"
The child, who was rubbing his shoulder and weeping, suddenly caught
sight of the thing on the nail; his childlike face kept the nervous
convulsion his crying had caused, but he was silent. He opened his
eyes wide, and gazed at the head of his father with a stupid look
which betrayed no emotion; then his face, brutalized by ignorance,
showed savage curiosity. Barbette again took his hand, grasped it
violently, and dragged him into the house. When Pille-Miche and
Marche-a-Terre threw their victim on the bench one of his shoes,
dropping off, fell on the floor beneath his neck and was afterward
filled with blood. It was the first thing that met the widow's eye.
"Take off your shoe," said the mother to her son. "Put your foot in
that. Good. Remember," she cried, in a solemn voice, "your father's
shoe; never put on your own without remembering how the Chouans filled
it with his blood, and /kill the Chouans/!"
She swayed her head with so convulsive an action that the meshes of
her black hair fell upon her neck and gave a sinister expression to
her face.
"I call Saint-Labre to witness," she said, "that I vow you to the
Blues. You shall be a soldier to avenge your father. Kill, kill the
/Chouans/, and do as I do. Ha! they've taken the head of my man, and I
am going to give that of the Gars to the Blues."
She sprang at a bound on the bed, seized a little bag of money from a
hiding-place, took the hand of the astonished little boy, and dragged
him after her without giving him time to put on his shoe, and was on
her way to Fougeres rapidly, without once turning her head to look at
the home she abandoned.
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