"He is dying; he belongs to you." The priest knelt down by the dying man, and the doctor rose to go toward the village.

He had not taken ten steps when he stopped, beat the air with both hands, and fell all at once to the ground.

The priest ran to him; he was dead-killed on the spot by a bullet through the temples.
That evening the village was ours, and the next day they placed in the cemetery of Villersexel the body of Dr.Reynaud.
Two months later the Abbe Constantin took back to Longueval the coffin of his friend, and behind the coffin, when it was carried from the church, walked an orphan.

Jean had also lost his mother.

At the news of her husband's death, Madame Reynaud had remained for twenty-four hours petrified, crushed, without a word or a tear; then fever had seized her, then delirium, and after a fortnight, death.
Jean was alone in the world; he was fourteen years old.