"Élisabeth's diary. . . . You'll find it in my kit-bag in camp . . . with a few pages written by myself . . . which will explain. . . . But first you must . . . Look, that German officer over there, bound up . . . he's a spy. . . . Keep an eye on him. . . . Kill him. . . . If not, on the tenth of January . . . but you will kill him, won't you?"
Paul could speak no more. Besides, he saw that M. d'Andeville was not kneeling down to listen to him or help him, but that, himself shot, with his face bathed in blood, he was bending double and finally fell in a huddled heap, uttering moans that grew fainter and fainter.
A great calm now descended on the big room, while the rifles crackled outside. The German guns were no longer firing. The enemy's counter-attack must be meeting with success; and Paul, incapable of moving, lay awaiting the terrible explosion foretold by the lieutenant.
He pronounced Élisabeth's name time after time. He reflected that no danger threatened her now, because Major Hermann was also about to die. Besides, her brother Bernard would know how to defend her. But after a while this sort of tranquillity disappeared, changed into uneasiness and then into restless anxiety, giving way to a feeling of which every second that passed increased the torture. He could not tell whether he was haunted by a nightmare, by some morbid hallucination. It all happened on the side of the attic to which he had dragged Major Hermann. A soldier's dead body was lying between them. And it seemed, to his horror, as if the major had cut his bonds and were rising to his feet and looking around him.
Paul exerted all his strength to open his eyes and keep them open. But an ever thicker shadow veiled them; and through this shadow he perceived, as one sees a confused sight in the darkness, the major taking off his cloak, stooping over the body, removing its blue coat and buttoning it on himself. Then he put the dead man's cap on his head, fastened his scarf round his neck, took the soldier's rifle, bayonet and cartridges and, thus transfigured, stepped down the three wooden stairs.
It was a terrible vision. Paul would have been glad to doubt his eyes, to believe in some phantom image born of his fever and delirium. But everything confirmed the reality of what he saw; and it meant to him the most infernal suffering. The major was making his escape!