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By Root 2194 0

what grew and poisoned her more every hour was her hatred of Goliath. He was her sin, her damnation. If he had not existed she would have waited for Honoré and Honoré would still be alive and she would be happy. What a tone of voice he had used when he told her he was the master! Of course it was true, there was now no police force, no judges to appeal to, only might was right. Oh to be the stronger and seize him when he came, this man who talked of seizing others! For her there was only the child left, for he was her own flesh. This chance father didn’t count and never had. She was not a wife, and when she thought of him she only felt moved by the anger and resentment of a conquered victim. Rather than give up the child to him she would have killed the boy and herself afterwards. She had told him clearly – she wished this child he had given her, like a gift of hatred, were already grown up and capable of defending her; she saw him later with a gun, putting bullets through the lot of them over yonder! Yes, one more Frenchman, another French slayer of Prussians!

Meanwhile, she only had one day left and she had to come to some decision. From the first moment one murderous thought had been going through her poor, bewildered head, and that was to alert the guerrillas and give Sambuc the tip he was waiting for. But the idea had been a fleeting, intangible one, and she had rejected it as monstrous and out of the question – after all, wasn’t the man the father of her child? She couldn’t have him murdered. But then the idea had kept coming back, steadily more obsessive and urgent, and now it was forcing itself upon her with all the persuasive strength of its simplicity and finality. Once Goliath was dead, Jean, Prosper, old Fouchard would have nothing left to fear. She herself would then keep Chariot and nobody would ever again question her right to him. And there was something else much deeper, unrecognized even by her, which was rising up from the depths of her being – the need to make an end, to eliminate the paternity of the child by eliminating the father, the savage joy of telling herself that she would emerge with her sin amputated, as it were, mother and sole mistress of the child, without having to share with a male. For the whole of another day she turned the idea over, having no strength left to thrust it aside but brought back in spite of herself to the details of the trap, foreseeing the smallest details and fitting them in. By now it was an obsession, an idea that has driven home its point and that one no longer argues about. When she eventually acted in obedience to this pressure of the inevitable, she moved as in a dream, motivated by some other person, somebody she had never known in herself.

On the Sunday old Fouchard, who was nervous, had told the guerrillas that their sack of loaves would be taken to the Boisville quarries, a lonely spot two kilometres away, and as Prosper was doing something else it was Silvine he sent with the barrow. Was this not Fate taking a hand? She read in this a decree of destiny, and she talked and made the arrangements with Sambuc for the following evening in a clear voice, with no emotion, as though there was nothing else she could have done. The next day there were further signs and positive proofs that people and even things were willing the murder. To begin with old Fouchard was suddenly called away to Raucourt and left orders for the meal to be had without him, foreseeing that he could hardly be back before eight; and then Henriette, whose turn of duty at the hospital did not come until Tuesday, was warned quite late that she would have to act as replacement that evening for the person on duty, who was indisposed. And as Jean never left his room whatever noise was made, that only left Prosper who, she feared, might intervene. He didn’t hold with slaughtering a man like that, several to one. But when he saw his brother arrive with his two lieutenants his disgust with that vile crew only reinforced his hatred of the Prussians – certainly he was not going to save one of those filthy