| |
| “GARÇON! You—you | |
| Snared along with this cursed crew? | |
| (Only a child, and yet so bold, | |
| Scarcely as much as ten years old!) | |
| Do you hear? do you know | 5 |
| Why the gendarmes put you there, in the row, | |
| You, with those Commune wretches tall, | |
| With your face to the wall?” | |
| |
| “Know? To be sure I know! why not? | |
| We ’re here to be shot; | 10 |
| And there, by the pillar’s the very spot, | |
| Fighting for France, my father fell: | |
| Ah, well! | |
| That ’s just the way I would choose to fall, | |
| With my back to the wall!” | 15 |
| |
| (“Sacré! Fair, open fight, I say, | |
| Is something right gallant in its way, | |
| And fine for warming the blood; but who | |
| Wants wolfish work like this to do? | |
| Bah! ’t is a butcher’s business!) How? | 20 |
| (The boy is beckoning to me now: | |
| I knew that his poor child’s heart would fail, | |
| … Yet his cheek’s not pale:) | |
| Quick! say your say, for don’t you see, | |
| When the church-clock yonder tolls out Three, | 25 |
| You’re all to be shot? | |
| … What? | |
| ‘Excuse you one moment?’ O, ho, ho! | |
| Do you think to fool a gendarme so?” | |
| |
| “But, sir, here ’s a watch that a friend, one day | 30 |
| (My father’s friend), just over the way, | |
| Lent me; and if you ’ll let me free, | |
| —It still lacks seven minutes of Three,— | |
| I ’ll come, on the word of a soldier’s son, | |
| Straight back into line, when my errand’s done.” | 35 |
| |
| “Ha, ha! No doubt of it! Off! Begone! | |
| (Now, good Saint Denis, speed him on! | |
| The work will be easier since he ’s saved; | |
| For I hardly see how I could have braved | |
| The ardor of that innocent eye, | 40 |
| As he stood and heard, | |
| While I gave the word, | |
| Dooming him like a dog to die.”) | |
| |
| “In time! Well, thanks, that my desire | |
| Was granted; and now, I am ready:—Fire! | 45 |
| One word!—that ’s all! | |
| —You ’ll let me turn my back to the wall?” | |
| “Parbleu! Come out of the line, I say, | |
| Come out! (who said that his name was Ney?) | |
| Ha! France will hear of him yet one day!” | 50 |
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