But she did not hear it; she had fainted in the servant's arms. At this moment a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the wild, bearded face of a hussar stared at him.
"Footman?" asked the hussar, in his broken Hungarian dialect. "Yes, footman!" said the valet de chambre, in broken German.
The hussar smilingly patted his shoulder, and, with his other hand, pulled the watch from his vest-pocket, kindly saying to him, "Footman, stay here. No harm will befall him!" He then bent forward, and with a quick grasp, tore the watch and chain from the neck of Roberjot's fainting wife.
His task was now accomplished, and he galloped to the second carriage, to which the other hussars had just dragged the torch- bearer, and which they had completely surrounded.
"Bonnier, alight!" howled the hussars, furiously--"Bonnier, alight!"
"Here I am!" said Bonnier, opening the coach door; "here--" They did not give him time to finish the sentence. They dragged him from the carriage, and struck him numerous blows amidst loud laughter and yells. Bonnier did not defend himself; he did not parry a single one of their strokes; without uttering a cry or a groan, he sank to the ground. His dying lips only whispered a single word. That word was, "Victoria!"
The six hussars who crowded around him now stopped in their murderous work. They saw that Bonnier was dead--really dead--and that their task was accomplished. Now commenced the appropriation of the spoils, the reward that had been promised to them. Four of them rushed toward the carriage in order to search it and to take out all papers, valuables, and trunks; the two others searched and undressed the warm corpse of Bonnier with practised hands.
Then the six hussars rushed after their comrades toward the third carriage--toward Jean Debry. But the others had already outstripped them. They had dragged Debry, his wife, and his daughters from the carriage; they were robbing and searching the lady and the children, and cutting Jean Debry with their sabres.
He dropped to the ground; his respiration ceased, and a convulsive shudder passed through the bloody figure, and then it lay cold and motionless in the road.
"Dead! dead!" shouted the hussars, triumphantly. "The three men are killed; now for the spoils! The carriages are ours, with every thing in them! Come, let us search the fourth carriage. We will kill no more; we will only seize the spoils!"
And all were shouting and exulting, "Ho for the spoils! for the spoils! Every thing is ours!" And the wild crowd rushed forward, and Jean Debry lay motionless, a bleeding corpse by the side of the carriage.
Profound darkness enveloped the scene of horror and carnage. The torch had gone out; no human eye beheld the corpses with their gaping wounds. The ladies had been taken into the carriages by their servants; the hussars were engaged in plundering the three remaining carriages, the inmates of which, however, forewarned in time by the shrieks and groans that had reached them from the scene of Roberjot's assassination, had left and fled across the marshy meadows to the wall of the castle garden. Climbing over it and hastening through the garden, they reached the city and spread everywhere the terrible tidings of the assassination of the ambassadors.