Sealed Lips — page 292: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

284 | SEALED LIPS. it would not be a legitimate vengeance; it would be a crime against my country. I wish to die a death worthy of my French uniform. That my blood may be on your head I kill myself, and it is your hand that gets ahead of the enemy's bullets. You have killed Major Sauval.’ I thought that he was crazy, although his words were only too clear to me. I looked at him petrified with shame and surprise, not knowing what to say. He threw a letter upon the table, accompanied with a laugh, that I can hear now, saying, ‘To whom better than to you could I confide the care of this letter to be sent to her address? But have no illusions, general. You are no more fortunate than 1; she deceives you, too.’ One second after he fell at my feet, witha shattered skull. As Iam sure that God exists Iam sure that he was crazy. He never in his right mind would have killed himself on the eveof a battle.” The priest had spoken very rapidly, and stopped to take breath as he wiped his forehead. He con- tinued immediately before the Roumanian had time to interrupt him: “ At least, I have saved his reputation; alone, save for an officer who aided me in my fraud, and who knew that Sauval had not been killed in fighting near me. But I am the only one that knows it now. The next day, before noon, the other wit- nesses no longer existed. When the war was ended, for | was spared in spite of myself, I disappeared in (E(@) CORNICE OOOKS