contain themselves for rage and disappointment. During the half a day which they spent in Belgium, they saw the ruins of a little town that had been destroyed by the Germans, the bodies of eighty women who had been shot, old men hung up by their feet, stacks of murdered children. And they had to retire before those monsters!
Some of the Belgian soldiers had attached themselves to the regiment; and, with faces that still bore traces of horror at the infernal visions which they had beheld, these men told of things beyond the conception of the most vivid imagination. And our fellows had to retire. They had to retire with hatred in their hearts and a mad desire for vengeance that made their hands close fiercely on their rifles.
And why retire? It was not a question of being defeated, because they were falling back in good order, making sudden halts and delivering violent counter-attacks upon the disconcerted enemy. But his numbers overpowered all resistance. The wave of barbarians reformed itself. The place of each thousand dead was taken by two thousand of the living. And our men retired.
One evening, Paul learnt one of the reasons for this retreat from a week-old newspaper; and he was painfully affected by the news. On the 20th of August, Corvigny had been taken by assault, after some hours of bombardment effected under the most inexplicable conditions, whereas the stronghold was believed to be capable of holding out for at least some days, which would have strengthened our operations against the left flank of the Germans.
So Corvigny had fallen; and the Château d'Ornequin, doubtless abandoned, as Paul himself hoped, by Jérôme and Rosalie, was now destroyed, pillaged and sacked with the methodical thoroughness which the Huns applied to their work of devastation. On this side, too, the furious horde were crowding precipitately.
Those were