Blumhardt, after a brief reflection, started
toward the group and Don Marcelo behind him.
Soon he saw a village lad in the charge of some Germans who were holding
their bayonets to his breast. His face was colorless, with the whiteness
of a wax candle. His shirt, blackened with soot, was so badly torn that
it told of a hand-to-hand struggle. On one temple was a gash, bleeding
badly. A short distance away was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding
a baby, and surrounded by four children all covered with black grime as
though coming from a coal mine.
The woman was pleading desperately, raising her hands appealingly, her
sobs interrupting her story which she was uselessly trying to tell the
soldiers, incapable of understanding her. The petty officer convoying
the band spoke in German with the Commandant while the woman besought
the intervention of Desnoyers. When she recognized the owner of the
castle, she suddenly regained her serenity, believing that he could
intercede for her.
That husky young boy was her son. They had all been hiding since the
day before in the cellar of their burned house. Hunger and the danger
of death from asphyxiation had forced them finally to venture forth. As
soon as the Germans had seen her son, they had beaten him and were going
to shoot him as they were shooting all the young men. They believed that
the lad was twenty years old, the age of a soldier, and in order that he
might not join the French army, they were going to kill him.
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